The Runaway Midwife Page 4

  As we drive, I run through my mental checklist to be sure I haven’t forgotten anything. Food, clothing, flashlight, matches and the briefcase with my stash of money . . . All I have in my wallet now is enough for the taxi fare along with Sara Livingston’s driver’s license, her cards and a photo of Jessie, taken last Christmas. Clara Perry has been terminated, deleted. She’s gone.

  THE CABBIE GETS me to the snow-covered park in about one hour, but Lenny isn’t there.

  This is not good. I’m so trusting I just gave the man my money, how do I know this hasn’t all been a scam set up by Ben the pilot from Red Hawk? It would be easy to do and they already have my $500.

  “Do you mind waiting a few minutes?” I ask the driver, getting out four twenties. “I’ll pay for your time.”

  “I can give you ten minutes,” the cabbie mumbles, and then he opens a copy of Sports Illustrated. I look at my watch, then stare at the lake. White drifts swirl up the stone breakwall and the rippled ice stretches as far as I can see.

  “You think your boyfriend’s going to show?” the taxi driver asks at eight minutes. “It will be cold tonight, fifteen degrees they said on the weather channel.”

  “Yeah. Sure. He’s always late.” I shiver, wondering if Lenny really will come and what I’ll do if he doesn’t.

  Finally, the black 4Runner pulls into the parking lot. I jump out and give Lenny a hug, whispering into his ear, “I told the driver you’re my fiancé.” Just to be smart he gives me a big smooch on the mouth. “Hey!” I hiss, half-offended, half-amused.

  The cabbie gets out my backpack then toots his horn and skids out of the lot. “You like that?” Lenny grins. “I was trying to keep it real.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Dark Path

  So here I am . . . on an island in Ontario, in the cold and the dark, with just a backpack and a new name. Lenny called this path a road, but it’s really just a wide white trail through the forest with a few animal tracks like dark pebbles in the snow . . . It’s so quiet I feel like I’m in a Robert Frost poem because I have definitely taken the road less traveled!

  Eager to find the cottage, I load up and push on, but the hike takes longer than I expected. Even with my mittens and warm boots, my hands and feet are freezing. Visions of frostbitten digits begin to intrude, blackened toes and fingers like I’ve seen in photos of Richard’s friends from the Arctic.

  From the map of Seagull Island that I’d found online, I had estimated a quarter of a mile from the cove to Mrs. Nelson’s cottage, but I’m beginning to wonder. There are no signs of civilization, except the untraveled trail. I begin to shiver inside. What if Lenny dropped me off at the wrong place? What if he left me on the wrong island? But that’s a stupid thought. Why would he do that?

  Finally a square shape appears in the moonlight, a squat little cottage set off from the road with a white picket fence, three big pine trees in front and a shed or garage to one side. What I see of the house with my flashlight is white peeling paint, two small windows flanking a wooden door, a porch and a carved white seagull nailed to the railing.

  This doesn’t look much like the cute little Seagull Haven I saw on the vacation home website, but then, I remind myself, the photos with the blue sky above and geraniums blooming in pots on the porch were probably taken five years ago.

  Desperate to get out of the cold, I approach the dwelling and kneel down at the bottom of the steps. Mrs. Nelson said I’d find a key under a heart-shaped rock in the flowerbed, but I didn’t imagine the depth of the snow. For five minutes I dig through the crusted ice, first on the left and then on the right. My mittens are getting wet and it’s imperative that I find warmth. Finally I hit something hard, the rock with the key duct taped to the bottom. Things are looking up. I take a big breath and put the key in the deadbolt, but the key won’t turn!

  Damn, where is Richard when I need him? He was the handy one in the family. Whenever something didn’t work he would fix it, but I paid for my dependence on him. Little by little I gave my power away, and as the years went by I began to feel more and more clumsy and inadequate.

  I’m starting to wonder if I can find an unlocked window, but before I go searching I drop my backpack on the porch and try the door one more time. With my small flashlight in my mouth, I flip the key over, but it doesn’t fit. I try three more times, jiggling the key harder, while I desperately pull the handle up and down . . . up and down . . . up and down . . . and . . . at last I’m successful! But as the door squeaks open, the smell of something awful assaults me. “What the hell?” I say out loud, and then I slam it shut again.

  Home Sweet Home

  Five minutes of cursing and I dry my eyes with the back of my mittens. There’s no bed-and-breakfast establishment nearby. It’s not like I can go somewhere else in the middle of the night. If I don’t want to die out in the snow from hypothermia, I’ll have to figure this out.

  Shivering, from both cold and dread, I pull my scarf over my mouth and nose, open the door again, shine my flashlight inside a dark hall and reach for the light switch next to the door. I’d been afraid there might be problems with the electricity, but for a change I get lucky. It comes on as it should, illuminating a small entryway with a coat rack and a tall bookcase lined with books. The wooden floors groan as I drop my heavy backpack near the door.

  The kitchen, I think. I’ll start my search there. And I don’t have far to go. The hall leads to a small dark room where the fetid odor is stronger and where I can make out a sink, a tile counter, wooden cupboards strangely left open and in the corner a round wooden table with five wooden chairs.

  It takes me a while, but I finally find a dangling metal cord and when the kitchen light comes on, the source of the smell is obvious. Somehow, a raccoon has found his way into the house and destroyed the place.

  Empty packages of cereal, rice, pasta and spoiled condiments are open on the counter and there’s animal feces and urine in the sink and all over the floor. I stand six feet away, covering my nose, wondering what to do next. All I want is to fall into bed and pull a pillow over my head, but finally, despite my exhaustion, I start opening windows. I’ll sleep better if I clean the mess up.

  Behind me there’s the open door to the bathroom and inside the small linen closet, like Mrs. Nelson promised, are neatly folded towels and sheets as well as a broom, a mop and a bottle of Clorox, so I get to work. First with a towel, I scoop up the dead raccoon and the poop, then dump it out in the yard.

  In thirty minutes, the odor is already receding and I inspect my new domicile as I go about closing the windows. In the living room there’s a worn blue sofa, a gold recliner and two maple rocking chairs, a pleasant space in a 1980s sort of way.

  A huge stone fireplace dominates the room and the mantel is crowded with dozens of ceramic, glass and carved wood seagulls covered in dust and cobwebs. There’s a picture window facing Lake Erie and a colorful braided rug that gives warmth to the room.

  The one bedroom is dusty but spacious, with an iron bedstead, a relatively new bare mattress, a dresser and a closet. To the side is an alcove with a bureau, more shelves and a stacked washer and dryer. The alcove is odd, I think, but perhaps it once held bunk beds. Probably the Nelsons had kids.

  Back in the living room, I find the thermostat and crank the electric heater up; then I build a fire in the fireplace. When the flames begin to catch, I throw in the cardboard from the kitchen, then I make my bed with clean flannel sheets and return to the living room to sit down by the blaze.

  On the back of the sofa there’s a green-and-white quilt in the flying-goose pattern and I shake it out and pull it around my shoulders. I know this design because my friend Karen was a quilter, a happy quilter and crafter, we all thought . . . until she jumped into the Atlantic.

  Karen

  The first time I met Karen she was sitting in the conference room of Labor and Delivery at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Her long wild golden hair hung around her face as she bent over a quilt s
quare she was working on. “Hiya!” she said, and when I saw the name embroidered on the left side of her rumpled long white lab coat, I knew who she was—one of the new ob-gyn residents.

  Dr. Karen Naylor’s reputation as a rebel preceded her and the midwives at the hospital were always happy when she was on duty because she would work with us to achieve a normal vaginal delivery. Unlike some of her fellow ob-gyn residents who preferred to wield the knife, she’d stay up all night just to assist us.

  She was even present at my home delivery of Jessie, along with my favorite nurse-midwife, Sandy. You bond when you go through labor together, but after a while I lost track of Karen. She graduated and moved out West. This was back in the 1990s.

  Then just six years ago, I met her again. I’d been up all night in Labor and Delivery at Torrington Community Hospital and needed a break. After twenty hours of back labor, my patient decided to get an epidural, which was fine with me because I was beginning to think she’d need a Cesarean.

  When I walked into the doctors’ lounge at 2:00 A.M., expecting the room to be empty, I was surprised to find another woman there, dressed like me, in blue scrubs. She was working on something that looked like a quilt.

  I’d heard a new female physician was joining the practice but didn’t realize she’d already started. There were four ob-gyns and two midwives in our group and since we nurse-midwives were employees, not partners, we weren’t always kept in the loop when it came to hiring and firing.

  THE WOMAN TOOK a few pins out of her mouth. “Hiya,” she said. “I’m your ob-gyn consult tonight, Dr. Cross. The nurses told me your patient, Mrs. Ward, has been in labor for a long time. How’s she holding up? How’s the baby?” I was impressed that the new physician first asked about the patient’s feelings, not how many centimeters dilated she was or whether I’d ordered a Pitocin drip.

  “She’s pretty discouraged.” I flopped into a chair across from her. “We’ve walked and squatted. I had her on hands and knees and she’s been in the shower and Jacuzzi. I thought after she got the epidural, I’d let her rest for an hour, then have her push again. The baby’s tracing is fine, reactive with no decels. I’m Clara Perry, nurse-midwife, by the way.”

  “Clara! Clara Perry?” the woman shouted, jumping up and spilling her pins on the floor. “University of Michigan? Holy cow! I haven’t seen you in what? Twenty years? It’s me. Karen Naylor. Now Karen Cross. Quilting Karen.” We fell into each other’s arms laughing.

  “Look at us. We both have some gray hair!” I said, running my fingers through her short, silver and gold curls. She was wearing round tortoiseshell glasses. No wonder I didn’t recognize her!

  “We’ve just moved out to Hope Lake from New Mexico. I have two grown boys living in New England. One is a medical student at Yale and one is a chef in Boston. My husband is the new cardiologist at Torrington Med Center.” After she caught me up, I told her that Jessie, who she once helped deliver, was a soccer-playing junior-high-school student and that Richard was working his way up the ladder in the biology department.

  Karen folded the quilt she was working on, picked up the pins and looked at me with a smile. “Let’s go see your patient.”

  Two hours later, with gentle traction from the vacuum extractor, we assisted the mother to deliver an eight-pound baby girl, and the best part was, Karen didn’t cut an episiotomy or make the woman feel like a failure. She brought the infant’s head to crowning and then let her push her own baby out.

  “Come on, Mom!” we both cried. “You can do it!” And she did.

  CHAPTER 8

  Open Water

  Lying in Wanda and Lloyd Nelson’s bed, facing the window, I remember again the events that drove me to this place: Karen’s suicide, Richard’s infidelity and finally Robyn’s tragic death, a perfect troika dragging me under the wheels of a heavy runaway cart.

  Outside big drifts of snow rise, like twisted sculptures, up the granite breakwall that protects the house from the waves of Lake Erie. Beyond is the frozen water and the gray-white sky of predawn. I need a breakwall, I think, a breakwall from life!

  The wind roars around the little cottage and when I look out I see the leafless cottonwood trees near the shore, dancing with their bare arms raised. I’ve lost track of how many days I’ve been here because all I can do is sleep and think of Robyn and Karen and my daughter, who I worry may be thinking I made the choice to end it all.

  Guilt and remorse, like black stones in my throat, keep me from swallowing, but there’s nothing I can do to remedy my situation. I can’t go back to the home birth and save Robyn. There’s no way to turn back the clock and save Karen. No way I can think of, without Richard finding out, to contact our daughter and tell her I’m still alive and love her. This unsettles me most.

  All this fall and winter with Jessie in Australia, the ties that bound us were strained to the breaking point. Sometimes, many times, I’ve been angry, told her in my head that I was through with her. Over and over I would try to reach her, but she rarely answered my phone calls or texts. I danced a strange dance, alternating between fear for her safety and being pissed off. Why did I bother?

  I am such a bad mother. If I were a good mother, I wouldn’t just run away in the middle of a snowstorm without trying harder to reach her. If I were a good mother, Jessie would have cared more and answered her phone calls and texts in the first place. If I were a good mother, I wouldn’t give up on her ever.

  How can a midwife be a bad mother? We’re supposed to be the defenders of motherhood. We encourage women in labor. We tell them they are beautiful and strong. We mother the mothers. In some countries we are called the wise women.

  I lie on my back, hands folded over my chest. “Forgive me,” I whisper. “Forgive me.” But I don’t know who I’m praying to, Jessie or God.

  PULLING THE GREEN-AND-WHITE flying-goose quilt over my head, I turn over and fall back to sleep. This time I dream that I’m with both Karen and Jessie at Robyn Layton’s home birth. There’s red all over the bedroom floor. Jessie and I are scooping it up with silver spoons and somehow returning it to the limp patient. “Hurry,” I say. “Hurry! She’s dying!”

  “It’s alright,” Karen tells me in her calm way. “We have time.” As I watch, the color comes back into Robyn’s face and she sits up and recognizes me. “Clara,” she says. “You came back!”

  I wake, my heart pounding. It was only a dream. Just a dream! And when I pull back the curtain next to my bed, I’m shocked to see that toward the south, about a quarter mile from shore, the ice has parted. Only a few days ago Lenny and I raced across that frozen sea. Now the white has torn apart as if it were a sheet of parchment. Reeling in the sunlight over the open blue water are hundreds of seagulls, diving, catching fish, rejoicing. Klee-ew. Klee-ew. Hahaha, they cry.

  CHAPTER 9

  Timberland Boot

  It’s the first of March, or somewhere near there. (I’m estimating since I have no calendar.) The sun shines and the air is full of birdsong, so I bundle up and go out on the deck. There are two levels, one just outside the back door and one up higher on the breakwall. I find a seat in the gazebo where I can see huge cakes of ice bobbing in the blue sparkling water and I almost expect to see a seal riding along on top of one.

  The effect of climate change on animals in the northland is one of my husband’s main obsessions. Actually, I think Richard cares more about the Arctic polar bears than me. It’s been his life’s passion, and for the last five years he’s spent four months of every year in Alaska, studying the consequences of global warming, four months out of twelve as we grew apart.

  Apparently, polar bears are going hungry because the polar ice is melting at a rate of twenty thousand square miles a year and the bears can’t travel and find food like they used to. Twenty thousand square miles a year! Can you believe that?

  To survive, the males eat each other’s cubs or die of starvation. This image, of course, greatly affects the midwife in me. There’s nothing so appealing a
s a fuzzy white baby polar bear, or any kind of baby, really.

  SINCE I’VE BEEN to the island, I’ve gone no further than the porch and the deck, but seeing the water nearly free of ice inspires me. Bundling up, I prepare for a cold hike and step off the porch into the remaining two-foot drift with caution. A broken leg might be the end of me. No one here knows that I’m here. I’d freeze or I’d starve before anyone would happen by.

  Carefully I test the snow and find that it’s now frozen solid, so I follow my trail across the yard. When I get to the road, I understand now why there’s no traffic. Except for my footprints coming in from the lake, and the footprints of a few small animals, it appears that nothing has passed all winter.

  The snow is softer under the evergreens and, stomping down the unplowed trail in white up to my knees, I head through the woods to another smaller trail that I follow down to the beach. Here I can see all the way along the curved spit to Gull Point.

  Sparkling ice chunks are piled up on the shore, but the bare sand is frozen so it’s easy to walk. I’m so entranced by these winter sculptures that I almost trip over a dead swan. I study the form. Yellow and black bill bleached by the sun. Long neck bent in a curious way. White wing feathers half-covered with snow. Did it die during the last Arctic blast? Did it starve because it couldn’t get food through the ice? Did someone shoot it?

  A tan leather Timberland boot, with the familiar tree logo on the side, lies next to the fallen bird. Then I realize the boot is connected to a half-buried leg and the leg to a man in a black hooded jacket, and I almost fall to the ground.

  For a minute, I think of running for help, but where would I go? I take a few deep breaths and calm myself to better assess the situation. The body is frozen so there’s no smell and the man’s face is buried in the sand, so he seems less like a dead person and more like a manikin.

  I take another deep breath. I have seen dead people before as a nurse. I have even done dissections on human cadavers in nursing school, so I’m not as horrified by the corpse as some might be. My main thought is What to do now?