The Runaway Midwife Read online

  Diet: Seeds

  Range: Canada to the southern US

  Voice: a trill

  Size: 6–7 inches

  Dance

  Fog today. The sky is flat gray and the water’s gray too so there’s no horizon. Finally, little dark specks come into focus and I can see birds, hundreds of them, floating out in the lake about a hundred yards away. Ducks, I think. Some new kind of duck.

  This is the first time I’ve experienced fog on the island. Outside, on what’s left of the drifts of snow, steam rises and makes more fog. By eleven in the morning I want to go back to bed, but then I remember the dream about dancing.

  Shake it up, Sara! Get up and dance.

  Sorry, I have no heart for it, I answer. And anyway my foot hurts!

  Oh, for God’s sake! (That’s Karen talking.) Get your butt moving.

  Hearing her voice so loud in my head, I do what she says. On my cell, I find the icon for music, then locate a free song that came with the phone, a reggae tune—“Stir It Up.” Soon I’m standing next to the sofa, holding on with one hand and waving the other above my head. Then I try hopping and singing along. “Come on and stir it up, little darlin’! Stir it up; come on, baby! Come on and stir it up, yeah!”

  WHEN JESSIE WAS little we used to dance a lot. We’d put on the stereo, turn up the volume and do our wildest imitation of rock stars. Those were the good days! And I wonder if we’ll ever dance together again. We will. We will! I promise myself.

  I also encouraged my patients to dance in labor, not wild like Jessie, though if they wanted to, that would be fine. Mostly, the women slow danced, holding on to their partners, standing in the middle of the birthing room, swaying to the music on their cell phones or boom boxes or just the music in their head.

  It was the nurse-midwives on the Labor and Delivery floor where I worked as a new RN in Ann Arbor who showed me how beautiful birth could be. Like mother birds, they took me under their wings. Sandy was my favorite.

  The first time I saw her deliver a baby, the room was dim. Pachelbel’s Canon was playing on a stereo. The patient was slow dancing with her partner. Then she was in the shower singing. Then she was on her hands and knees, no stirrups, no drapes, just a mom grunting her baby out.

  Sandy, who later helped me have my baby at home, didn’t even tell me to take the foot of the birthing bed down; she just took a seat on the edge of the mattress and asked for some warm compresses. “It’s okay, Annie. It’s okay,” she said softly to the mother. “It will all be over in a few minutes.” And I watched as Sandy helped the father deliver his own baby, her gloved hands over his gloved hands, and the patient didn’t have a single tear.

  “I did it! I really did it!” the mother cried, reaching for her wet wailing infant. Sandy gently laid the newborn across the mother’s bare chest and covered it with a baby blanket. “Oh, my sweet tiny girl!” the mother whispered with tears running down her face. The father was crying too and he bent over and kissed his wife, their tears running together.

  THAT’S WHY I love helping women in labor. (Loved, I should say.) Not that all deliveries were as simple as that one. Case in point—Robyn Layton, my home-birth patient. What kind of a wimp am I, to run away after that? I did nothing wrong. I don’t think I did, anyway.

  Assuming she had an amniotic embolism, as I suspect, the complication was completely unpredictable. The only thing is . . . if she’d had her baby in the birthing center in the hospital one floor away from the intensive-care ward, we might have saved her . . . we might have . . .

  UNTIL DR. AGATA WAS recruited to be the head of the hospital, we nurse-midwives were allowed to attend home births. It wasn’t often, maybe two or three times a year, but we enjoyed it. The soft lighting, the music, the children helping their mother.

  The birthing center was nice too. We could turn the lights low and have music playing and kids present, but there were always nurses coming in and out to get vital signs, chart on the computer and monitor the baby. There were dietary personnel and housekeepers too. Occasionally you’d hear a woman screaming in the next labor room. Sometimes, in the middle of everything, they’d announce a code blue over the intercom.

  When Agata changed the rules about attending home births, we midwives protested. I brought the administrator a copy of the 2014 study of nearly seventeen thousand home births that said home delivery for the low-risk mother accompanied by a trained midwife was as safe as the hospital. I highlighted the findings that 97 percent of babies born at home were carried full term, weighed an average of eight pounds at birth and were only transferred to the hospital in 1 percent of cases, but the man wouldn’t budge. I told him that the C-section rate for home births was only 5.2 percent compared to the hospital C-section rate of 34 percent, but still he held firm.

  “It’s the malpractice insurance company that sets the rules,” he told us. “It’s out of my hands. You can tell your patients you’re no longer able to deliver their babies at home or you can resign.”

  I was so mad, I actually considered leaving and starting a home-birth practice, but in the end Richard said it wouldn’t be worth it. I’d have to pay for my own medical liability insurance, my own assistant, my own office and equipment, so I kept my head down and went with the program, the obedient wife and midwife.

  IN THE NIGHT I wake and find moonlight streaming in from every window. I just have to go out! Hobbling out onto the lower deck, I scoop moonlight over my half-naked body. The light from the three-quarter moon spreads out across the silver water. I take the stairs to the higher deck on top of the breakwall and a sound involuntarily comes out of my mouth. “Ahhhhh!”

  In joyous salute, I reach for the moon, the eye into heaven. I can’t help it. A big smile comes over my face. It’s pure joy. I’m in as much trouble as I’ve ever been in my life, wanted by the law, estranged from my daughter, hiding out on an island in Canada without a real friend in sight and still the moon follows me, dances with me, calls me.

  CHAPTER 19

  Obstinate

  It’s been well over a month since I provided my driver’s license to Girard at the credit union and so far no Mounties have knocked on my door asking about my passport. This makes me wonder if the teller didn’t run the number through a database or if they only do that when someone seems suspicious. Perhaps he forgot. It’s possible.

  TODAY MOLLY LOU and I are bumping our way to Burke’s Country Store. Molly expertly bounces around a muddy pothole as we drive past the cider farm where the apple trees are in bloom and ten or twelve men, dressed in matching tan coveralls with hoods, are out pruning trees.

  “The migrant workers always come back this time of year,” Molly announces. “They make good money working here, eleven dollars an hour plus room and board. In six months they can make enough to support themselves and their family for the year back in Mexico.”

  I wait for her to beep and give them the peace sign, but she looks away. (Is the woman prejudiced about the farm workers as well as the hippies?) Rolling down the window to wave to them myself, the smell of the sweet apple blossoms almost overwhelms me. “So beautiful!” I say. “Rows and rows of snowy trees.”

  “It’s a late bloom this year. Further up, you’ll see the peaches and apricots,” Molly says when we’re well past the men. “The blossoms are a little pinker. We don’t know how the crop will be yet. It was a long hard winter. At least they didn’t bloom too early like last year. That’s the trouble with this climate-change thing . . . Freeze. Thaw. Sun. Snow. The poor trees are as confused as we are.”

  “I want to say again, how much I appreciate Chris plowing me out and you taking me to the store. Did Officer Dolman tell you I hurt my ankle?”

  “Yeah. He left his patrol car at our house when he plodded on his snowshoes down Grays Road. He’s a good guy. Tries to take care of everyone. Smart too. Not much gets past him.”

  That’s the part I don’t like, I say to myself, and then something catches my eye.

  All along the shore
, big birds of prey are catching the updraft from the water’s edge and circling higher and higher. There must be twenty of them. “Look. Stop. It’s a flock of eagles!”

  Molly pulls over on the side of the road and we get out. “Those aren’t eagles,” she explains. “Those are vultures, migrating north to the mainland but a dozen or so will stay here all summer.”

  We watch as scores of the big birds circle over our heads like bombers from a World War II movie. Just about the time I think the show is over, another ten or twenty show up, soaring higher and higher. “How can you tell they aren’t eagles?”

  “First, eagles don’t fly in flocks and, second, can you see how the feathers on the tips of their wings curl up? Eagle’s wings are flat. When the vultures land to feed it’s even more obvious. Turkey vultures have featherless bloodred heads and are as ugly as sin. Still, you know spring is here when the vultures come back.”

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, Molly Lou pulls into the lot at Burke’s Country Store and parks next to five other vehicles, some old, some new, but all muddy. (There’s apparently no car wash on the island.)

  “Shoot,” says Molly. “It’s the day the shipment comes in on the ferry and look how many people are here already. I hope they still have bread and milk. Also, I want some ripe tomatoes.”

  When we enter, I see what she means. For a little store on a little island, this is probably as busy as it gets. First I pick up my electric bill and junk mail at the post office, reminding myself that Molly told me I could get home delivery . . . then I head right for the tomatoes and take the last four. They’re grown in greenhouses across the lake in Leamington, bright red and still attached to the vine, the prettiest I’ve ever seen and I give two to my companion.

  “That’s the last of them, two for you and two for me. No, maybe you should get three! You have more people to feed.” I hand over another of the jeweled fruits.

  “Hi, Eugene. Hi, Helen,” I greet the shopkeepers.

  Because she knows where everything is, Molly finishes first and leans against the post-office desk, gossiping with Helen, while Eugene bags my groceries. “How you doing down on the point?” Eugene asks me.

  “Fine,” I answer, wondering about his sudden interest.

  “You going to stay through the summer?” What’s with the man? He’s never said two words to me before.

  “I hope to. I sent Lloyd and Wanda a check.” I refer to them with familiarity.

  “The reason I ask is . . .” Before he can finish his sentence, Rainbow and five other hippies burst through the door. Molly Lou gives them a look that would freeze hell, and Eugene turns away, but Helen goes to the coffee bar and makes a quiet call to the cop again.

  What’s with these people? They act like Rainbow and her friends are a band of thieves about to steal the whole store.

  “Sara!” Rainbow calls when she sees me. “How are you? Can you come out to the farm next week? We have six new lambs and a baby goat. You told me you would.”

  All the eyes in the store are on me, turkey vultures watching from the limbs of dead trees.

  “Next week? What day?” I ask, as if my social calendar might be full.

  “How about Friday?”

  I know the locals want me to say no, but I’m obstinate and they piss me off. The hippies might be weird, but they don’t seem like bad people. “Sure, that would be fun.”

  “Great! I’ll pick you up.” She gives me a one-armed hug and all the locals look the other way.

  Charity

  As we leave, I notice someone has set up a yard sale in the parking lot. “Can we look?” I ask Molly Lou.

  “Suit yourself, but hurry,” Molly answers coldly. “I have to get home.” She sits in the car, staring at the lake, watching the little white ferry bounce over the waves, while I limp over. It’s not that I particularly like to shop, but all I have with me is winter clothes. Summer is coming and it’s going to get hot. In five minutes I’ve picked up a worn bathing suit, some leather sandals, an orange knit shift, a summer nightgown, two short-sleeved faded tees and three pairs of shorts, a whole summer wardrobe, all for nine dollars.

  The ride home is a quiet one, until I break the silence. “What’s with you and Helen and Eugene?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, with the hippies, the organic farmers. Your eyes were like ice when they came into the store and no one even said hello. I understand you resent them for not letting their kids go to the island school, but there must be more to it than that. I felt like I was shunned myself when I said I’d come visit them.”

  “We want those people off the island. If we give them the cold shoulder, maybe they’ll go away.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you said you wished they’d send their children to your school so you could get more teachers. I thought that’s why you were mad.”

  Molly hesitates. “That’s true about the school, but it’s not just that . . . It’s complicated.”

  “So what’s the scoop?” At first, I don’t think she’s going to answer, but then she begins.

  “Two hippies raped and beat up Helen and Eugene’s girl, Charity, twelve years ago. She’ll never come back to the island again. Helen is my aunt. Charity is my younger cousin.” She takes the turn from North Wing to Middle Way a little too fast . . .

  “It was summer. Charity was nineteen. She was working at the Black Sheep Pub as a waitress, and she told Dolman and the detectives from the mainland that two hippie men waited until she got off duty and she was getting on her bike to ride home. They threw her in their van, took her down to the woods on Gull Point, beat her up and had their way with her for hours. When they were through, the men tied her up, left her for the mosquitoes to feast on and took the plane or the ferry back to wherever they came from, the States or mainland Canada.

  “The rapists were never found or arrested, not that it would have changed the outcome for Helen and her family. After being in a mental hospital in Toronto for a year, Charity moved to Montreal.”

  “But that was years ago. The people from New Day Farm probably don’t even know those assholes,” I say.

  “It doesn’t matter. We don’t like their type. We want them gone. The island has a long memory.”

  Molly Lou drops me at the house with my food and yard-sale bargains. “Can I give you something for gas?”

  “Nah, I was going there anyway.”

  “I’m sorry, Molly. I’m sorry about our conflict. I do understand people’s feelings about Charity. It was a terrible thing and I feel so bad for Helen and her family, but I can’t judge a whole group of people when likely this bunch of hippies is completely different . . . You know?”

  The woman lets out a long sigh and looks straight through the windshield at the lake. “I gotta go. We just don’t like them. We want them gone and we won’t give up until they leave.”

  Returning to the cottage, I feel very blue. Not Lake Erie blue, but the blue of Jessie’s eyes when she’s crying. Jessie is, like Charity was, just nineteen years old.

  TURKEY VULTURE

  A large scavenger, gray-brown with a blue or red naked head

  When in flight, the wing tips curve up

  Usually seen soaring in the sky, catching the updraft or perched on dead trees

  Voice: low guttural hiss when irritated

  Range: Southern Canada to South America

  Size: 26 inches

  Wingspan: 6 feet

  CHAPTER 20

  Lady in Black

  It’s the end of April and most of the snow is gone, except little piles of it in the shade under the pines. Just for fun, I’ve made a little collar and leash so that I can take Tiger for walks, and today, as I’m hiking down the beach, I notice a flock of long narrow ducks riding the waves.

  The ducks aren’t mallards, that’s for sure. The males are white with dark green heads and the females are gray with auburn heads. They cry to each other in short croaks and they swim with their faces and bills in the water
looking for fish. When they dive they stay down and then they pop up again, twenty or thirty feet away.

  After watching with the Nelsons’ binoculars, I move on and am startled when I catch sight of a lone figure walking toward me along the sand. I don’t really feel like talking to anyone, but I’m curious. As I get closer, I make out a female, tiny in stature and all wrapped in black.

  “Hello!” I call, waving a greeting, but the wind takes my voice away and I realize now that the woman is not as tiny as I’d thought, she’s just bent over, searching for something.

  We are within fifty feet of each other before she looks up and I see that she’s not just wearing all black . . . she is black.

  “Hello,” I say. “What are you looking for, shells?”

  The woman tilts her head to one side and adjusts her dark glasses, then says in a low voice, “I haven’t seen you around here before. Nice cat. I had one like that years ago. Not all cats will tolerate a leash.”

  “My name’s Sara Livingston. I’m staying at Seagull Haven, about a half mile up the beach.” I expect the older lady to introduce herself but she doesn’t. Instead she explains what she’s up to.

  “I’m looking for pieces of colored glass, pieces of pop bottles or beer bottles that are ground smooth by the water and sand. This is the only beach on the island where you can find them. In the 1930s there used to be a tavern in Lorain, Ohio, directly across from here, on the other side of the lake. They dumped a lot of broken beer and whiskey bottles off the docks. Almost one hundred years later, the shards arrive on Seagull Island. I call them glass beach stones and use them to make jewelry and sun catchers. You won’t copy my idea, will you, honey? There’s not enough for two of us.”

  “No, but if I find any, I’ll save them for you.”

  “Well, that’s very generous . . .”

  “Have you lived on the island long, Mrs. . . .”

  “You ask because I’m of African descent?” She chuckles. “Funny isn’t it, to be the only person of color, except the Mexican boys, with all these white folk. Wait until the summer—you’ll see people of all races then.