The Reluctant Midwife (32 page)
Read The Reluctant Midwife Online
Authors: Patricia Harman
I've not been feeling well and I know Isaac notices. He has even begun cooking and cleaning the house. Sometimes I go out in the garden and weed, even if it isn't needed, just to sit with the plants. Sometimes I lie down in the meadow, down by the creek, looking up at the sky, just to feel the comfort of the earth. Secretly, I fear something has been burned out of me, something that will never grow back.
Despite all the many losses when I was young, I thought if people did what was right and played by the rules, all would be well, but life, I've learned, doesn't work that way, and death and pain come on relentlessly whether you are good or not.
It has been a week of funerals. On Saturday we went to Clarence Mitchell's service at the Saved by Faith Baptist Church. I couldn't stop crying. When I went up to Lucy Mitchell, instead of easing her grief, I bawled on her shoulder; it was that bad.
Willa's girls are staying with Mrs. Stenger, and she told me in private, “I'm too old for this. The littlest ones have nightmares and the older ones fight. I hate to think of them going to an orphanage,
but they have no family and I have my own brood of five to care for.”
I didn't go to the Bowlin boy's memorial service at Hazel Patch and neither did Dr. Blum, though Patience invited us to join them. I'd only run into the young man twice, when the pastor brought us wood and then again at Livia's birth, and Blum didn't know him at all.
While the Hesters are at the Hazel Patch chapel, I walk out behind the barn to look at the graveyard where Blum has been digging the graves. There will be eight in all, each seven feet deep. Next to the empty holes, there are three little graves with tiny wood crosses.
The first cross is for the premature baby that was left in a cardboard box at my Women and Infants' Clinic, another lifetime ago, when I didn't understand how such things could happen. Now I know. Life is cruel.
The second is for the baby Patience lost before she moved to West Virginia, the one she delivered prematurely in the back of the horse-drawn ambulance in Chicago, when she was sixteen. (There are no remains in this tiny grave, but the midwife needed a place to remember.)
The third cross is for the baby Patience made with Daniel during a thunderstorm and then birthed on the kitchen floor.
All the victims of the fire who have no family plots will be buried in this place tomorrow. Captain Wolfe, Drake Trustler, the colored homeless man John Doe, Willa Hucknell, Alfred Hucknell, and the baby, but Patience has also convinced the Hazel Patch folks and the Bishop brothers that Beef and Nate Bowlin belong here too, with the other heroes of the Hope River Wildfire. When the midwife makes up her mind about something, she's very convincing.
Blum has started carving a sign, to be mounted on two cedar posts, that will read,
HOPE MEMORIAL CEMETERY
.
May 9, 1935
I am out digging the last grave behind the barn in the spring sunshine and all the time I'm thinking about my own grave, the one I jumped into the day Priscilla died. What was it that propelled me into that black tomb? What happened that made me turn my back on life? I'll try to explain, though it may not make sense. The thing is, I was beyond sensibility
.
Looking back, the words of the circulating nurse in the operating theater come back to me through a dark tunnel. “You won't be happy about this, Dr. Blum. They're sending a patient up from the ER, a hot abdomen.”
I was just finishing my third surgery of the day, a hernia repair, and was anxious to get home. Whether Priscilla would be there was the question
.
“Dr. Gross says the man is in critical condition,” the RN goes on. “You're the only surgeon still in the hospital, so the case comes to you.”
Pissed off, I changed, rescrubbed, and reentered the operating room, just as the anesthesiologist was putting the patient under. As the nurse gave report, I waited, scalpel in my gloved hands. I had done hundreds of appendectomies and a couple of dozen ruptures
.
“This is a patient in his late thirties, found in front of a downtown hotel with fever and chills, acute abdominal pain. Temp 104, pulse thready at 120, blood pressure 100/40 and dropping. The ER suspects a ruptured appendix or a twisted bowel. There's no known next of kin, but the name on his business card in his wallet says John Teeleman, Eli Lilly.”
I almost dropped my scalpel
. John Teeleman,
the man who had been screwing my wife?! Rage overcame me. My
hands shook, sweat beaded out on my brow. Fortunately, everyone else in the operating theater was concentrating on getting the man's blood pressure up and no one noticed
.
“Epinephrine,” the anesthesiologist ordered, and a nurse inserted the drug into the IV. “You'd better cut now, Blum,” he said to me
.
The rest of the surgery was a blur. My first look at the patient's abdomen revealed a well-healed vertical scar from sternum to public bone, so he'd already had surgery sometime in the past
.
I know I made a small incision over McCurry's Point and opened the fascia. I remember opening the peritoneum and being surprised when I encountered massive adhesions, probably the result of an old war wound. The appendix had already burst and purulent fluid was everywhere. It must have been as I was cutting through the scar tissue that I nicked the abdominal aorta. I couldn't be sure because the visual field was compromised with a waterfall of blood
.
“Suction!” I ordered, though the scrub nurse was already sucking
.
The anesthesiologist tried to start a second IV line
.
I opened the abdominal incision wider, searching for the bleeder
.
The nurses tilted the table to shunt what was left of the Eli Lilly rep's life fluid back into his heart
.
I fought for John Teeleman's life, as his blood drained red on the operating room floor
.
“Thanks, Dr. Adams,” I shook hands with the anesthesiologist when it was all over
.
“You tried, Isaac,” the circulating nurse said, giving me a one-armed hug
.
But did I? To this day, I don't know. Sworn to protect life.
Did I try
hard
enough or did I intentionally kill the patient with that slip of the knife, execute John Teeleman, the man who was fucking my wife?
“These are
some
apple fritters, Isaac!” Daniel exclaims.
“More, please!” says Danny, agreeing with him. “More, with apple butter!”
There's a cool wind outside and we're sitting in the kitchen around the table in the little house with the blue door. Tomorrow is the burial in the new graveyard, and Dr. Blum cooked the meal.
“You're going to put me to shame, man,” Daniel goes on. “All I can make is fried eggs and bacon.”
“Isaac has been feeding me very well. Somehow I just don't feel like cooking.”
The doctor doesn't say anything, but he smiles, and I realize how, despite the anger I had toward him about my journal, my feelings have softened. Maybe the fire melted my heart. With that thought, the tears come again and I have to leave the table.
Patience follows me out behind the barn where the graves are ready for the ceremony.
“Are you okay, Becky?” Patience asks when I wipe my eyes.
“I guess. I just can't stop crying. It wasn't like I was
in love
with Captain Wolfe, but we were close friends and maybe I
could
have loved him. And Drake Trustler, he was so brave and such a good spirit. I can't believe he's gone. The others I didn't know well, but still it's so sad.
“You should have seen the boys the day the of the blaze, Patience. The Forest Army went off in their trucks, singing as if the fire were a Sunday School picnic. I'm not kidding. They were singing
Hi-de-hi-ho
, never knowing the hell they would face. They were just kids really. I keep hearing their voices.
Hi-de-hi-ho. Hi-de-hi-he.”
The midwife doesn't say anything, just puts her arm around me as we stare into the empty holes, seven feet deep and seven feet long.
“But you know what really gets me?
Willa
. I cry for her and I cry for the baby and I cry for Alfred, the wife beater, who loved his little children so much he would walk through fire to save them.”
May 10, 1935
The day John Teeleman died, I left the operating suite like a man in a trance and was surprised when Priscilla ran up to me in the ER waiting room
.
“How is he?” She grabbed at my coat sleeve
.
“Who?”
“Don't play dumb! John Teeleman, my lover.”
“How did you know?”
“When I went to the Inn to meet him, the bellman told me they brought him to Martha Washington Hospital. How is he?” she asks again and pulls at my lapels, her face so close I can smell the fear
.
“He didn't make it.” (I don't mean to sound cold, but I'm just so exhausted it comes out that way.) “Bled out during surgery.”
“No!” Priscilla pounds on my chest, hits me over and over as she screams in front of everyone in the waiting room. “No! You killed him, you son of a bitch! You killed him on purpose!”
“It wasn't like that, Pris,” I try to explain. “There were adhesions. Massive infection. He was already critical. We couldn't stop the bleeding. . . .” But she rages on, not caring who hears
.
“You killed him!” Every eye in the waiting room is on us, so I pull her roughly outside
.
“You killed him. My only chance at happiness! You fucking waste of a man!” That's when I slap her. It's not like I meant to or even thought about it before my hand moved, but my palm makes a red mark on her cheek
.
“Pris!” I yell, but it's too late, she's already running across the parking lot, careening carelessly, blinded by tears
.
“Watch the ice, Doc,” Jackson, the colored maintenance man cautions as he lights a cigarette on the hospital loading dock. I don't answer, but throw my black bag on the seat of my Pontiac and follow Pris's little roadster out to Locust. By the time I make the turn, she's a half mile ahead of me, disappearing fast
.
Thirty minutes later, I cross the iron bridge over the James, pass through Perrysville, and pull into the drive of our brick home. I'm thinking I'll beg her forgiveness, but her car isn't there. It's already on the bottom of the James River
.
An accident they called it, but I thought differently and have never doubted she drove over the bank on purpose
.
How long does it take a person to forgive himself? Two lives lost because of my stupidity. Maybe you will say I'm too hard on myself, but I was a hard man in those days, and I set my own punishment: death for a double murder . . . and for a coward who doesn't have the courage to kill himself, death while alive, madness
.
The turnout for the burials is more than we expected and I'm glad the four of us spent some time last evening constructing makeshift benches to seat the next of kin and older folk. There were horse-drawn carts and vehicles parked all over the yard.
The little Hucknell girls find Dr. Blum and cling to him, insisting he sit up front on the benches. Only the eldest, Sally, cries, and Isaac puts his arm around her and holds her close.
One by one, the coffins are lowered into the graves by the CCC men. There are eight freshly dug holes and nine dead, because we planned to bury the baby with his father, Alfred Hucknell.
Boodean is here and Starvation MarFarland, and Snake and Loonie Tinkshell and a few of the others, even Rusty on his crutches because, as he told me, even though he lost his foot, he wanted to thank Dr. Blum for saving his life. The new superintendent seems a little lost, but Lou Cross takes care of everything.
“Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.” Reverend Miller says a few words about death and heroes and reads the Scripture. I picture the ashes left from the wildfire sifting across the land, acres and acres of drifting gray ashes. The service closes as Mrs. Miller, wearing a long purple gown and a strand of pearls like Eleanor
Roosevelt, sings a hymn and we all join in on the chorus. “
Will the circle be unbroken
?
By and by, Lord, by and by? There's a better home awaiting. In the sky, Lord, in the sky
.”
Afterward, everyone gathers at the homemade tables for potato salad and baked beans, apple pie and cold milk and coffee. The Hazel Patch faithful are present and Mrs. Miller comes over and gives me a hug. The Bishop brothers and Cora are here. From across the crowd Cora winks at me and points to her belly. She's wearing a new blue dress and her hair is done up on her head, like a proper lady. The CCC guys sit by themselves, all in uniform, until the Reverend and Sheriff Hardman go over and join them.
As everyone gets in their auto or carts to leave, Blum, Hester, and Maddock walk out across the fields toward the creek and I think how good it is to see Isaac acting like a regular man, a man who has friends. Even before his collapse, when he was a functioning physician, I don't think he had friends. Come to think of it, neither did I, not many anyway, and not close.
From where I stand toward the back of the cemetery, I can look down Spruce Mountain toward the Hope River. We are on the green side, and I see, on the other, blackened forests and fields all the way to the west.
The golden forsythia bush next to the barn rings like a churchbell.
“No one brought any flowers for the graves!” Patience says after everyone is gone and the four of us are taking down the homemade benches and tables. “Let's go get some. Come on!” She is pulling my hand. “Here,” she says to Daniel taking her baby out of the
sling and handing her over. “You take the kids. We have to find flowers!”
It's almost dusk. I'm dead tired and would just like to lie down, but I do what she says. In the field by the barn we find daisies and mustard and phlox. We pick and pick until we have enough for all the graves.
“Isaac is carving the sign for the cemetery. What do you want it to say?” I ask as we turn back.
Patience doesn't hesitate. She must have had it all planned.
HOPE MEMORIAL CEMETERY
DEDICATED TO THE HEROES OF
THE HOPE RIVER WILDFIRE OF 1935
“WE ARE ALL STRONGER THAN WE THINK.”
Back at the gravesites, we kneel again and spread out our flowers, a blanket of color to cover the dead, white, yellow, and pink. Patience surprises me when she makes the sign of the cross. “Mrs. Kelly,” she shrugs as if that explains it. “She was Catholic.”
I think about that . . . how little parts of those we love are alive in us, even when the beloved is gone.
“What happens to them?” I ask. “Drake and Beef? The captain and Nate Bowlin? The Hucknells? Are they just flesh and bones to molder under the earth or is there something more?”
“More,” the midwife says firmly.
“You sound so sure.”
“Look around you,” she says pointing down into the valley where the Hope reflects the sunset, a ribbon of red, and I'm crying again, but this time for the joy of it.