Joshua followed the woman so close that he almost tripped on her heels. “Did her water break?”
“This mornin’.”
Joshua cursed silently to himself. There was some chance of turning the baby, but it would have been a bigger chance if her water hadn’t broken. Whatever her mother had noticed that clued her in, it was a damn shame she hadn’t noticed it sooner.
A hoarse cry, like a grunt but louder and longer and higher, came from down the hall as they reached the second floor. A woman in labor, if she made noise at all, could sound like nothing else Joshua had heard or imagined. It sent prickles down his spine. And if he didn’t school his imagination, he would be picturing women he knew, girls at Mamie’s or shopkeeper’s wives or the usually self-contained Miss Brook, in the throes of such suffering.
Just before he entered the room, the older woman clutched his wrist and faced him, with all the fear she must have been hiding from her daughter writ plain on her face. “Can you save my baby? Can you bring her baby into the world?”
Maybe, by the time he’d been a doctor for twenty years, he’d have a better feel for whether to lie. He could hardly say, “I have no idea.” Even “I hope to God I can” was probably not enough. So he said, “That’s what I’m here to do.”
If he failed to do it, she could curse him later. He moved around her and headed for his patient. His patients.
He plunked his bag on the floor and pulled out his smock, shrugging it on. Even an easy birth was a messy business. Then he approached the bed. The laboring woman seemed oblivious to his presence until he bent to take her hand. “I’m Doc Gibbs. I’m here to help.”
She lay there pale and sweaty, the bedclothes under and around her all rucked up from her thrashing about. She squeezed his hand so tight he thought another contraction was starting, but her face showed only exhaustion and worry, no pain. She said hoarsely, “Ma thinks the baby’s coming out wrong. Is it?”
“I’ll find out.” He gently moved the bedclothes away from her. “I’m going to be touching your belly now.” She nodded weakly.
He ran his hands over her, pressed lightly here and there. “Your ma appears to be right.” He hesitated. “I’d like to take a look down where the baby’s coming, to see how far along you are in opening the way. And I may need to touch you there, to be sure.”
She turned away, her face contorted in protest — or in pain. Another contraction was starting. The pillows muffled her words, but he could hear. “Must you?”
“I should. I really should. I need to know how much time we have to get this baby turned around.”
She gritted her teeth and nodded. A moan, almost a wail, escaped her as he squatted down and examined the birth canal. She was almost fully dilated. Not much time, then.
He stood back up and bent over the woman. “I’m going to be pressing on your belly where the baby is, to get it head down.” He had been concentrating too hard to notice who else was near, but now he looked around and found the woman’s mother hovering in the doorway. “Do you have any wine or spirits? It would relax her and help me with what I need to do.”
The mother turned and called an order to some unseen member of the household. While he waited, Joshua told his patient, “It’ll probably take a few minutes. And it may hurt some of that time. I’m sorry about that.”
The woman actually chuckled. “Well, won’t that be a change. This has just been a picnic so far.”
He smiled back as best he could. Just then a boy came up to the woman’s mother with a glass of dark red wine. Joshua retreated while the mother brought the glass to the bed, helping her daughter sit up enough to drink. “Take it slow, now,” Joshua cautioned her. It’d do no good for her to vomit it up again.
She got most of it down before another contraction started. He waited while she moaned and panted. When she finally relaxed against the pillows, he stepped forward and got started, feeling for the hard smoothness of the head and the narrower bump of the buttocks. It was hard to make himself push firmly enough, knowing it was hurting her, but there was no way around it.
She let out a cry and then grabbed a handful of blanket and stuffed it in her mouth. Joshua pressed steadily with both hands, trying to push exactly as hard with both.
“There we go!” He could feel the baby starting to change position. But damn! There came another contraction. If the cord was in the wrong place during it, the contraction could squeeze it shut . . . .
The seconds might have dragged even more slowly for Joshua than for the moaning woman in the bed. When the abdominal muscles finally relaxed, he got to work again, pushing harder, terrified of the next contraction.
Slowly, slowly . . . and then a little faster . . . the baby yielded to his efforts. As it turned more crossways, the woman let out a shriek. But in a moment more, the baby was moving toward vertical again, this time with the head down where it should be.
Now he had to see whether the baby would stay in position. This process didn’t always take. Sometimes, for whatever reason, maybe the same reason the baby had been breech in the first place, the baby turned butt-down again. But that was the one good thing about this happening so late, with contractions coming every couple of minutes. The baby wouldn’t have much room or time to maneuver itself back into danger.
And twenty minutes later, Joshua got to see a purple head with just a wisp of hair appear, and recede again, and finally crown.
Downstairs again, Joshua collapsed in a kitchen chair while the older woman fixed him a sandwich. He had already removed his smock and rolled it up tight, clean side out. He’d rinse it as best he could once he got home, then take it to Li Chang later in the morning.
The new mother was weak from her ordeal, and her vital signs could have been more reassuring. The baby had been quick to cry and pink up, but its movements were on the sluggish side. He couldn’t say either patient was out of the woods just yet, but all he said to the family was to come get him right away if the mother started bleeding much or either of them came down with fever. He’d come back tomorrow evening, after all concerned had gotten some sleep, to see how things were going.
There were still a few stars overhead when he pulled himself back aboard Nellie-girl and turned her toward home. All over, for now, until the next time. . . . A thought struck him so sudden that he pulled up on Nellie-girl’s reins, startling a neigh out of her. He patted her neck in apology and loosened the reins again. The next time, if Mrs. Blum’s schemes actually came to anything, it might be his own wife lying in a bed, moaning and screaming and tossing around, trying her hardest to bring their baby into the world.
Did every husband, every father-to-be, wonder if it was worth the risk?
Would he be even more terrified than he had been on the battlefield, or assisting the doctors afterward, trying to keep yet one more soldier from dying?
And if the worst happened, would he ever forgive himself for putting the woman he loved in that fatal danger?
When he finally stumbled up the stairs to his rooms, he no longer cared enough to bother with the smock and planned to fall straight into bed. But instead, he found himself looking for the letter he’d gotten from his mother the week before, and reading it over, and kissing her signature.
She had been through all that, or at least something like it, for his sake. And he’d never thought to thank her for it. If he had had the strength to hold a pen and produce recognizable words, he would have written her right now. Instead, he laid the letter on the table where he ate his breakfasts, so he couldn’t possibly forget.
* * * * *
It would have been awkward enough if only Mrs. Blum had shown up, just four hours after he got to sleep. But she had apparently had enough of his stalling about the dry goods store assistant. Both of them were there at his door, Mrs. Blum beaming to match the morning sun, the younger woman a step behind and considerably shyer.
At least Mrs. Blum looked embarrassed when he opened the door partway, in nightshirt and cap, and peered
blearily at his inconvenient visitors. He hadn’t been sure she knew how to look embarrassed. “Oh, I’m sorry! We’ll come back —” (“ve’ll koom back”) “— later on. But here!” She placed a basket in his hand. “We brought you some crullers. Eldora made them herself, such a clever girl, such a good cook, she makes me jealous!”
He could smell the fried dough. It made his mouth water. “Thank you, ladies.” He managed to smile. “Now I know what to have for breakfast.” He eased the door closed, leaned against it, and stumbled to the stove to make fresh coffee.
An hour later, his mouth coated inside and out with grease and sugar, he made a wager with himself about when Mrs. Blum would return. Another half an hour, perhaps. And probably alone — he doubted the young woman would have the nerve, after that reception.
He was wrong on the first point, right on the second. An unusually timid knock came not ten minutes later. This time he opened the door all the way, dressed properly from collar to boots. The widow looked him up and down, but still seemed less than satisfied. “Sit, sit, before you fall over! You must have been out half the night. At that farm to the north, with the baby?”
Of course she would know all about what everyone in and around town was up to. “That’s right.”
She followed him as he headed for his easy chair and settled himself in it. “And mother and baby are well?”
He rubbed his eyes. “They were well enough when I left. I couldn’t say how either of them’ll fare. It was a hard birth.”
You still have that tea I brought you?”
He simply shook his head, too weary to deal with her ministrations.
“Eldora, she had to go to work, or she’d have come with me.”
Maybe so, maybe not. Just the mention of that fresh-faced lady, youthful health and energy radiating from her, made him imagine how she would look with that happy glow extinguished, sweat and exhaustion and pain in her face, an unearthly wail coming from pale and bitten lips . . . . He hid his face in his hands.
He heard a creak as Mrs. Blum settled into the wicker rocking chair, and then the rumble of the rockers on the floor. When she spoke, her voice was gentle, coaxing. “You’ll rest up, you’ll feel better. It was a hard birth, you say, but still, a baby born! Such a miracle! And one day, it’ll be your own miracle, a joy like no other . . . .”
He let himself drift in the wake of her persuasive voice, imagining holding his own babe the way he had finally held the baby last night. Rocking his little girl to sleep. Taking his little boy fishing, late afternoon sun gilding the trees as the boy proudly carried home his very first catch.
And then, a shadow falling over the picture, the shadow of the angel of death, a woman stretched the length of a bed and gasping her last breath in a darkened room, and himself crumpled in a chair with little hands grasping and pulling at him, and a newborn babe whimpering from a nearby cradle. He gasped, and choked on a sob.
The sound of the rocking chair had stopped. He opened his eyes to see Mrs. Blum leaning forward, elbows on knees, looking solemnly in his face. She spoke softly, the melody of her speech subdued.
“I lost a little one, when I was a young woman. The pains came before time. It was so tiny, the poor little thing. Samuel was so unhappy, I never saw him like that before or since . . . . And I couldn’t have more, afterward.”
So that explained why she never talked of a son or daughter back in New York. “I’m sorry.”
She took a deep breath and shrugged. “Nu, that’s life. Life, death, all written in the book, and we watch the pages turn, and go on.”
She started rocking again, the rhythm soothing as he leaned back and shut his eyes again. After a while, still rocking, she spoke. “A good man like you, you’d be such a good father. But . . . not every woman wants to have a child.”
What woman wouldn’t? A widow with children already, he supposed. He waited, weary, for her to put forth the name of a Mrs. Somebody, still young, still lovely, only three children, he could be a father to them . . . .
But when he peeked up under his eyelids to see what she was doing, he spied an unexpected, mysterious smile on her face.
Mrs. Blum hauled herself up from the chair, setting it rocking vigorously from her movement. “I’ll stop by later and bring you some leftover stew I made. You need something solid, you should get your strength back. And I have someone I want to talk to.”
“Who??” Joshua wondered which of them had lost their mind, the respectable older widow beaming at him or himself.
“Mamie! She’s hardly older than you at all, just a year or two maybe. She knows about life, no just-hatched chick, a woman of experience. A good head on her shoulders, responsible, smart. And not counting on having children, but not dead set against it, so you have options. Not to mention she knows how to please a man, you can’t say that isn’t a good thing.”
“Mamie. Madam Mamie.” Madams almost always started as prostitutes. How many men had she been with?
Well, how many whores had he been with? How was that any different, really?
And Mamie had always treated him with respect, and given him a straightforward, friendly welcome.
He imagined walking into church on Sunday with the notorious Madam Mamie on his arm — and he spluttered in laughter. He seized Mrs. Blum’s arms, almost picking her up to swing her around before thinking better of it, whirling her around where she stood. “Mamie. You amazing woman. All right, what have the two of you come up with? Where do we start?”
* * * * *
Joshua had never seen this room before, a small dining room with furnishings, wallpaper, and even tablecloth as excessively ornate as the main parlor where guests waited their turn. It made sense, now that he thought about it. Some of Madam Mamie’s wealthier patrons would want to have supper parties for a few friends, complete with a girl for each. But this evening the table was set for only two, with covered dishes and a bottle of wine.
Mamie led him in and expertly deployed a corkscrew, then poured him a large glass of white wine, full to the brim. “I figure it can’t hurt to start relaxing you.”
Joshua found himself relaxing at once, even before his first sip of the excellent wine. Mamie poured herself a glass, just as generous, and waved him to a chair, uncovering the dishes and serving both of them with a feast more like dinner than supper: creamed corn, mashed potatoes and butter, and rare roast beef. “Folks say you shouldn’t drink white wine with beef. But you can guess how much I care what folks say.”
Joshua raised his glass in a toast. “To white wine with beef, and to hell with ‘em!”
Over supper, they traded first histories, then anecdotes. He steered clear of the grisly aspects of his war experience, which left not much, but he dwelt on such topics as the absurdities of command and the deliveries of ridiculously useless supplies. And he managed to remember a few oddly peaceful interludes. “There was one time, maybe three years into the war, a few of us got separated from our company with a blizzard coming on. We found a hut, something someone must have used for a hunting shelter, and almost as soon as we stumbled inside, about the same number of Rebs found it. We just looked at each other, and then me and the other boys stepped aside to let ‘em in. We shared our rations and played poker with twigs for chips. And when the weather cleared up, we looked the other way while they vanished.” He gazed into the candle on the table. “Always feared we’d come upon ‘em in a fight, but it never happened. A bit of mercy, that.”
Mamie poured him more wine. “Must have been around that time that I set up here. Speaking of poker, would you believe it, I won this house, or what it was then — a smaller place, I’ve built it up since — in a poker game, right across the street at the saloon? Damn fool didn’t think a lady could bluff. And the first girl I took on — she’s moved on since, but she was a corker. Used to be a fancy shooter, showing off her shooting from one town to the next, but her fingers got to troubling her, some sort of rheumatic trouble. She was pretty as all get-out, and knew how
to dress up and get attention, and was used to handling menfolk. A real natural, she turned out to be.”
And back and forth, on and on, through supper and a couple of hours after, through the bottle of wine and a sweet, thick liqueur to follow. The openness with which Mamie discussed all manner of subjects reminded him of Clara Brook. Though he had the impression, even with their short acquaintance, that Miss Brook’s conversation would cover a wider range of topics.
A pause in the talk, possibly arising from his wandering thoughts, lingered and turned into a portentous silence. What now? If he were here as a customer, he would know what came next, but surely this evening came with no such expectation. He must, above all, show a proper respect for his companion . . . .
Mamie drained her glass, put it down with a decided thump, and folded her hands on the table. “Joshua, I’ve enjoyed our time tonight, and I’m grateful to Freida for suggesting it. I hope we’ll stay acquainted, after this. But whatever it may take to touch my heart, if such a thing could happen, it’ll need a different sort of fellow to do it. Someone older, and tougher, and stranger, and at least a little meaner, I’m thinking.”
Joshua’s jaw dropped; he hauled it back into place and cleared his throat. “Well, then, ah . . . .”
She patted his hand, her cut glass ring twinkling in the candlelight. “I suspected as much. But you know Freida. It’s easier to go along when she has an idea. And I was curious to get to know you better, after just doing business for so long.” She tilted her head and studied him. “No hard feelings, I hope? Me and the girls count on you to take care of us. And there’s several of ‘em would miss you more personal, should you stop coming by.”
Joshua shook off embarrassment and confusion and a bit of wounded pride, and gave her a little bow from where he sat. “No more than I’d miss them. I’ll be by in two weeks, as usual.”
“Good.” She gave a decided nod. “Now let’s have a little coffee, and some brandy in it, before you go.”
What Heals the Heart Page 6
