The Reluctant Midwife Read online

  “I brought Dr. Blum home, thinking the mountain air might do him some good, but when I got to Liberty, Mr. Linkous, his attorney, told me the bank sold his house.”

  Here, Maddock enters the yard. When he cracks open his shotgun and removes the shells, I take a long, shaky breath. The sun is just rising over the mountains, golden through the still bare branches of the oak.

  “I used most of the gas we have left to get to Patience’s house, but no one’s here. . . .”

  Maddock steps closer, his eyes like black marbles inspecting Dr. Blum. “He’s gone queer, all right. Used to be a sharp fellow. Stroke, you say . . .” He pushes his black hat back a little and squints. “I didn’t hear you come up the road last night or I would have stopped you.”

  “It was almost dark. Can we stay a few days? We won’t harm anything. Just until I figure out what to do next?”

  “I’ll tell the missus to make you some biscuits.” I take this as a yes and am grateful.

  “Have Patience and Bitsy been gone long? There’s not much in the house. Nothing in the barn, and the lawn isn’t mowed.”

  “Moved out around the time you left. Whole damn country is moving like a bunch of ants hunting for food. I try to keep the weeds down when I have time.” He kicks at the grass and some pieces of the picket fence that used to surround the cottage.

  “So who owns her house? Patience didn’t just leave it, did she?”

  “I imagine she and her husband still own it . . . or the Mountain Federal Bank.” He never looks at me when he talks, but he can’t take his eyes off the doctor.

  “Her husband?”

  “The animal man. The vet.”

  “You mean Dr. Hester? I didn’t even know they were courting. Did they all leave together?”

  “No.”

  I have to squeeze for each tiny bit of information and it’s slower than picking burrs off your socks.

  “So where are they now?”

  “Bitsy, the colored girl, and that colored fellow Bowlin went east to Philly, to be with her brother, Thomas Proudfoot, the one they thought killed a white man.”

  “And Patience?”

  “Why’s he staring like that?” Maddock indicates the doctor.

  I glance back at Blum, who sits gazing without expression at the same spot one foot from his face, a man sleeping with his blue eyes open.

  “I don’t know, Mr. Maddock. We don’t know. It’s like he’s not home anymore.”

  “Don’t let him come down to my place. I don’t want him around my Sarah. I’ll shoot if I see him. He was right sharp the last time I saw him.” He says this last part again.

  “I know. It’s a tragedy. But Patience, where did she go?”

  Maddock raises his chin toward the ridge covered in spruce that rises behind the barn.

  I turn to look back.

  “On the other side of Spruce Mountain.”

  “On the other side of the mountain?”

  “Yonder,” he says again. “The midwife and her baby.”

  Good Samaritan

  Driving back down Wild Rose Road and around Salt Lick, I am almost gay. “Well,” I say, turning to my companion, “things are looking up. Did you hear what Mr. Maddock said? Patience isn’t gone; she just moved to the other side of the mountain. Oh, I hope they say we can live in her house for a while! It’s not bad, really. I could fix it up. Then maybe I can get a job. Probably not nursing . . . But what will I do with you? I can’t leave you alone.”

  This had never occurred to me. “Oh, well, don’t get the horse before the cart. First things first . . . We need shelter . . . then warmth and firewood . . . then food.” (I can’t believe my life has been reduced to such basics.)

  As we bounce down the dirt roads, still slick from last night’s rain, I glance at the gas gauge. One-quarter full. We have just enough to get to Patience’s house to ask for permission to live in her cottage and then get to town at some point for supplies.

  As a physician’s daughter and a physician’s wife, then later as a single professional woman, I have never been particularly frugal, never needed to be, but with no job and no income, I will have to start now.

  I glance over to check on Blum, but he is staring out the passenger window, his face impassive, a little spit on his chin, and I reach over to wipe it off with my hanky. That’s when I hit the rough place in the road and blow a tire!

  “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” I curse, pounding on the steering wheel. With the economy busted, most states’ coffers are as empty as a robin’s nest in December and the roads have all gone to hell. I get out to look. I have never changed a tire in my life!

  A jack is used, I think, to lift up the auto, and there’s a spare in the back, but how do I get the flat tire off the wheel? “Oh, Blum! Why don’t you pull yourself together and help me?”

  The able-bodied Dr. Blum sits vacantly, gazing at the pussy willows just beginning to open along the road. He doesn’t even know the Pontiac’s stopped.

  Irritated, I remove the gear and luggage from the trunk to get at the jack, his medical bag, two boxes of books, my art supplies, and his surgical instruments, though I don’t know why I brought them.

  I’m sitting in the wet grass in the ditch with tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how the jack works, when a low hack driven by a black man wearing a yellow slicker pulls up to the side of the car.

  “Ma’am.” He steps out of his vehicle and tips his broad-brimmed straw hat. “Preacher Miller of the Hazel Patch Baptist Fellowship. Can I be of some assistance?”

  I catch his eyes on Blum, probably wondering why the man still sits in the car while the woman struggles with the jack.

  “It’s me, Reverend, Becky Myers. I met you one time at the hospital in Liberty. The home health nurse . . . It was after the cave-in at the Wild Cat Mine. You were one of the men who brought in the bodies. And that’s Dr. Blum. You probably met him sometime too. He’s . . . He’s not well.” I leave it at that.

  “Miss Myers!” The preacher tips his hat once more and gives me a big smile that lights up his dark face. His eyes are brown and soulful. “So nice to see you again. I heard you and Dr. Blum moved away to Virginia. Are you back to set up your clinic or just visiting?”

  “No, we’re back. It’s a long story. Right now I’m trying to find Patience Murphy, the midwife. Mr. Maddock, on Wild Rose Road, told me she’s married to the vet. Am I headed in the right direction?”

  “Not far at all.” Reverend Miller is already rolling up his sleeves and soon has us back on the road.

  “Just two miles ahead on the left. You’ll see a sign that says Daniel Hester, DMV, Small and Large Animals, with a little sign below, Patience Hester, Midwife, Small and Large Women.” He chuckles at the joke. “Say hello for me.”

  4

  Reunited

  As we pull across a small wooden bridge that spans a bubbling creek and into the tree-lined drive of Daniel Hester’s farmyard, my heart leaps. Here I hope I will find friends.

  The two-story stone home, with a porch on two sides, is surrounded by mowed grass. I can tell Patience lives here, because there are bunches of herbs hanging under the porch eaves: tansy, feverfew, mint, and echinacea are the ones that I recognize, but there are a dozen more. The midwife is also an herbalist and uses them to help heal her patients.

  There are chickens in the yard scratching for insects and four horses and three cows in the field. The cowbells tinkle, but other than that it’s so quiet, I decide Patience and Dr. Hester must both be out delivering babies, a little boy or girl for her, a calf or lamb for him.

  Unsure what to do, I take Blum’s arm, head for a wooden bench under one of the giant weeping willows, and take a seat. The long drooping branches are just budding out, covered in yellow, like palpable sunshine, and with the tip of my finger, I reach out to touch them.

  We don’t have to wait long. Within twenty minutes, a dusty black Olds rolls across the bridge and stops behind our Pontiac. My friend has come up in the
world. She once rode a horse to births, before that a bicycle.

  I take my time rising, watching as Patience gets out of the vehicle. She’s a small woman, thin, but sturdy, and pretty, with high color. Her brown hair, which she used to wear long, is shoulder length now, and she peers through her wire-rim glasses at our Virginia license plate.

  “Hello!” she calls out, looking around, and when she turns, I’m startled to see she has a toddler on her hip.

  “Over here.” I step from under the long willow fronds. “Patience! It’s me, Becky Myers.” If I had been apprehensive at all, my questions about our friendship evaporate in the time it takes a wide smile to rush across her face.

  She plops the child on the grass, and with open arms runs toward me, her red-and-black-plaid farm jacket flapping like wings. “Becky!” Laughing as we embrace, we almost fall over. Though the midwife is small, she’s as strong as a pony.

  “Chiggers,” I say indicating the baby. Patience doesn’t get it. “Chiggers,” I repeat, thinking she must not know about the troublesome insect that burrows under the skin and itches like crazy. “On the grass. They’re everywhere in Virginia. Very much a problem for the young and tender.”

  “Oh, chiggers. Yes, we have them. Danny gets them once or twice in the summer and me too, but since it’s cooler here in the mountains, they’re not so much of a problem. You are the same old worrywart, Becky Myers! Come inside.”

  It’s then that she sees Dr. Blum, still sitting immobile on the bench under the weeping willow. “Oh, you have someone with you! A new beau?” She’s probably kidding, but I don’t find it funny.

  “No, it’s Dr. Blum. He’s not well. The physicians at Johns Hopkins think it’s a stroke or maybe catatonia.” I wave my open hand in front of his face. “Anyway. He’s all gone. . . . We’ve come to ask for your help.”

  Kindness

  At the kitchen table in the stone farmhouse, Patience and I catch up over coffee. Silent as a sphinx, Dr. Blum sits staring into space on a stool in the corner.

  I take in the room. . . . There’s a green enamel wood cookstove against one wall with a wooden box filled with split oak, shelves filled with glass canisters of beans, cornmeal, and flour, and a sink with a small red metal water pump. In the corner is a large Frigidaire, which means that the Hesters have electricity and probably a phone. This must be heaven for Patience, who used to live without any such conveniences.

  “What happened?” Patience asks in a low voice, indicating the doctor with her eyes.

  I tell her the story, how Priscilla Blum died when her auto crashed through the guardrail into the ice-covered James River and how, after that, the doctor just collapsed, lost his mind.

  “Up until then he’d been his normal self. He’d actually done four surgeries earlier that day. One was an emergency appendectomy that went horribly wrong and the patient died on the operating table. . . .”

  “Maybe the two deaths on one day were his breaking point, or maybe he had a stroke from the stress.” That’s Patience.

  “Maybe so.”

  “He’s lost so much weight.” She studies the doc and I look at him from her eyes. She’s right. He’s lost around twenty pounds and his once strong jaw has gone slack. Not only that, his brown hair is thin and dry. Not a healthy-looking specimen.

  “I feed him, feed him with a spoon three meals a day,” I respond defensively. “But he doesn’t care about food or anything. I was sympathetic in the beginning. Really, I was, but I expected his disability to be temporary. Now, I don’t know. . . . I’m just frustrated. In all this time there’s so little improvement.”

  “This happened a year ago?” We watch as Danny, Patience’s toddler, approaches the doctor and runs a little metal truck up his leg. For just a moment, I think Blum sees him, but then he goes back to the blank stare again.

  “Yes, a year ago, during a snowstorm. Like I said, as a last resort, I took him to Johns Hopkins, but it cost a fortune, and they were no help. After about a year, his brother, the older Dr. Blum, had no sympathy at all. He bellowed at Isaac to snap out of it, thought he was faking. Just a few days ago, he abandoned us altogether and we were left on our own. . . .”

  Here I trail off. I don’t tell Patience how I prayed on my knees for my colleague, to a God I couldn’t locate. I don’t tell her how at first I would stroke Isaac’s head and his shoulders after I bathed him, hoping I could bring him back. I don’t tell her how once or twice I slapped him, I was so mad.

  We both turn to the sound of an auto rattling up the drive. “It’s Daniel,” Patience says, standing.

  From the kitchen window, I watch as the veterinarian opens the trunk of his Ford Model T, removes a satchel, and sets it on the top of the car. Then he pulls out some rope and pulleys and other bizarre-looking veterinarian equipment and carries it into the barn. He’s a tall man, with an outdoor look, wearing a long brown canvas coat.

  A few minutes later, the kitchen door slams open and the vet comes in and picks up his little boy. “Who have we here? I wondered about the Virginia license plate!” he says with a lopsided grin. His light brown hair is receding in front, and his large hands are chafed and rough.

  “It’s Becky Myers and Dr. Blum!”

  “Well, hello! What brings you back to Union County?” He leans over to shake the doctor’s hand, and when there’s no response, frowns and looks at me with concern.

  “Dr. Blum is . . . I don’t know how to put this . . . disabled.”

  The vet looks him over as if assessing a lame horse.

  “What can he do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No one knows what’s wrong with him,” Patience puts in. “It might be the shock of his wife’s death, a stroke, or possibly catatonia. Remember? We heard about her accident.”

  I take up the narrative a second time, giving the history and what the doctors proposed. “The neuro men at Johns Hopkins said there was nothing they could do, except electroshock treatment and there was no guarantee with that.”

  “So why’d you come back?” That’s Daniel, looking deep into Dr. Blum’s pale eyes. “A damn shame! So why’d you come back?” he asks me again.

  “Well, he told me to.”

  “That doesn’t sound catatonic.”

  “It wasn’t a conversation, just one word . . . no, three words in all. . . . After his brother disowned him. We were out of money and owed three months’ back rent. Since he couldn’t take care of himself, I’d moved him in with me, and I was tearing my hair out about a probable eviction when he opened his mouth and offered an alternative. ‘Home. West Virginia.’ ”

  “That’s all he’s said in a year?” Patience moves to the sink to pump water.

  “Yes. That’s about it . . . until yesterday when he spoke again. After the lawyer told us that his house had been sold . . . we were sitting on Main Street in his Pontiac, broke with nowhere to go. I’ll be honest, I was crying when Dr. Blum spoke for the second time. ‘Patience’ he said. At first I thought he meant to be patient and have faith, then I realized he meant Patience, the midwife.

  “We drove up to your old house on Wild Rose Road, hoping to find shelter and found you were gone, but camped there anyway, feeling lost. Mr. Maddock was the one who told us you’d moved to the other side of the mountain.” Here I clear my throat and take a moment to get up my courage.

  “I was hoping we could stay there for a while, take care of the empty house for you. . . .” I trail off, suddenly embarrassed. Asking for help isn’t something I’m used to.

  “Of course . . . of course,” Patience reassures. “You’d be doing us a favor. We thought of selling the place, but no one can afford to buy it now . . . except the very rich, who are already hovering like vultures, taking advantage of the foreclosures and bottomed-out land prices.”

  Here her face gets pink and her voice crackles. Hester reaches over to pat her arm. The midwife, I recall, has always been something of a leftist, sympathetic to the poor and suspicious of the rich.
/>   “There’ve been hundreds of drifters and homeless passing through, but we’ve been reluctant to just let a stranger move in,” Daniel adds, standing to let his dogs in, two beagles and a three-legged mutt. “We might even have some furniture in the barn and some of Patience’s kitchen things and linens. You could stay here with us for the night, and in the morning we’ll look around.” He stands and gives his wife a kiss on her neck.

  “Come on, Blum. Time to milk.” He takes a bucket and then pulls Blum through the door.

  I shake my head. He still doesn’t get it, or else he’s trying to prove some point, and I watch through the kitchen window as the men cross the farmyard.

  Hester has his arm linked through Blum’s as if they were old chums and they probably were associates, both college-educated doctors. Tears come to my eyes for what’s been lost, tears for the vet’s kindness, tears for the long, lonely way ahead. I wipe them with the back of my hand, before Patience can see, then I tell her about my emergency delivery on the roadside yesterday.

  “I must say I was proud of myself,” I end the story. “Bernice didn’t even have a perineal tear.”

  “Sounds like maybe you have a knack for this. Maybe you should be a midwife,” Patience kids me. She knows that being near a woman in labor terrifies me. “Anyway, you should keep track of your births. Start a journal with the dates, names, and details of what you think is important. You never know when you might need it.”

  “It’s not like I’m going to attend many more deliveries, but you’re probably right. If something bad happened, the board of medicine might someday investigate. I’m a registered nurse.”

  Patience shakes her head, laughing. “Becky. Becky. Becky.”

  “Well, they might!”

  April 2, 1934

  Emergency delivery near the intersection of the National Turnpike and Route 26. I assisted a male infant to be born in an auto to a Mrs. Bernice Norton and her husband, Alvin. (I was more nervous than usual because I hadn’t seen a baby born in five years. The Blum brothers stopped doing home deliveries when all the women started going to the hospital in Charlottesville.)