“You’re not going to die. It won’t be much longer, I promise you. Just a little while and you can push. And then you won’t feel so helpless. You’ll be working to bring your baby into the world.”
The privacy blanket was moved aside and Devon glanced up to see Miguel. He looked as strong and solid as the mountains surrounding them. A rush of pure joy flowed through her veins. Would she ever not feel this way when she first saw him? She thought not. “How’s my grandmother doing with the blankets?” she asked him. Lydia was so strong and uncomplaining, so staunch a partner, that Devon had forgotten for a few hours how recently she had been ill.
“Jesse’s warming them while Lydia takes a break. I told her to stay by the fire and keep Jesse company. The kid’s about at the end of his rope with worry. She might be able to explain what’s going on in here to him a little better than I’ve been doing.” He dropped to the balls of his feet and brushed back Sylvia’s matted hair with a gentle hand. “How are you doing, Sylvia?”
“I hurt so bad,” she said, but she choked back her tears. “I…I’m afraid I will die.”
Miguel shook his head and moved around so that he was sitting with his back to a boulder. Sylvia turned a little sideways and he began massaging her neck, just as Lydia had been doing before she left. “You won’t die. You’ve got the two best midwives in Enchantment here with you.”
“I’m still scared. And what will I do with the baby? Oh…oh…Devon…”
“Breathe,” Devon said. “Whoo…. whoo. Just like I showed you.” The light of the kerosene lantern etched Sylvia’s features in lines of pain and stubborn determination as she attempted to follow Devon’s instructions. The contraction was long and hard, but when it was over, she didn’t immediately begin sobbing again. Instead, she lay her head back against Miguel’s shoulder and closed her eyes, gasping for breath.
He returned to the gentle massage, encouraging Sylvia with low words of praise.
“You’re good at that,” Devon said.
“I’m a Meals-on-Wheels Marine, remember?” But the bitterness with which he’d used the reference in earlier conversations wasn’t there. “When the folks in Somalia weren’t shooting at us, they were begging for our medics to help them. I spent a lot of time with the docs. I’ve seen a baby or two born.”
“Just keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s working. She’s as relaxed as I’ve seen her.” Once more relying on touch, Devon slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and checked Sylvia’s progress. The cervix was totally dilated and the baby had moved well down into the birth canal. “Excellent, Sylvia. A few more like that and you’ll be ready to push.”
But by the third long, hard contraction Sylvia was once more agitated and afraid. “I can’t,” she whispered, not opening her eyes, rolling her head back and forth on Miguel’s shoulder. “What good will it do for my baby to be born? I can’t keep her if they’re going to send me back to Mexico.” Devon sensed she was now too exhausted even to cry.
“You’re not going to be sent back, Sylvia. I promise.”
Miguel’s big hands had moved to the middle of the girl’s back, working in slow circles to ease the knotted muscles. “You and the baby will be able to stay here. I promise, too.”
“You do?” Sylvia was trembling, not only with emotion but with the power of the birth force. “And Jesse?”
Miguel looked over the top of Sylvia’s head and held Devon motionless with the intensity of his dark gaze. “All of you,” he said, and Devon’s heart skidded to a halt before it began to beat again. “You have my word.”
“I want to believe—arghhh.” Sylvia screamed with the intensity of the contraction, straining against Devon’s hands as she braced her knees. She didn’t need any monitors to tell her that Sylvia had made the transition into the final stage of labor. Miguel sensed the change, too. He rose to his knees, supporting Sylvia with both hands spread flat against her shoulders. Lydia appeared from around the makeshift curtain with another flashlight and Jesse, who carried warmed blankets.
“Do you have everything you need?” she asked Devon, after first positioning Jesse and Miguel to help hold Sylvia’s shaking legs. Devon nodded.
Sylvia grabbed Jesse’s arm with both hands. He winced at the strength of her grip but didn’t pull away. “What should I do?” he whispered.
Devon spared him a quick smile. “Just support her leg so that I can see to catch the baby. And be there for her.” He nodded, his eyes fixed on Devon, away from what was happening between Sylvia’s legs. “Sí. I’ll do that. But she’s cutting off the blood to my arm.”
“You can handle it,” Miguel growled, and Jesse nodded.
“That’s good, Sylvia. Go ahead. Push.” The baby’s head crowned, then receded back into the birth canal. Devon caught herself holding her breath, and released it. “Once more, Sylvia. Just like the last time. Don’t worry about anything else. Don’t think about anything else, just push.” But once more the baby’s head slipped back. Sylvia fell back against Jesse’s arm, sobbing and discouraged.
Devon kept up her soft, encouraging croon of almost meaningless words. She knew it was the sound of her voice that would be an important touchstone to Sylvia, not what she said. With the next contraction the baby’s head slid free, but as the infant rotated so that the shoulders could be born, Devon’s blood ran cold. The cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. Lydia saw it, too. She rested her hand on Devon’s shoulder and gave a slight encouraging squeeze.
Devon looked up and saw Miguel watching her, and the quiet confidence in his eyes sent the momentary beat of panic winging back into the darkest corners of her mind. She could do this. She had done it before. “Sylvia, I need you to slow down just a bit. Don’t push through this contraction.”
“I can’t do that. Why do I have to stop now? It hurts too much.” Sylvia struggled to sit up so that she could see what was happening.
Devon studied the frightened young woman’s face, saw the exhaustion and fear, and beneath it all the strength that had gotten her, gotten all of them, this far in their journey. She decided to tell her the truth. “The cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck. You must work with me so that I can slip it over her head. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Sylvia didn’t have the breath or the energy to say more.
Carefully Devon worked her fingers between the baby’s neck and the gently pulsing cord. She could feel another contraction beginning. She willed her fingers to stay steady and calm. Slowly, deftly, she worked the cord over the scrunched little face and the top of her skull. It came free just as the baby’s head rotated and the shoulders were born. “One more push, Sylvia. One more, that’s all.”
“One…more…” Sylvia’s cry faded away to a low, satisfied moan, as the rest of the tiny body slipped out into Devon’s hands.
Tears filled her eyes and Devon did nothing to stop them falling. “Oh, Sylvia, it’s a girl! A beautiful little girl.”
Lydia immediately suctioned the infant’s mouth and nose with a syringe from Devon’s box and a few seconds later a faint but indignant wail of protest issued from the new arrival. Devon looked at her grandmother and they both laughed in joy and relief at the most wonderful sound a midwife could hear. “She’s breathing well. Her color’s good. She’s perfect.”
“A very beautiful little girl,” Lydia seconded. Devon wiped the tiny body with a towel and handed her to Lydia. Her grandmother clamped and cut the cord, then wrapped the baby in a warm receiving blanket, while Devon delivered the placenta and examined it. It was intact and complete. She let her breath out in another sigh of relief.
“Here is your daughter, Sylvia.” Lydia laid the baby in Sylvia’s arms.
“Oh, Jesse, look at her! Mi hija. Mi Estrella. I want to name her that because there are so many stars in the sky tonight. She’s as beautiful as they are.” Sylvia fell silent, then held the baby out to Devon. “But I can’t keep her.” Tears flooded her eyes once more. “I…I want to give her to you.”
/> Devon heard her grandmother draw in her breath. She halted with her hands still supporting the baby she’d just placed in Sylvia’s arms. Devon pulled off her gloves and leaned toward the distraught new mother. “Sylvia, if you want to give the baby up for adoption, we’ll discuss it later. But now you should rest.”
“But if I give her to you, she will be able to stay here, even if I am sent back to Mexico.” Tears continued to roll down her cheeks as she cradled the child to her breast. “I know you love children. That you want children of your own. Look at her. She is beautiful, is she not? Muy linda.”
Devon’s heart contracted and pain filled her chest. Sylvia should be enjoying these first few moments of her daughter’s life; she should be bonding with her baby. Instead, she was attempting to make one of the most painful decisions a woman ever had to make. “We’ll work this out tomorrow. When everyone is rested and off the mountain.” Devon reached out and touched the baby’s tiny fist, which lay beside her cheek.
Sylvia wasn’t comforted by the words. “I can’t keep her if she will be sent back to Mexico with me. She is a citizen. She’s an American.”
Jesse remained on his knees behind her, supporting Sylvia’s weight, his eyes fixed on his niece. It was Miguel who made the next move. He, too, reached out to touch the baby’s silky cheek. “You won’t have to give up your baby, Sylvia. Not unless you decide that is best for her welfare. It won’t be because you have to leave the country.”
“Can you do that? Can you make la migra let us stay?”
“I’ll do my best. But it will take some doing. You have to be strong. And patient.”
She looked up at Jesse. “God and the Blessed Virgin will help us. I can be strong and patient. Can you?”
Jesse was watching Miguel. Devon waited for his answer. “Do you mean what you said?” he asked. “That you’ll help us, or are you only saying this to make my sister feel better right now?”
“I give you my word.”
“You’ll break the law to let us stay here?”
Devon watched Miguel’s profile, the lines and angles of his face, a mixture of races and backgrounds that blended together into an individual of strength and character as he formed his answer. “I’ll work with the law to make it legal for you to stay here. As far as the INS is concerned—” he hesitated a moment and Devon saw the muscles of his jaw tighten before a smile twisted up the corners of his mouth. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
DEVON CLOSED THE DOOR of the Blazer very quietly behind her. She held the precious weight of the baby in her arms, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Lydia and Sylvia were asleep on the old mattress in the back. Jesse and Miguel were bunked down in the Durango. Sunup was only an hour away, but Devon couldn’t sleep.
Sylvia, dressed in the extra pair of scrubs Devon always kept in her midwife’s box, had attempted to nurse her daughter with only one or two false starts, and then fallen into a sound sleep. Lydia, also, was too tired to stay awake all night. Devon had taken the baby so that the other women could rest without worrying about rolling over on her in their sleep.
She walked carefully toward the little grotto and settled into Daniel’s rickety folding chair. The lantern, set on a rocky shelf, cast enough light for her to see the sleeping baby’s face. Her eyes were screwed shut. Her little nostrils flared with each breath. Her hand lay fisted against her downy cheek. Her hair was thick and black, although not as black as her mother’s, and her nose was more aquiline than Sylvia’s, a feature inherited from her absent father? Estrella. Little star. It was a beautiful name, and it suited her. She was fragile and tiny, like the pinpricks of light in the sky.
Devon’s stomach growled with hunger and she fished in her pocket for a peppermint to lull it into submission. They’d feasted on half a Snickers bar each, and peppermints from her emergency supply. There was fruit juice for Sylvia, to help rehydrate her after the delivery, and Miguel had contributed a couple of cans of soda he kept in the back of the Durango. There was water from the spring. They wouldn’t starve before they could get back down the mountain, but everyone would be ready for a meal.
Devon held the sleeping infant close to her heart and laid her cheek against the top of her head. The wind had dropped at sunset. The sounds of men fighting the fire had continued all around them throughout the night, but as the hours passed, the chain saws and bulldozer noises had receded into the distance. Miguel’s last radio check with Angel Base had promised rescue just after dawn.
“We don’t need rescuing,” he’d grumbled as he helped wrestle the old mattress into the back of the Blazer.
“Consider it an escort down the mountain then,” Lydia had said. It’d been too dark to see her face, but Devon knew she was smiling. Miguel must have known it, too, because he’d chuckled and hadn’t mentioned the matter again.
“Are you warm enough out here?” His voice came out of the darkness. Devon’s heart accelerated and her arms tightened around the baby.
She looked up and saw him silhouetted by the dying flame of the fire. “Miguel. I thought you were asleep.”
“I was dozing. I can’t sleep in the front seat of that damned truck. I heard you come up here. Is everything all right?”
“I couldn’t sleep, either. But now that I’m here, I’m not sure this was a good idea. The fire’s nearly out and I’m a bit chilly.” She’d wrapped one of the cotton blankets around her shoulders like a shawl, and the baby was swaddled in a cocoon of receiving blankets.
“That’s easily fixed.” He pushed the cotton blanket off her shoulders and draped them with his soft leather jacket. Devon drew in a deep breath. Sunlight and sagebrush filled her nostrils, the scents she would always associate with him. Miguel threw a couple of the boards he and Jesse had torn from a ruined building on the embers, and they both watched as a shower of sparks spiraled into the sky.
He perched himself on a boulder beside her chair and stretched his booted feet toward the fire. The moon had set, but the star shine and the fire gave enough light for her to see his face. “Is she sleeping?” He leaned over to look more closely at the baby in her arms.
“Sound asleep. It’s tough work being born, you know.”
“You did a great job with Sylvia.” His voice was a low, soothing rumble that warmed Devon as much as the flames. The baby stirred and turned her head as though listening to his words. “The kid was scared to death and you talked her through it like a pro.”
“I am a pro.” She caught him smiling at her. “No fair teasing a woman who’s been awake for twenty-two hours,” she said, smiling back. Maybe it was because she was so tired, or maybe it was because she had missed him so much the past few days, but she reached out and touched his cheek, a fleeting caress, all she would allow herself. “Thank you for coming after us. You came riding in like the…”
“The U.S. Cavalry?”
“No. Like the U.S. Marines.” She had wanted to say, “Like the man I love,” but she lacked the courage.
“Did you think I could just stand by and leave all of you out here alone?”
“I knew you would do what was right and courageous and honorable.”
“Bull,” he said, and the baby screwed up her face and whimpered before settling back to sleep. “Devon, where are you going with this?”
She touched the newly healed burn on his wrist. “How long have you known the kids were illegals?”
“Your hands are like ice,” he said.
She was shaking, but as much with emotion as cold. He scooped the baby up in one arm, as though it was something he did every day of his life, and then clasped his free hand around her wrist and tugged her into the V of his legs. He wrapped the blanket she’d been wearing on her shoulders around her legs, then settled her against his chest, sheltering both her and the baby.
She let herself relax against him for a long moment, inhaling his scent, absorbing his warmth. “How long?” she asked again.
“I suspected from the beginning. For sure
since the day I found that damn pickup.” He gestured in the direction of the barn. “I should have had it towed back to town then and there, and none of us would be out here tonight.”
“Did you mean it when you said you’d help them stay in the country?”
“I always mean what I say, Devon.”
“They have an aunt, but if we can’t find her, or if she can’t care for them, I’ll adopt them to keep them here.”
“Adoptions usually go easier if there are two parents in the equation,” he said quietly.
Two parents. He didn’t move, his breathing didn’t change, but she felt the quick acceleration of his heartbeat as he waited for her answer.
“I’m glad I’m here right now.” She was going to have to take this slowly, one step at a time, or she would lose her courage and fall silent again.
“Why are you glad? Tell me what you’re really thinking. Talk to me, Devon. Not talking to each other is what kept us apart for ten years. Don’t let it happen again.” She may have wanted to take this one step at a time, but Miguel, obviously, was not so cautious. He identified an objective and he went after it.
She could have said because Sylvia’s baby had been safely born. She could have said because they were all safe and sound. That would have been the prudent, risk-free course the old Devon would have followed. “Because of what you just said.”
He splayed his hands over her ribs. She could feel the warmth of them through the supple leather that separated them. “Is that the only reason?” he asked. His breath warmed the back of her neck.
She twisted slightly in his arms so that she could see his face. The sky was turning from black to gray to the silver of dawn’s light. “A few hours ago I might have said yes. But not now. I want to be with you because I love you. I tried to tell you that night at your cabin, but I…I couldn’t.”
“Because you’d lied to me about the kids?”
He was looking down at her with just a flicker of a smile curving his mouth. She sensed that he already knew what her answer would be. “Yes, I lied to you. I intended to keep on lying to you and I thought you would come to hate me for it. I couldn’t have lived with that, so I kept silent and almost lost you.”
The Midwife and the Lawman Page 22
