The Midwife of Hope River

Thunder rolls over the mountains, and a breeze hisses through the dry willow leaves; then lighting flashes—for real this time. Though I should be grateful for any rain, it’s not a good time. If it starts to storm, I can’t change my mind and hike home over the mountain.

The vet pauses in his work, and his silhouette steps into the amber light pouring like honey out of the barn’s double doors. “Hello!” he calls out, seeing my shadow advance across the yard. “Who’s there?”

Tears are already running down my face, the first tears I’ve shed, now that the ordeal is over. I guess it’s over. It suddenly occurs to me, with a cold feeling right in my middle, that I could be charged for the mother’s and infant’s deaths and lose my midwifery certificate.

“Patience, what’s wrong?” Hester’s wearing just his trousers and a white undershirt, the kind with no sleeves, and his arms shine with sweat. “Is it Moonlight? Is it Star? Is it Bitsy?” Even as the tears fall, this strikes me as typical, that he should ask about the animals first.

“A patient died today. Kitty Hart,” I whisper. “It was bad. Bad. Blood all over, even coming out her nose, and then she seized up and died.” I know I must sound incoherent. He takes me in his arms, and the smell of him almost overwhelms me: earth, pine, vanilla.

“Come in. Come in.” He leads me into the barn and makes me sit on a wooden bench.

“Here.” From his back pocket he pulls out a silver flask. I’m not much of a drinker, but I take a big swig, almost choke, and then whip my head back and forth to shake out the fire. It’s strong stuff and not nearly as pleasant as a rum toddy or blackberry wine.

Hester smiles at my reaction, but the smile drops away. Outside, the thunder rumbles closer and the branches of the weeping willows sweep back and forth.

“Maynard Hart’s place?” he asks. “Broken-down farm over by Burnt Town?”

I nod, taking a big breath, trying to get my emotions under control. He holds out the flat silver container again. This time the liquid goes down easier, just burns at the back of my throat.

“I’d never met him or his wife before,” I explain. “A young woman, Kitty. The neighbor, a Mr. Moon, came riding fast up Wild Rose Road. Bitsy had just left for the mining camp, and I was alone.” I start to cry again, leaning over, holding my face in my hands, and he sits down beside me. Thunder again and then lighting. Wind slams the side of the sturdy wooden building.

Remembering the terrible scene, I cry and cry, as if my tears could float Kitty Hart out of her deathbed, up and away down to the Hope River, where she’d be found alive lying in the damp grass nursing her newborn. Hester pats my back as though I’m a baby, humming a little tune under his breath, but I can’t stop blubbering and the sobs get louder, more out of control. He puts his arm around me again. It’s a cloudburst of emotion. I’m crying again not just for Kitty and her baby but for myself and my baby, for Lawrence and Ruben and my mother and Mrs. Kelly and all the times I’ve been alone and afraid with no one to help me.

“So you arrived . . . ?” Hester asks, trying to get me to talk about what happened . . . anything to quiet the weeping. “I went there once to stitch up a mare. Beautiful horse. Got her leg tangled in some barbed wire. So you arrived and then?”

I reach for the flask and swallow two more mouthfuls, then take a big breath. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. When we pulled into the yard, two women were hollering from the dogtrot porch. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’ all hysterical. I ran into the bedroom, and there was blood all over the floor. All over the bed. A young lady lay there almost unconscious and hemorrhaging with the baby still trapped in the birth canal, a premature baby with dark hair, wedged sideways.” I describe how I got the baby out but it was stillborn and about the continuous bleeding that I couldn’t stop. I tell how Mr. Hart refused to go to the colored doctor and how the seizures came and then Kitty died.

The vet frowns, trying to picture the events, takes a swig from the silver flask, then hands it back to me. “I don’t know much about women, but cows get seizures related to milk fever when they lack the ability to quickly move calcium into their milk and end up depleting their own blood levels. And there’s a condition in cats and dogs called disseminated intravascular coagulation that’s related to the depletion of clotting factors. Basically they use up all their platelets and protein and start hemorrhaging from everywhere . . . There’s also eclampsia. Maybe that was it.”

He may be attempting to comfort me by providing clinical information, and at some other time I might be attentive, but right now I’m overcome, not interested in a possible explanation. I put my hand to his mouth to silence him, and he takes it and kisses my palm, a strange gesture—an agreement, perhaps, that he should shut up. The rains have started for real now, first a pitter-patter, then a hiss.

“You have blood on your face.” He touches my cheek. “And your neck . . . here . . . and your dress.” He takes his bandanna, steps over to the door to wet the cloth in the downpour, and wipes my face, then my neck. He’s so close I can smell his sweet breath, and I close my eyes and turn my cheek to feel his hand better.

Lightning flashes, then thunder a few seconds later, so close and so loud that it shakes the barn walls. He unbuttons the two top buttons of my dress and I let him, my heart pounding so hard that I think if it wasn’t for the sound of the now-continuous claps and booms, he might hear it. When we stand, the moonshine has affected me more than I realize, and I almost fall into him.

The rain roars on the tin roof now, roars all around us, and we step to the barn door to watch the sheet lightning. He holds out his bandanna to wet it again and wipes my hands and nails, still grimy with blood, then leads me out into the downpour, where we stand with our arms around each other. My face against his wet undershirt, his face looking into the sky, flashing white, then yellow, then white again, we sway like dancers in an all-night dance marathon.

Hester unbuttons a few more buttons and then washes my neck almost down to my nipples. Shivering, I watch his fingers work. He kneels in the mud and wipes my legs, then wipes me between my legs, over and over with his soft bandanna, washes me like a baby, and I begin to cry again. No one has bathed me since my mother died. I have bathed others, patients in labor, newborn babies, old people who were ill, even just today I washed a dead woman, but no one has washed me.