The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil

by Lesley Choyce

  And then at about ten o’clock on the night of the twenty-third, a rampaging burst of north wind hit the house as if a giant fist had dropped from the sky. It hit with a single powerful gust and then there was nothing. It happened a second and a third time, almost like we were under attack by some invisible alien artillery.

  I walked to the barn to make sure the door was firmly latched. The air temperature had dropped dramatically and my breath produced perfect clouds of smoke. The moon had vanished and, once beyond the perimeter of my backdoor light, the night was pitch black.

  And then it began to rain. And the rain quickly turned to a shower of ice pellets. And then back to rain. And then more ice.

  I had an impulse to wake Em when I returned from outside. I was thinking perhaps I should wake her and go to the hospital, use that speech, that voice of authority I had practised. I felt panic rising as the taste of bile in the back of my throat.

  But I didn’t wake her just then. I settled by my radio and listened for the weather forecast. The CBC from Sydney said it would be windy with temperatures hovering near freezing, possibly some black ice on the roads. Reason for caution. But no more than that. Clearing by morning. I made myself a cup of tea. My inner debate was whether to sleep some now or to stay awake. When would I be needed most?

  The weather would pass. Tomorrow the sun would shine. For the first time in a while, I poured a second cup on the table for Eva. And then studied it. When the next gust of wind hit the house, I heard the familiar sound of shingles lifting slightly, nails straining in the shakes of the outer wall. It disturbed the tea in the cup, creating a frenzy of concentric rings. And then there was the tattoo of ice pellets on the north windows followed by a rising wind. I thought I could smell salt in it as it blew in through a small chink in one corner of the window where the glazing had chipped away.

  I decided to stay awake as long as I could. The wind was on the increase now but that was to be expected with the temperature shift and a cold front moving in. I concentrated on the pattern of falling rain, then clattering ice and wondered about the forces that caused this alternation. I knew it must be warm air wrestling with that cold front and I knew the cold would win. By now the roads probably had that sheathing of black ice. Already it would be dangerous to get in the car and try to weave down my ice-coated driveway to town. It would be even more difficult for someone to try to drive here, uphill from Inverary. But perhaps the ice was only here, in the slightly higher elevation from the shoreline.

  In the kitchen I lined up three kerosene lanterns, all cleaned and fuelled. I sat with a flashlight in my lap. It had been a long time since I had spent a full night as a watchdog. I’d never been good at it but had worked a night shift or two at the mines, sometimes in the seam and sometimes above but always vowing that it was not for me no matter what the pay.

  After a while, I heard Emily stir in her sleep. I heard her moan and then call out to me. I got up, suddenly feeling my age, the brittleness of my bones, the very real tensing of old muscles beneath my skin. With each step, I could not remove the thought from my mind that, somehow, I had already made a mistake, miscalculated. Already things had gone out of control. I decided now was the time to call Sheila, to have her here even if I was jumping the gun. I wanted to be the nurse. I wanted someone else to be in charge.

  But Emily called out my name again. And I went to her.

  She still had the covers pulled up around her. She looked frightened. “The bed’s wet. I’m sorry. And there’s some blood. I saw it.”

  I stood blinking at her, quelling my inner storm, listening to the rising wind. I falsified a smile. “Your water broke. A little blood would be normal.”

  “I know. But I needed to say it.”

  I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I’ll make a phone call and then we’ll change the sheets. We have lots of time.”

  And then the lights went out. Emily took a quick gulp of air.

  “It’s okay. Gonna be one of those nights.” I don’t know what that meant, only that I forced myself to usher the words out with a casual air. It was all about acting now. Events had already moved beyond the planned and predicted. Practise had not made perfect.

  I knocked the bedroom flashlight onto the floor and then got down on my hands and knees and found it, flicked on the switch. I prayed that the phone would still work.

  “Be right back,” I said.

  I walked to the kitchen and tried the phone. I was already dialling Sheila’s home number before I realized there had been no dial tone. I hung up, then quickly picked up the receiver and tried again. And a third time. Nothing.

  “John Alex,” Em called. Another gasp of air.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  I walked to the back door, turned the handle and tugged. It didn’t budge. I pulled harder, heard something that sounded like a seal being broken on a Mason jar lid. I tugged harder and felt something give way and then a small satisfying crack and the door opened. I shone the light out towards the trees in the yard. Everything had a thick polished coating of ice. The barn looked like it had been lacquered. This house must too have had its own great coating of ice. The yard was for skating. My car looked like it was entombed in glass. Maple tree branches were weighted down and a few had already broken from the ice. The spruce trees were bent over and looked like they were praying.

  And I took the hint that it was indeed a night for prayer. I had been long out of practice with communing with a God I had so often denounced or denied. I wished that Father Welenga had persuaded me to take up the practice. I wished that the world was a kinder place to me at this critical moment. I was certain I shouldn’t call Sheila to come out here on a night like this. Could get her killed. I’d have to see this thing through with Em, just the two of us.

  But I could neither slip back in time to make another decision nor could I change the terrible weather of the night. Nor could I pray. All I could do was breathe.

  As I closed the door on the outer vision of despair, I could imagine the house from the outside, a perfectly sealed capsule of ice. A perfectly contained little world sheltering the lives of the two of us with a third on the way.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I POSITIONED ONE OF the lit lanterns by the bed table and one on the dresser. It provided a wondrous soft light to the room and, because Emily was now sweating, made her seem to glow.

  “Contractions,” Emily said. “They feel different from what I was expecting.”

  “Some pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not going to ask you to get up. I’m going to slide this clean blanket and sheet under you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to get the fire in the other room blazing so we’ll be warm.”

  “When is Sheila coming?”

  “She’s not.”

  “Oh,” Emily said but she did not ask me why. “That’s okay.”

  It was those two words that just about buckled my knees. That’s okay. She sounded like a little girl. She was a little girl.

  “We’re in this together, right?” I said.

  “Yes. Everything will be fine.”

  Then the contractions began to increase. She was working hard to pretend the pain was not that great.

  “I’m going to take the blankets off now,” I said softly. “This will all be … very interesting for both of us.”

  I lowered the blankets as a very powerful contraction convulsed her body. I moved very slowly. “Bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want something for it?”

  “Yes.”

  We had discussed “natural childbirth” many times and Emily was militant that it was the only way to go. Sheila had warned me that many diehard “organic” mothers had opted for painkillers in the end.

  I went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Billy Sheehan’s moo
nshine rum. Emily looked dubious. “For you or me?”

  “For you, my dear.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “Should we hold off?”

  She bit her lip. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let me know if you change your mind. It’s the only painkiller the doctor has tonight.”

  A new onslaught of wind hit the house and it creaked and groaned in its shell of ice. Outside I heard the limbs of several trees crack and fall to the ground. “Ice,” I told her. “Just a little wind. A little ice. Quite beautiful, really. Nothing to worry about. We’ll put a pair of skates on us and skate down to town in the morning.”

  The contractions continued.

  “I’m going to examine you. I need to do this.”

  “I know. To see how far I’m dilated.”

  “Yes.”

  My hands were shaking as I touched her hips first and then the opening through which a child would come into the world.

  “You’re nervous,” she said, almost whimpering.

  “Yes. But it’s okay. A kind of test. For me and you. Do you feel like pushing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not yet. I think you should wait.”

  “Okay.”

  The horrific orchestra of wind took the score up one notch in volume. Some of the ice coating was cracking from the swaying branches and falling from the trees, shattering on the ground. “Did you hear that?” I asked.

  “It sounded like breaking glass.”

  “The ice. Wait until you see how splendid everything will look in the morning light.”

  I had a powerful desire that we could fast-forward like they do in the movies to the following day. I wanted the tools to do that. But I had none.

  “I have the feeling something is wrong,” Emily said.

  “That’s natural. This is all new to you. Remember what we read? Even women prepared for the process are surprised at how different it feels.”

  She began to push, leaning up a little and gritting her teeth. “I couldn’t help it,” she said.

  “We’ll just take our time.”

  It truly sounded like a battle going on outside now. I marshalled the will to ignore it and counselled Em to do the same. “We’re going to be okay,” I repeated, my only litany, over and over.

  “I need something for the pain now,” she said after a while.

  I poured her a little clear rum in a glass and lifted it to her lips but she balked at first.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I counselled her. “But you’ve not had a drop of anything since I’ve known you. I think she’ll forgive you. And I think it’s necessary. For now.”

  Emily sipped and grimaced and then she swallowed the alcohol. “She? You said she.”

  “I don’t know why. It just slipped out.”

  THREE HOURS PASSED. MORE contractions. More wind. Spraying showers of crystal ice and more wind. The stoking of the inner fires — all of them. The fear haunting me and me shouting it silently down. Forcing it away. I was Emily’s friend and coach — just like the books had suggested. And I was also her protector.

  “Just breathe,” I’d say. “In. Out.”

  And she breathed. And sometimes screamed. And repeated that she thought something was wrong.

  “No. The pain makes you feel that way. It’s going to be okay.”

  But things weren’t okay.

  I replaced the kerosene lamp near the bed, refilled the first and prepared for what was to come.

  AT FOUR IN THE morning, I saw the crown of the baby’s head. Emily screamed loudest just then. And then she reached for another small shot of the painkiller I had poured and slugged it back.

  I was on the bed kneeling between her legs. The bed was soaking with fluids and some blood and I had my hand upon the child’s head. “Push now,” I told Emily and she pushed enough to allow me to see more of the head of the baby emerging but with great difficulty. And then I noticed that the umbilical cord was wrapped around the neck.

  Emily was crying now, the pain more intense. I said nothing. I was blinded and frozen by fear. I had read about this and knew that doctors, recognizing such a complication, can sometimes untangle the cord before the birth. But the baby’s head had already emerged, coated in a thick white mucous. A caul as it used to be called. A baby born with a caul was considered to have good luck.

  But not this child.

  “What is it?” Emily asked, sobbing now. “Should I push?”

  “Wait,” I said. I gently slid my index finger down between the tiny neck and the cord. “Now,” I said. Push hard.”

  Emily screamed at the top of her lungs. I tugged ever so carefully and the little body began to appear. The cord was tight, though, and the baby could not emerge further without tightening the cord more around my finger and the child’s neck.

  The child’s face was turning blue. “Emily, push hard now. Again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  “I’m exhausted. Let me rest first.”

  I studied the baby’s face. There was no sign of life. The eyes were not open. The kerosene lamp was running down now. The light was dimmer than before.

  “The light,” Emily whispered.

  “It doesn’t matter. Emily, push with all your strength.”

  Emily pushed just as the lamp went out and we were plunged into darkness. I closed my eyes and felt the delicate neck of the baby I was trying to save. Then Emily screamed and the child slipped further into this world. I turned the head back quickly towards Emily and began to unwrap the entanglement. I could only go on instinct. The child did not stir or make a sound.

  I held the baby in my hands and ran my fingers over the face, found the mouth and traced it, then dipped my finger in and cleared the fluids. There was no breath. I leaned towards the little one and put my mouth over her nose and mouth and blew gently, then cleared the mouth again of fluids and breathed into her. And a third time. All in darkness.

  I was convinced that light would not ever return to the world. I studied the child with my hand, as if some secret code would be written on the body to tell me what to do. And it was in that shuddering few seconds as I held my own breath that I realized Emily had gone silent.

  Another limb cracked from a tree just then and fell against the wall of the house. I held the child in the palm of one hand and pushed delicately against the chest. And then I turned the baby over and tapped lightly on the back.

  There was a sound.

  At first I did not recognize it as a cough. I tapped lightly again with the baby face down. A second cough. And then the child was crying. I laid the baby down upon Emily’s stomach and got up, reached for the flashlight and turned it on Emily.

  She was pale and covered in sweat.

  Before I could lean over her, I finally prayed. I did not know who I was praying to but I prayed. The baby continued to cry.

  I leaned over Emily and put my ear to her mouth. Her breathing was shallow but persistent.

  I rose and went into the kitchen and brought in another kerosene lantern. The light filled the room. The baby — I could see that it truly was a girl now — was flailing arms and legs. I placed the lamp on the table and picked up the child, still attached to her mother by the lifeline that might have strangled her. I wrapped her in a soft towel and then placed her at Emily’s breast.

  I knew that there was no real hurry to cut the cord. The baby still wailed loudly but I took this to be a good sign. Her eyes were wide open, I could see now, and filled with fear. Born in the dark in the middle of a storm into a world that was totally unfamiliar. Plenty of reason to scream. I kissed Emily gently on the cheek once, and then twice. Then begged her to come back, to open her eyes.

  She came to consciousness slowly and, I think, believed she was still dreaming.


  “It’s a girl, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re still here. All three of us. You, me and, um, the baby.”

  “Eva,” Emily said. “I want to name her Eva.”

  “Eva,” I repeated. It felt good to say the name out loud, but, as always, I felt the sorrow as well.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I WAS SHAKING BADLY as I cut and tied the umbilical cord and removed the placenta. Whatever confidence I had coaxed out of myself had long since retreated. Suddenly the full impact of this immense responsibility fell upon me like an anvil that had been teetering on a shelf above my head.

  Emily fell asleep and the baby was still asleep on her mother’s stomach. A blanket partially covered them. I worried for them both. Their fate was yet in the hands of an old man, an old man who was now seeing dark and vaguely human shapes in the flickering images the kerosene lantern splayed upon the wall. Up above me, a collage of faces presented itself all too clearly to me: Lauchie was a young man smiling with all the confidence in the world. My own mother looked at me tired and afraid. My young father hovered behind her, his hand raised but thankfully I could not see his face. My shaking grew worse.

  Part of it was the cold. The temperature of the room was dropping. I checked the fuel in the lantern and then went out of the room to stoke the wood stove. With newspaper and kindling, I soon had a roaring blaze, heard some of the creosote in the chimney crackling as it does sometimes but knew it would not be enough to be of danger. I had checked and cleaned that chimney little more than a month ago. Emily had chided me about the safety of me going up on the steep roof. And her caution had made me feel two things. First, it had made me realize how much she cared for me. Second, it made me realize how much she depended on me.

  I put some bigger logs on the flames and closed the door to the stove.

  Back in the bedroom, I washed Eva with a warm cloth and then wrapped her in a small cotton blanket. The phrase “swaddling clothes” jumped into my head. It had been a long while since I’d read the Bible but I had read it through, several times, cover to cover in my youth, and it was surprising how often a King James phrase would present itself at the oddest moments.