“No time to waste,” she said, waving him into the maternity hospital.
Chapter nine
DR. PETERS FOLLOWED SADIE HOPE through to the hospital. Freshly painted wainscoting, the green of a summer pear, covered the bottom half of a long hallway. A copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna and Child hung high up on one of the white walls. An inexpertly stitched Mary Magdalene tapestry adorned the other. In the first room on the right, Judith Dennick, still recovering from her difficult labor a week earlier, snored loudly.
“It’s Muriel Hartwell.” Hands trembling, Sadie pushed back the door on their left and held it open. “Bled some in the last hour.” She hurried her words as if hoping to carry the doctor along with them. “Poor dear’s been laboring since three this morning.” She nodded toward a curtained area behind her. “And her temperature keeps spiking.”
The doctor walked in with his medical case in hand, though he hardly needed it in such a well-stocked operating room. After ten years of service, the good sisters never questioned his requests. “Whatever it takes,” the Reverend Mother would say, “to deliver our girls safely.” Gauze, tape, Kelly pads, and cotton sponges lined the upper shelves of a gray-enameled steel cabinet, the first of two, next to the doorway. Vials of sutures, mostly silk and catgut, were arranged in rows across the back of the cabinet’s worktable. Batches of bleached white towels and sheets were folded into the drawers below. The adjacent cabinet held the usual supply of drugs—chloroform, ether, diluted Lysol among them, and an unmarked bottle of whiskey, should a patient need a bit of courage.
A low moan crossed the divide from the curtained side of the operating room. The doctor tucked his medical case in the corner, bloused his sleeves over his armbands, and waited next to a small sink. “How far along?”
“Seven months.” Sadie lifted her pale eyebrows. She slipped a rubber apron over the doctor’s head, and then a muslin one, tying it snug around his broad waistline. “Her water broke a good ten hours ago,” she said, turning on the faucet. She grabbed a nailbrush and a cake of green soap, and offered them to the doctor. “Can’t coax more than a finger in after all this time.”
Dr. Peters clasped Sadie’s wrist and snatched the items out of her stilled hand. “And the contractions?”
Sadie draped a cloth across the top of a wheeled table and pushed it to the far side of the sink, next to two more cabinets filled with surgical instruments and appliances. “Four minutes.” Lowering her voice, she added, “I’m worried something awful. The child’s exhausted and talking out of her head.”
“I’m not surprised,” he said, soaping and rinsing his hands before wiping them on his apron. “These girls have no idea what’s coming.” Another moan rose up from Muriel’s side of the room and the doctor bristled at the sound. “Clean her good,” he said, handing the bottle of Lysol solution to Sadie. “I’ll be in momentarily.”
Dr. Peters pulled the wheeled table over and smoothed its cover with his palm. He rooted through the medicines; glass bottles clanked up against one another, making way for his meaty hands. He lined the drugs up on the table in order of height. Next, he stepped over to the instrument cabinet and began unraveling the cotton wrappers from the surgical tools—scalpel; metal catheters; artery clamps; ether mask; scissors; forceps, mouse-toothed and thumb; needles, curved and straight—and arranged them on the table.
Muriel’s moaning escalated into screams, causing the doctor to swing around and face the curtain. “That’s of no help to anyone,” he said with the matter-of-fact tone of a schoolmaster. He turned back to the last cabinet, grabbed the brass base of a well-used ether inhaler, and placed several sponges inside. Finally, he set the glass-domed lid on top of the contraption and washed his hands again.
Muriel’s eyes squeezed shut tight as fists at the start of her next contraction. “Get him away from me!”
“Who?” Sadie dipped a rag into a bowl of cool water and wrung it hard. “Dr. Peters? He’s a good man,” she whispered, laying the cloth on Muriel’s hot forehead. “He studied for the priesthood before he got the call to medicine.” She brushed damp strands of hair away from the girl’s face and eyed a mahogany dresser pushed up against the opposite wall. Its low, broad design made it a practical place to tend to a newly born baby. That morning, Sadie had stocked the top with clean towels, a flannel blanket, dressing for the cord, and mineral oil for the newborn’s skin. But something was missing. She looked again and spotted the bottle peeking out from behind the blanket. Boric acid. She’d need it to wash out the infant’s eyes and mouth.
A moment later Muriel opened her eyes and started to breathe more easily. “Where is he?”
“Who, child?”
“Papa. I seen him standing in the doorway.”
“Nonsense. That’s the fever talking.” With the back of her hand, Sadie felt the girl’s cheeks. “Dr. Peters,” she called out, before returning her attention to the patient. “He’ll do right by you.”
“He best do right by me.” Muriel aimed her words toward the doctor’s side of the curtain, but they landed far short of their goal. “I can’t do this no more,” she said, her voice clouded with tears and exhaustion.
Sadie looked past the iron headboard to the crucifix hanging on the wall. This brass Jesus had finished with His suffering. Eyes closed, head lolled. He just needed someone to take Him off that cross so He could get back among the living. She glanced at Muriel. The worst of her suffering still lay ahead. “Not too much longer now,” Sadie said, scooting down to the foot of the bed where the smell of Lysol lingered. She tented the untucked blanket up on the metal bedposts, steadied her trembling hands on Muriel’s pale knees, and split them open.
Goose bumps rose up on the girl’s calves and she started to shiver. “It’s too soon,” she cried.
“Seven-month babies can survive. I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” Sadie said. “All things are possible with the good Lord.” She glanced at the crucifix again as if to make sure the good Lord had heard her.
“Not for me.” Muriel shook her head. “Not after what Papa done to . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Metal rings scraped across a wooden rod as Dr. Peters pulled back the curtain. He wheeled his table to the foot of the bed.
Sadie looked up. No change, she mouthed and stepped back.
Without warning, the doctor reached between the girl’s open legs and shoved two chapped fingers inside her.
Muriel yelped like an injured dog.
“The cervix is firm,” he said. “Unyielding.” He drew back his fingers and wiped them across his apron. “Disinfect the abdomen.”
Sadie folded Muriel’s nightgown up to her breastbone before rubbing an alcohol-soaked cloth across her belly. “No need to worry,” she told the girl. “Dr. Peters will see to everything.”
“Rest assured.” The corners of the doctor’s mustache lifted around his tight-lipped smile as he poured ether onto the sponges in the inhaler’s brass base. He quickly set the glass-domed lid back in place and attached a length of rubber tubing and a cone-shaped mask to a protruding knob. He smiled again, hanging onto the expression a little longer. “You’ll hold her down?” Although the last word lifted into a question, the tone did not allow for refusal.
Sadie kissed Muriel’s brow. “It’ll all be over soon.” She pressed her weight against the girl’s arms as Dr. Peters lowered the mask over her mouth and nose. Muriel bucked up several times before succumbing to the anesthesia.
“She’s a fighter,” the doctor said. “I’ll give you that.” He eyed Muriel’s bare abdomen and picked up a scalpel. The tip of the blade caught the light before disappearing into the taut flesh just above the navel.
* * *
All through the evening service, Mother Mary Joseph ruminated on the infant incubator that Jack and Mamie Barrett had donated. Could a machine really keep a premature baby alive? she wondered. Would tonight be the night they’d finally put it to the test?
“I’m going to see about Muriel,”
the Reverend Mother said, walking past Sister Immaculata and exiting the chapel. “Will you check on the nurseries,” she called back, “after you get the girls settled?”
Mother Mary Joseph headed straight through the pocket doors and into the hospital.
She paused for a moment when she reached the operating room, but continued down the hallway to the second door on the left. In the dim light, the incubator on the far wall resembled a narrow stove with its pipe running up behind it. The Reverend Mother switched on a lamp and examined the machine, an iron-and-glass oxygenated box on slender white legs. The stovepipe look-alike connected to a central boiler and thermostat. As the nun stepped forward, a mesh metal hammock, intended to cradle a premature infant inside the box, swayed to the floor’s vibrations.
In this age of science, Mother Mary Joseph always felt conflicted about these modern inventions. How could she be sure of God’s will? If a baby came into this world unable to survive on his own, should man intervene? Dr. Peters didn’t think so, and she certainly valued his opinion.
Though she continued to ponder this matter, the Reverend Mother reached behind the incubator, making sure Sadie had already opened the valve that allowed the oxygen to fill the glass chamber. “If it saves one child . . .” she said aloud and walked back into the hallway toward the operating room.
* * *
After cutting through the abdomen, Dr. Peters applied two hemostats to control the bleeding. With the anterior uterine wall exposed, he traded his scalpel for a pair of angular scissors. Using his finger as a guide, he made an eight-inch incision, sufficient for the baby’s head. He nodded toward the patient, so Sadie could see that the placenta lay on top of the infant—unusual, but not harmful.
Sadie stood close by, clenching a large white towel, ready to receive the baby. “I understand,” she said, aware that he would have to cut through the afterbirth to get to the child, creating a frightening amount of blood.
Dr. Peters plunged through the membrane, slicing away the placenta with one hand and pulling the baby out with the other. When he lifted the lifeless boy into view, he and Sadie both gasped.
“God have mercy on our souls,” Mother Mary Joseph said, as she walked into the operating room and eyed the creature in Dr. Peters’s arms.
A neckless head jutted faceup from the infant’s shoulders, as if he’d purposely thrown it back in laughter or despair. The mouth hung open, unable to contain such a broad and swollen tongue. Two centered holes hinted at a nose, and froglike eyeballs bulged through thick folds of skin. A shock of red hair started at the place where a forehead should have been, and trickled past a flattened skull. Below the crownless head, blue-tinged flesh stretched across what appeared to be a perfectly formed body.
In addition to her hands, Sadie’s whole body shook as she reached for the stillborn baby. “I’ll see to him.” Staring ahead at the bottles, the mineral oil, the diapers, the towels, anything other than the hideous creature in her arms, she carried the newborn and laid him out on the table.
“God have mercy,” the nun said a second time, joining Sadie.
“An anencephalic monster.” The doctor steadied himself and looked down at Muriel. “A brainless abomination,” he said. “The devil’s work.” He glanced around, making sure the Reverend Mother and Sadie had their backs to him before slipping a curved needle up into the left corner of Muriel’s exposed cavity. His knots were small, tight, practiced. Knotting the tubes was the form of sterilization he used most often. He had hoped to try one of the newer methods discussed in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, but with both women in the room, he decided not to take the risk. Given the Good Shepherd’s habit of ministering to the morally depraved, he’d have other opportunities to experiment soon enough.
Dr. Peters cut the thread close to the ligature, and repeated the tying process on the right side. He had to work quickly. The sisters at the Good Shepherd would certainly never approve of his actions. They were women of God, sheltered from the realities of modern life. He’d been ignorant himself while he’d been studying for the priesthood, but then he’d attended a lecture on eugenics. He’d immediately put his faith in science and his efforts into improving the human race, as God intended. Sacrifices had to be made, he thought, as he sutured the abdomen before him, but what good would ever come from allowing this girl or others like her to bear more children?
“She’s lost a good deal of blood,” the doctor finally said, finishing the last stitch. “Only time will tell.” He rinsed his hands in the bowl of water next to the bed and picked up his stethoscope.
Both women shook their heads while they tended to the baby. Sadie washed its heavy-lidded eyes and awestruck mouth with the boric acid solution and cleaned his bluish flesh with mineral oil. For no other reason than dignity’s sake, the Reverend Mother trimmed the baby’s cord closer to his body, the way a careful hand would have after a favorable delivery, and dressed the wound in fresh cotton.
With the body prepared, the nun covered the tiny form with the flannel blanket and pressed her palms together. Sadie and Mother Mary Joseph dipped their heads.
At the conclusion of the prayer, Sadie asked, “Shall I send for the priest?”
Before the nun had a chance to answer, the infant began to cry.
Chapter ten
DR. PETERS YANKED THE STETHOSCOPE OUT and looked upon Muriel in her etherized state. “If she makes it through the night,” he said, “she’ll have a fighting chance.”
“Hush.” Sadie cocked an ear toward the dresser.
“I beg your pardon.” His cheeks flushed with indignation.
The Reverend Mother waved a hand at the doctor but kept her eyes locked on the newborn.
A small foot, just starting to pink up, kicked out from under the cover, as the infant cried a second time.
“It’s not possible.” Dr. Peters started over toward the women but stopped halfway.
This time a tiny fist pushed past the cover as the baby whimpered thinly. Mother Mary Joseph peeled back the blanket, and the women parted to make room.
With his stethoscope still in hand, the doctor walked to the dresser and shook his head. “Fetal asphyxia,” he said. “I’d swear my reputation on it.” He put the stethoscope back in his ears, while never taking his eyes off the infant. When he pressed the metal chest piece against the breastbone, the baby appeared to flinch. Dr. Peters listened for a full minute, his mouth hanging open as if imitating his patient. “It’s not possible,” he said again.
“Thought so myself, and I handled him,” Sadie said, standing near the baby’s oddly shaped head and studying its awkward position.
The Reverend Mother glanced toward the inner door that opened into the incubator room but said nothing.
“Heartbeat is slow and irregular.” The doctor draped the blanket back over the infant’s face. “He’ll not survive.”
“That may be so,” the Reverend Mother said, pulling the cover back and tucking it around the well-formed shoulders, “but until then, it’s our duty as Christians to provide comfort.”
“Of course, Sister.” Dr. Peters returned to Muriel, lifted her eyelids, and started to untie his apron.
“Do we try to feed him?” Sadie asked.
The Reverend Mother nodded at the question.
“Pointless.” The doctor dropped his surgical clothes to the floor and unrolled his shirtsleeves. “Let nature finish what God started.”
Mother Mary Joseph’s eyes traveled to the incubator room, then she looked back at the infant. “No time for the priest,” she said. “I better baptize him myself.”
“Baptize!” Dr. Peters spit the word out as if it were spoiled cream. The women turned and stared at him, but remained silent. “Sister,” he said, starting back toward the infant, “I understand the importance of the sacrament, but look.” He pushed the baby’s hair aside to show a dark red tangle of vascular tissue where the crown of the head should have been. “He’s more brainless than an imbecile.” He l
et the strands of hair drop back into place.
“It’s your duty to take care of their medical needs.” Mother Mary Joseph dipped an empty bottle into a basin of water. “It’s my duty to see to their spiritual ones.”
“Baptize? How?” He ran his hand over the baby’s odd features. “There’s no brow. Where will you make the sign of the cross?”
The nun wiped up a few drops of spilled water and tossed the damp cloth in a nearby hamper. “If you’ll excuse me, doctor.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Father Finetti will not approve of this.”
“Father Finetti is not here, so the decision rests with me.”
“You’ve read the decrees from the Sacred Office regarding the abnormal fruits of conception. You know what they suggest.”
“I’m quite familiar with the Church’s teachings.” She tightened her lips but the words pushed through. “I finished my religious training, as I’m sure you know.” She swaddled the infant and cradled him in her arms. “Ego te baptize in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” she said, pouring water over the misshapen head.
Dr. Peters stormed out of the room.
An hour later, the baby perished in the Reverend Mother’s arms.
* * *
Thanks in large part to Sadie Hope, Muriel’s story made its way through the convent. At breakfast, the girls spoke in hushed tones. She had a rough time of it. Almost didn’t pull through. She gave birth to a monster, may he rest in peace. To Sadie’s credit, there was no mention of words between Mother Mary Joseph and Dr. Peters, though Sadie did make it clear that the baby could be buried in consecrated ground, giving those who were Catholic a bit of relief.
After the morning Mass, Lily headed straight for the infant nursery. “Did you hear about Muriel?” she said a little too loudly, and one of babies cried out.
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