Bittersweet

by Anita Mills

  Another contraction doubled her over, sending blood down her bare leg. He could see how hard it tightened her belly, and he knew it wasn’t normal. It was as though her body was trying to rid itself of the baby in one painful contraction. Reaching up under her dress, he felt between her legs for the head. It wasn’t down there, and she wasn’t wide enough yet to deliver.

  Silently cursing the excessive clothing women wore, he worked feverishly to undress her, then swung her legs onto the bed. She rolled onto her side and drew up her knees as he searched for his medical bag. He was out of nearly everything, but there was no sense in letting her know it. “Jesse didn’t have any whiskey, did he?” he asked, coming back to her.

  “He liked beer.”

  Beer. “Do you still have any of it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s not that important,” he lied. “Anything with alcohol in it?”

  “Cough medicine. He…he…Clutching her stomach, she held on until the pain eased. “He had a cough last summer … I made some.”

  “With what?”

  “Honey…lemon…mash whiskey … I borrowed some—”

  “Where is it?”

  She hurt too bad to think. “Cupboard.”

  She had a lot of stuff on those narrow shelves, but he found a bottle of something. Opening it, he took a whiff and smelled the whiskey in it. “There’s half a bottle here, Laura—I want you to drink all of it down,” he said, lifting her shoulders to keep her from choking.

  She gagged as it went down. She felt her whole abdomen convulse, bearing down, but she could tell the baby wasn’t going anywhere. “It’s not moving, Dr. Hardin—it’s not!” she cried.

  “Then there’s a reason. We’ll just have to compensate for whatever it is.” Moving to the kitchen again, he washed his hands in lye soap and cold water. “We’ve got time to fix it.”

  “How?”

  “Close your eyes. I’m going to find the baby.” Placing one hand on her abdomen, he palpated it, trying to feel the head. It wasn’t in the birth canal. “This could be false labor,” he lied again.

  “Not with the water,” she gasped.

  “Maybe.” It didn’t seem possible that it could happen twice, but the baby was lying transversely. “We’re going to give it a little longer to move down to where I can reach it, then I’ll have to turn it into the canal,” he told her frankly. “Don’t worry—I’m not letting this go on for days.” Reaching for her hand, he squeezed it reassuringly. “We’ll make it.”

  “I hope so.”

  Sitting on the bed beside her, he reviewed his options silently. If he could turn it, he expected the labor to progress normally. If he couldn’t, he was a surgeon, he told himself. He could get it out of her, but that wasn’t anything he wanted to do. The baby would almost certainly die, and she’d never have another. No, he had to turn it, even if it came out breech again. If he didn’t let her get too weak, she could deliver it. “I’m not going to let you get too tired,” he told her again.

  As the hours wore on, she lost all sense of modesty or dignity. It no longer mattered that she was naked, or that his hands touched the most intimate part of her body. Between contractions, his voice soothed her; during them, his hand gripped hers.

  Every labor he’d seen in medical school had been without complication, but as he sat there in the waning hours of the afternoon, he called to memory the textbook cases that exceeded the norm, reviewing everything he could remember. His hands followed the progress of the child within her until he knew she’d done all she could without help.

  Despite the risk of hemorrhage, he decided to attempt turning it into the birth canal manually. With one hand outside, pressing downward, and the other in the canal itself, he moved the baby. Blood gushed down his arm, forcing him to hurry. Finally, he felt the head tilt downward; then his hand touched the small cranium. Reaching behind him, he retrieved a scalpel and cut the tautly stretched perineum to give the child more room.

  “The next hard one, bear down with everything you’ve got left, and we’ll know if we’re going to make it, he told Laura.

  She took a deep breath, holding it against the coming pain, and when the gut-wrenching contraction hit, she pushed so hard she thought she’d split open. Somewhere a scream pierced the air, shattering it.

  He could see the caul on the head now. Gripping it, he told her, “One more, and it’s over.” As the pain intensified, the head slid into his hands, and he pulled the infant out. One glance told him it was too small. A second glance made his heart pause. Laura was bleeding profusely, and the afterbirth was coming. It slipped like a mass of dark red jelly onto the bed.

  Laying the baby by her leg, he massaged its body, trying to bring life to it. Above him, Laura Taylor wept. She knew it wasn’t breathing.

  “It was just too early—I knew it was too early,” she whispered brokenly.

  “Maybe not.”

  With his clean hand, he opened the little mouth to poke a finger down its throat, clearing mucus. It was blue, but it was warm. He smacked the tiny feet, hoping the infant would respond, and he heard a choking sound, but no cry. Cradling the bloody infant’s head with both hands, he bent his head to it and forced his breath into its mouth. At first he felt nothing; then the chest walls expanded. His forefinger pressed on the tiny breastbone, expelling the air before he tried again. He didn’t know whether he just wished it to be so, or whether the blueness was receding. Stopping long enough to see if it breathed on its own, he waited, unsure if he saw anything. Finally, he turned it upside down across his knee, and there was a gasp, followed by a thin, reedy wail.

  “Well, aren’t you something?” he said softly. His face split into a full grin as he watched the baby girl turn pink, then red from the exertion of squalling. “Laura, you’ve got a daughter,” he announced proudly. “She’s little, but she’s here to stay.”

  Exhausted, she closed her eyes. She had a daughter. Not a son, but a daughter. A moment of disappointment washed over her, followed by pure joy. Her daughter was alive.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as the tears streamed down her cheeks. “Spencer Hardin, you’re wonderful,”

  He felt the intense emotion himself. “No—you were magnificent.” Placing the shaking infant in her arms, he murmured, “We’re not quite done, but almost. Now we’ve got to fix you up. I’ve got to sew together what I cut,”

  Overwhelmed by what he’d done, by the miracle he’d witnessed, he fought his own tears as he started stitching. Laura Taylor was crooning to the tiny daughter he’d brought into this world, and right now nothing else mattered.

  “You’ll freeze to death down there,” he heard 1 her tell him.

  Shivering, he drew his knees up against his chest, seeking warmth from his own cold body. “I’m all right,” he mumbled in the darkness.

  “You can’t be. You don’t even have a blanket on.”

  Opening his eyes, he stared into the dying coals of last night’s fire. He rolled over, touching the hem of Laura’s nightdress, then came fully awake. “What’s the matter?”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “You shouldn’t be up on your feet yet.” Pulling his coat closer, he sat up. Every joint in his body felt as if it needed oiling. He was stiff, sore, and chilled to the bone. The rag rug hadn’t made much of a mattress, he realized ruefully. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “In the morning?” It was a foolish question, considering it was pitch-black out. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I haven’t slept a wink yet. For one thing, I’m afraid I’ll take the covers off the baby in my sleep,” she admitted. “For another, I’m afraid I’ll smother her.”

  He could hear the wind still howling. If anything, it was eerier than the sound of a wolf pack cornering a hapless animal. Dragging himself up, he groped his way across the room to the wood box by the door. “Damned fire’s about out,” he muttered.

 
“I was thinking about sitting up for a while,” she told him quietly. “If you get the fire going, I’ll bring the baby over here, and you can have the bed. I’m too excited to sleep, anyway. I just want to look at her.”

  “Yeah.” Yesterday, he would have thought the idea was just plain silly, but he felt it, too. “I did— twice.”

  “I know.” Taking a match from the box she kept near the hearth, she lit the lantern, sending grotesque shadows up the wall. “She surely is something, isn’t she? I just wish she was a little bigger, that’s all. I’m afraid she’s too small to get a proper start.”

  “Well, there’s no way to put her back, so she’ll just have to grow.” Kneeling on the hearth, he blew on tinder, trying to get it to catch. He didn’t want to tell her, but the baby’s size still worried him also. “She’ll grow,” he said, reassuring himself as well as her.

  “As little as she is, I’m almost afraid to pick her up, but I expect I’ll get over that soon.”

  “Yeah.” He watched the small flame spread up a dry twig. “If I put them together, she just about fits in the palms of my hands.”

  She sank into the rocking chair beside him. “You know, I was going to name a boy Jesse for his daddy—I didn’t even think about a girl. I didn’t have any girl’s name picked out.”

  “Name her Jessica and call her Jessie,” he suggested.

  “I could do that,” she allowed. “Jessica Taylor…I don’t know,” she mused slowly. “I’d have to think about it for a day or two before I make up my mind for sure. I always wished Mama had thought of something besides Laura, but I had to live with it.”

  “What’s wrong with Laura? I think it’s pretty myself.”

  “I always thought it rather old-fashioned.”

  “Well, it isn’t. Old-fashioned would be something like Jane or Anne or Mary.”

  She was silent for a while, rocking while she watched him work on the fire. “I’d like for her to have your name, too, if you don’t mind it, she said finally. “She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

  He rocked back on his heels as if he’d been hit. “What? Oh, no you don’t—I didn’t make a good husband the first time, and I’m not about to try that again,” he declared flatly.

  “You think that I—?” Taken aback by his reaction, she hastened to set him straight. “Well, I didn’t mean anything like that, I hope to tell you. I was just wanting to ask if you minded being her middle name. Believe me, I’m not looking for another husband either. I already told you that, but I guess you just weren’t listening.”

  Now he felt like a damned fool. “I guess I’m just too tired to think straight. It’s been one hell of a night.”

  “Well—do you? Mind, I mean?”

  “No, but neither Spencer nor Hardin is much of a name for a girl.”

  “Do you have a middle one?”

  “David.”

  “Spencer David Hardin, she said softly. “It even sounds highfalutin.”

  “Well, it isn’t,” he retorted. “Spencer was my mother’s maiden name, and my father’s was David, so I came by all of it honestly.”

  “Jessica Spencer Taylor. Jessica Hardin Taylor.”

  “It’ll sound like she’s married before she’s even out of the cradle. Why don’t you give her a name that’ll mean something to her later? Why not use your mother’s?”

  “Because I promised her I wouldn’t. She was Nellie Mae Parrish before she was married, and hated being Nellie. And I’d never name anybody Mae, either.”

  “Oh. Well, I can’t say as I blame you,” he admitted. It looked as though the fire was spreading from the tinder to the logs. Standing, Spence brushed the soot from his clothes. “Look, I don’t care if you use mine, but ten or fifteen years from now, she might.”

  “When she knows you brought her into the world, she’ll think it’s fitting. I’m going to tell, her that if it wasn’t for you, she wouldn’t be here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “No, it’s true. And I’ll always be grateful for what you did for us.” Looking up at him, she added, “Jesse said you were the best doctor he’d ever met, and I believe that, too. I don’t know how you can even think of giving up medicine when you can do so much good with it.”

  “Well, I have, and I did. Hell will freeze solid before I saw off any more limbs—or deliver any more babies, either. I’ve had about all of the blood on my hands I can take,” he declared emphatically. “I don’t want any more.”

  She digested that for a moment, then shook her head. “If you kill him, that’s what you’ll get,” she told him quietly.

  “What?”

  “You’ve still got it in your mind to kill that Ross fellow, don’t you? You’ll get more blood on your hands by taking a life than by saving one.”

  “Damn, but you never give up, do you?” Exasperated, he demanded, “Who appointed you my conscience, anyway?”

  “Nobody. But it just goes against everything you stand for.” Noting the set of his jaw, she decided to drop the matter for now. “I didn’t get up to fuss at you, even if it sounds like it, she said, sighing. “I was just going to sit here by the fire and rock my baby, and I thought maybe you’d like to take the bed for a while. After all, it was me that ruined your bedroll,” she reminded him.

  “You belong in bed yourself.”

  “In a day or two, when she’s squalling at all hours, maybe I’ll get over feeling like this, but right now, I just want to look at her.” When he didn’t say anything, she added, “There’s two feather beds on that bed, and it’s real warm between them. Besides, if you get down sick, we’re going to be in a real pickle. The way it’s coming down, that snow’s going to be three feet deep, and I sure can’t dig myself out right now.”

  Tempted, he realized he was sore, tired, and cold. “All right,” he said finally. “I guess if you need me, you’ll wake me up. But you’d better get that rocker close to the fire and bundle up or you’re both apt to catch pneumonia. As little as she is, she’s got to be kept as warm as she was before she was born. She should’ve stayed in there another month,” he reminded Laura.

  “I know.”

  As soon as he was satisfied that the fire was putting out enough heat, he crawled gratefully between the feather beds, savoring the lingering warmth her body had left there. Too tired to think, he closed his eyes and slid into a deep, dreamless sleep. Neither the raging storm nor the steady creak of the rocker disturbed him.

  “Dr. Hardin! Oh, my God—Dr. Hardin!” Laura cried. “My baby!”

  He nearly tripped himself scrambling blindly from the bed. “What the…? What is it?” he asked sleepily, groping for a lantern.

  “I don’t think she’s breathing!”

  “I thought a snake or something,” he mumbled, not comprehending yet.

  “She’s not breathing, I’m telling you! Something’s bad wrong!”

  His mind snapped awake at that. Taking the infant from her, he said over his shoulder, “Bring the lantern to the table. I can’t see anything in the dark.” Positioning the tiny girl on the table, he ordered, “Hold it at my shoulder—yeah, that’s right.” Unwrapping her, he looked for signs of life. “When did this happen?”

  “I must’ve dozed in the chair … I don’t know . . . I just realized she was too quiet, that I couldn’t hear her breathe. Before she was making a little chirp, but now there’s nothing.”

  His hands ran over the little body, rubbing the fragile skin. It was warm. Repeating what he’d done earlier, he cleared her throat of mucus, and he heard her sigh. “She’s all right,” he said shortly. She hiccoughed, confirming that she breathed.

  “Oh, thank God!”

  He didn’t know what had happened, but as the weak wail grew stronger, crescendoing in a howl that would have done a coyote proud, he thought maybe she’d sucked mucous down her trachea, maybe the. chirp Laura’d heard had been the infant’s attempt to expel it. But she was sure getting enough air
now.

  “You’re sure she’s all right?” Laura asked anxiously at his shoulder.

  “I think so. But you could put just about everything I know about babies in a thimble, and you’d have plenty of room to spare,” he admitted.

  “You’re a doctor,” she reminded him.

  “I was more interested in surgery.” Lifting the infant, he held her close, stunned again by the seeming fragility of that little body, amazed by the life in it “You go on to bed—I’ll sit up with her.”

  “I couldn’t—I just couldn’t,” Laura protested.

  “Look, one of us needs to sleep, so it might as well be you. Come morning, she’s going to want to eat, and I sure as hell can’t help her there. Besides, whether you realize it or not, you’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re weaker than you think.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Just try,”

  He looked so big, her daughter so very small. It was as though his hands covered all but the soft down on the baby’s head.

  “Please, I’m asking you to do this,” Spence said quietly. “I’m going to watch her sleep to see if anything seems out of the ordinary. Just give me that shawl so I can keep her warm.”

  “All right,” she said finally. “But if anything happens, you’ll wake me, won’t you?”

  “You’re her mother—I’m just her doctor,” Looking at the perfect little face, the tiny button nose, the miniature fists doubled up in the air, he felt an extraordinary tenderness for this baby, and at the same time, a profound sense of loss for missing his own son’s birth.

  As she went to bed, he held the infant to his shoulder and sank carefully into the rocker. Pulling the shawl close, he began rocking slowly, rhythmically beside the crackling fire, his ears alert to every sound she made. She was just so small, so terribly small, that he found himself praying she’d survive, repeating the plea over and over. She was so still, so quiet that he eased her from his shoulder to the crook of his arm to watch her. The tiny lips moved, and he realized suddenly that she sucked silently in her sleep. And the thought crossed his mind that when Laura’s milk came in tomorrow, she probably wouldn’t have much trouble getting. her daughter to nurse.