THE PARSONAGE         
TUESDAY, APRIL 20

We ride, hell-for-leather. The wind tears at my face and whips my hair into a frenzy. There was no time to pull it back before leaving. I’d had to saddle Brutus as well. Not to mention pack my medical bag and change into my riding dress. I met Doctor at the trees, and we were off.

Now we gallop, heads down; Brutus and Goliath sense the urgency and propel us forward as mud kicks up at our heels.

“Rebecca Foster did not send for you,” Doctor shouts, and the wind nearly rips her voice away.

“What do you mean?”

“Her husband called for me at the cabin. He was very specific that I not alert you.”

“Then why did you?” I shout.

“Because Rebecca is your patient. I know you care for her.” Doctor points one long finger at me. “And I have long since learned that people only come to me when they are keeping secrets. You will forgive me for being wary of such motives.”

It stings, this knowledge that Rebecca would hide her labor from me. That she wouldn’t want me there. I delivered both of her sons.

“How long has it been? Since you saw Isaac?”

“Less than an hour,” Doctor says.

“When did her pains begin?”

“I do not know.”

It is nearing one o’clock in the morning now, and I urge Brutus faster. At a full-blown gallop, it will be a ten-minute ride to the Hook. Without knowing her condition, it could be ten minutes too long.

The sky is clear and dark as ink, with only a slice of waning crescent moon to guide us. If not for that and the scattered stars, we would have no light at all. As we cross over Mill Creek Bridge, I see a shadow dart out of our way. Black and silver with eyes of amber.

Tempest watches us speed away.


We can hear screaming from the yard.

Doctor slides off Goliath’s back and tosses the reins to me. “I will meet you inside,” she says.

I dismount, then lead both horses to the hitching post to tie them off. They’ve run hard and bend their heads to the trough for a long, cold drink.

I gather my medical bag, uncertain what’s waiting for us inside. Isaac is nowhere to be seen, but I know my way around and go directly to the bedroom.

Rebecca is arched back against a stack of pillows, shift rucked up to her ribs. Legs open. Knees bent. Eyes closed. A fine trickle of sweat drips down her temple. Her hands fist the quilt beneath her, and her jaw is clenched.

Doctor looks at me in that calm, unnerving way of hers and shakes her head slightly.

“Is she ready?”

Non,” she says, indicating the hard ball of Rebecca’s stomach. It is still high, under her ribs instead of flat and wide at her hips the way it needs to be for her to push. Doctor waves me over. “Come.”

I slide out of my riding cloak and set my bag at the foot of the bed. A single glance tells me that the baby’s head has not yet dropped, that despite the pain, this labor is far from over.

Once the contraction subsides, Rebecca’s eyes flutter open. If she is surprised to see me, she doesn’t show it. Or perhaps she doesn’t care.

“I asked for Doctor,” she says.

“I know. But I am here regardless. I will not leave you alone in this. Where is Isaac?”

Rebecca lifts her arm and points to the ceiling. “Upstairs,” she pants. “With the boys. They’re scared.”

She has no women to attend this birth. No family. No friends. It is only Doctor and I. And I fear we will not be enough.

“Make it stop. Please,” Rebecca begs when another contraction begins its relentless march through her body.

I look to Doctor, not because I don’t know what to do, but because she is Rebecca’s choice and I don’t want to press my help where it isn’t wanted.

“The baby will not turn down. I have already tried,” Doctor says.

“You have tried from the inside as well?”

She shakes her head. “Pas encore. That requires deux. Une for turning. And une for holding the mother down.”

Rebecca is wilting, exhausted from the long effort of trying to expel this child from the confines of her body.

I plunge my hands into the wash bucket, scrub them with lye soap, then join Doctor at the foot of the bed. It has been stripped, all the blankets piled in a corner, and an old quilt is folded beneath Rebecca to catch the blood and water. There is—mercifully—not an alarming amount of either. But the scent of birth permeates the room.

The human body has a smell. Not just perspiration. Or defecation. Flatulence. Blood. But the deep parts of a person. Damp and earthy, tinged with the metallic bite of iron. All the moving, beating things that comprise our inmost being. They smell like the natural world, humid and verdant, like soil after the rain. But those are scents that a person rarely notices until a moment like this. Births. Accidents. Injuries. The various ways in which we are turned inside out.

“When did your pains start?” I ask.

“After…” She grinds her teeth together. “Noon. In the afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you send for help earlier?”

There, the desperation in her eyes speaks the truth. “Because I do not want this baby to come.”

Rebecca has been laboring for nine hours with a breech presentation and is fast approaching the limits of what her body and soul can bear. Her movements are weak and rubbery, exhausted.

“It has to come, or you will die,” I tell her.

Slowly, the realization of what I am saying hits her. “My boys…”

“They still need you. Isaac still needs you. So we must get this baby out. In order to do that, we have to turn it.”

“All right.”

“But we cannot do that from the outside.” A pause and then I say, “It is going to hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rebecca bobs her head, but I can’t tell whether it is a nod or a shake. And whether it hurts or not, the work must be done if Rebecca is to survive this night.

Doctor presses her palms together as though praying, then brings them to her face, thumbs brushing her nose. She whispers something in French, and the only word I recognize is Dieu.

God.

When Doctor opens her eyes again, her only focus is the entrance to Rebecca’s womb and the child trapped beyond.

“We must wait until the pains ease,” she says. “It cannot be done before.”

This contraction is long and crushing, deep in Rebecca’s back, and she arches against it, wailing so loudly that the air catches in her throat, making her cough, then gag.

“Breathe,” I say. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”

The sound of her agony is the most difficult part, but it must be set aside, even knowing that with her boys, Rebecca birthed them in steely, resolved silence. Nary a moan the entire time. So this difference—the shrieking terror—unnerves me, and I cannot help but wonder how much goes beyond the physical pain of the child’s arrival and lies with that of its conception.

“Go up. Beside her. When I tell you, press on the top of her belly.” Doctor taps the heel of her hand. “With this.”

I do as I’m told, and as we wait for the last waves of the contraction to fade, I brush the wet hair away from Rebecca’s brow and the tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca whispers, “for not calling for you. I didn’t…”

“Hush. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I didn’t want you to be here because…”

Doctor nods to me and I set the heel of my hand on the top of Rebecca’s stomach.

The moment her belly slackens, Doctor leans forward, whispers, “Je suis désolé,” and slides first one, then the other hand into Rebecca’s body.

She pushes and turns, and I can see the small muscles in her forearms begin to tremble with the effort. For her part, Rebecca splits the air with the kind of scream that is rarely heard off a battlefield. We are all sweating from the exertion within seconds, but when Rebecca’s belly ripples from one end to the other, I think that perhaps the wrestling match is won. A gush of water floods the bed, soaking the quilt.

Bien,” Doctor pants. “The head is down, but backward.”

Oh God, I think, that will double her pain.

“She doesn’t have the strength for that.”

“She does not have to. But we must work quickly. Turn her over. Hands and knees. I can do the rest.”

It takes both of us to roll Rebecca onto her side, then get her up on all fours. She hisses and spits through her teeth, like a wounded cat. Rebecca’s arms shake, and I fear she will fall face-first into the pillows. Her strength is gone. But this position seems to help immediately, gravity pulling the baby’s head away from her tailbone and into the birth canal.

The groan comes, deep and ragged, and I know that another contraction ravages her body. At its peak, Doctor slides two fingers inside Rebecca’s body.

“I am lifting the head,” she says. “In a moment I will guide it out. But you must lift Rebecca’s shoulders up. Her body will do the rest.”

I climb onto the bed and pull Rebecca up so that her arms are draped over my shoulders and her head is pressed into my breastbone.

“Now,” Doctor says, sliding her other hand inside. It is immediate. Rebecca’s stomach deflates as the head drops farther into the birth canal. “Push.

She has no choice in the matter. Her body recognizes that this journey is almost over. It seizes as though being compressed by some external force, and as she bears down, the baby’s head emerges halfway.

“Again,” Doctor demands.

Rebecca obeys with the last of her energy, and the baby slides, slick and angry, into Doctor’s hands. Even from where I kneel at the other end of the bed, I can tell that the cord is far too short. Twelve inches where it should be twenty. No wonder the child hadn’t turned.

Doctor slices through the cord with a small pocketknife and I ease Rebecca down onto the bed once more, then roll her onto her back. Below us Doctor hums as she inspects the child for injuries or defect. Finding none, she lifts the baby.

Vous avez une fille.

I move to the bottom of the bed to clean the child as Doctor tends to Rebecca. As I’m wrapping her in a soft linen cloth, I notice that she has a strawberry birthmark behind her left knee. It is identical to the one on Joshua Burgess’s temple. It is proof of Rebecca’s claim. It is heartbreaking.

“Hello, little one,” I tell the red-faced, squinty little thing. Then I look up at Rebecca. “You have a daughter.”

I bring the bundle to Rebecca and hold her out. But she does not reach for the child. Instead, she looks to the tiny, squalling girl once, then turns her face into the pillow, and says, “Throw it in the river.”