The Mountain Midwife

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  Soon. Surely she would know soon.

  She flipped on the radio and tuned in the college station from Virginia Tech. Most of the music was terrible, and she didn’t think she was simply getting old. Her family was pretty musical, with her father still playing the ancient dulcimer. Ashley knew good music when she heard it, regardless of the genre. She did, however, enjoy the students’ often bumbling attempts to be professional or humorous or informative. They sounded so terribly young and earnest that she felt ancient by the time she pulled into the restaurant parking lot.

  Heather was already there, powdering her nose and freshening up her lipstick in her rearview mirror. She waved to Ashley and slipped from behind the wheel of her Camry, her long, slim legs in leggings and four-inch platform shoes seeming to precede the rest of her by half a minute.

  “Hey, girl.” Ashley embraced her friend since nurse-midwifery school. “You look gorgeous as ever.”

  At thirty, Heather could still have worked as a supermodel with her tall, slender frame and pale-gold hair. But she shrugged off Ashley’s compliment. “I look like a hag, and you know it.”

  “You look a little pale, but you helped deliver twins last night. That’s bound to make anybody tired.”

  “Especially since Tim and I had to fight over minding the mother’s wishes and letting things proceed naturally, unless contraindicated medically, or rush things along with a cesarean. He had a birthday party to go to.” Heather grimaced. “He’s a great doctor most of the time, but sometimes he’s too quick to cut.”

  “Who won?”

  Ashley wasn’t going to enter into a dissing of her supervising doctor. She didn’t want him to find an excuse to drop his sponsorship, something required by law for all midwives, as getting another one close by would be nearly impossible.

  “The mother won. The second baby entered the birth canal before an operating room was ready and—poof!—out it came. Easiest twin birth I’ve ever seen, if you discount how the mother carried on like she was being tortured.” Heather slung a long arm around Ashley’s shoulders and headed for the restaurant. “Let’s go inside. I’m starving.”

  “You’re starving?” Ashley made an exaggerated show of surprise.

  Heather ate like her food was rationed by a stingy dictator.

  “Yes, well, things do change.” Heather led the way into the restaurant, her platform shoes, which made her over six feet tall, clomping hollowly on the pavement and louder on the wooden floor inside. Several patrons turned to stare. Heather ignored them all and addressed the hostess. “Reservations under Penvenan.”

  “Yes ma’am.” The hostess came to perhaps Heather’s waist. She led the way through the room, Heather clomping and Ashley teetering on her three-inch heels.

  She wanted to crawl to her table beneath the legs of the other ones and not make such a spectacle. The V of her wrap dress felt too low, the hem too short. Having her hair unbound, when braiding it was the norm in her life, felt indecent, which was totally ridiculous. Sometimes she wondered if her family was so steeped in tradition she forgot in which century she lived.

  They reached their table and she slid onto her chair, wondering if she dared kick off her heels for the length of the meal.

  “Why are you frowning?” Heather asked.

  “My feet already hurt in these shoes and I feel strange with my hair down, so I think I may be living in the wrong century.” Ashley laughed at herself. “All that history we’re taught from the cradle is probably not good for us.”

  “I’d rather have that than no history at all.” Heather’s smooth forehead creased. “Or at least the kind of history I know about my family.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Ashley reached toward her friend, but Heather raised her menu, putting her hands out of reach.

  “Hey, drug-addict mom, drug-dealing dad make foster care look like functional homes.” Heather’s tone was light, breezy. “What are you hungry for?”

  Taking the hint, Ashley glanced at her own menu. “What’s good here?”

  “What isn’t? Right now I want one of each.”

  “Heather?” Ashley studied her friend’s face.

  It looked the same as always—flawless skin with a natural glow, stretched taut over high cheekbones and narrow jaw. Her pale-gold hair shone in satiny smoothness Ashley only dreamed of achieving with a flat iron and blow-dryer, if she had about an hour to make the effort. In short, no sign of anything out of the ordinary.

  “Since when do you want to overindulge in food?” Ashley asked.

  “Since right now.” Heather folded her menu and caught their server’s eye.

  They placed their orders. While waiting for their food, they talked shop, a never-tiring dialogue for them. They rarely spent time together without talking nonstop. Yet when their food arrived, Heather dug into her pasta with such enthusiasm, she didn’t speak for several minutes. Eating more slowly, Ashley studied Heather’s odd behavior until she finally had to ask, “Since when do you eat pasta and bread in the same meal?”

  “Since I’m hungry.” Heather added butter to a slice of bread.

  Ashley set down her own fork. “Since when are you hungry, or at least do anything about being hungry?”

  “Since—” Heather broke off and filled her mouth. Ashley narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  Heather shrugged and kept chewing.

  Stomach suddenly cramping, Ashley set down her fork and clasped her hands on the edge of the table. “Heather, I have known you for nearly ten years. You can’t pretend with me.”

  “I don’t intend to.” Heather took another bite of chicken. “I am seriously hungry is all. I haven’t eaten since last night.”

  “Okay.” Not quite believing her friend, Ashley took another tack. “How’s Ian?” Ashley asked about Heather’s husband returning from consulting work overseas.

  “Ian is great.” Heather speared a bow tie pasta with more vigor than necessary. “He has more work than he knows what to do with in countries I never heard of, but it seems to make him happy.”

  “And what about you? Does it make you happy?”

  Heather dropped her fork and pressed her napkin to her lips, but not before Ashley saw them quiver.

  “Heath, what’s wrong?” Ashley started to rise.

  Heather waved her back, took a long breath, and lowered her hands to her lap. “I need a change is all. Tim doesn’t have enough work for a midwife in his practice. Oh, some of his patients claim they want a midwife, but it’s more a fashion statement than my actual services.” She twisted up her face and lowered her voice from its normally sweet, sparkly register to one of slow moderation like the graduate of a boarding school. “I buy only organic in the store, eat at that local foods restaurant, and use a midwife. It’s all so much more natural, you know. And halfway through labor they’re begging for an epidural.”

  Ashley laughed. “Not all of them.”

  “No, not all of them. Some want the security of a hospital staff nearby and the more natural birth, but not enough for me to feel like more than a glorified nurse.”

  An answer to prayer, oh, yes.

  Ashley tamped down her excitement and talked with exaggerated slowness. “Would you like to join me?”

  “I might.” Heather half smiled. “Is there enough work on the Ridge for two midwives? I mean, can two women make enough money? I mean, I know you do a lot of pro bono work.”

  “Let me tell you, Heather.” Ashley leaned forward over her plate. “I make a six-figure income with the paying and insurance patients, and I turn people away depending on their due date. I could also run more women’s health clinics if I had more help.”

  She didn’t know why Heather worried so much about money. Her husband did very well, besides coming from an affluent family, but a lifetime of poverty made having her own income super important to her.

  “I had no idea.” Heather leaned forward as well, both of them so close over the table the server with a pitcher of tea shrugged and
attended to another table. “It’s worth considering then. But what about Sofie?”

  “Sofie has gone back to Texas. A family crisis. But even when she does come back and gets her certification, by next summer I’ll be gone.” Ashley’s words tumbled over themselves in her eagerness. “I’ve been accepted to the Medical School of Virginia in Richmond and have accepted the offer, though I am holding out for Georgetown.”

  “Are you serious?” Excitement flared in Heather’s green eyes. “Ash, that’s wonderful, amazing, all that. What does your family think?”

  “I haven’t told them yet.”

  “Your mom won’t like you leaving the women behind.”

  “She did.” Ashley rolled her shoulders to shrug off the light burden of guilt. “And I can serve them better as a doctor.”

  “In a gazillion years, and if you aren’t so in debt you have to take a regular paycheck like I did.”

  “I have the money saved.” Ashley hated admitting that to her friend who had had to pay her way through college and grad school, much of the money coming from student loans. “I don’t have much in the way of expenses other than malpractice insurance and equipment, so I have poured a lot into savings over the past six years.” Heather wouldn’t have much in the way of living expenses either, being married to a man who did well for himself. “I think I’d like the independence.”

  Heather waved the server over to fill their glasses. “But when will you start med school?” She snapped Ashley back to their discussion at hand.

  “Next August.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” Heather frowned with lips and eyes. “It’s just terrible timing for me.”

  “It is?” Ashley’s stomach knotted from excitement and hope followed by disappointment. “Do you have some kind of contract with Dr. White?”

  “No.” Heather smiled, although a little tightly. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Heather.” Ashley tried to keep her squeal to a mouse squeak. “When? How far along are you? What does Ian think? Has Dr. White examined you? Heather, I can’t believe it.”

  Nor could she help a tinge of envy for a friend who had a charming and loving husband with an equally charming and loving family, a lovely home in town, and now the beginnings of a family of her own.

  Heather, however, didn’t match Ashley’s excitement. She held up a hand in the “stop” signal to cease Ashley’s spate of questions. “I haven’t told Ian yet. I haven’t told Dr. White yet. I’d prefer you be my midwife. And I’m three months along, as best I can tell.”

  “Three months and no one’s examined you yet? Have you been taking your vitamins? Any morning or afternoon sickness? How’s—” Ashley stumbled to a halt, truth dawning on her with a sickening thud. “You’re sure it’s three months?”

  “Positive.” Heather’s grim set to her lips said she knew what Ashley had figured out.

  “But Ian—that is—” Ashley feared she was going to be sick right there at the table.

  Heather inclined her head, hiding her face behind a fall of satiny blond hair. “That’s right. Ian wasn’t home three months ago. The baby isn’t his.”

  Ashley knocked over her glass of tea. The amber liquid spread across the table and splashed onto the floor like a gushing faucet, and a dozen heads turned her way to stare. She didn’t care. She would recover from the embarrassment of so many people witnessing her clumsiness.

  She didn’t know if she would ever recover from Heather’s news. How could you? Who is the father? Why? were only some of the questions that crowded into her head. She asked none of them. She was too trained to read the signs of when a woman was willing to talk and when she wanted to let a subject drop to push the matter. By the way Heather picked up the dessert menu from a stand on the table and held it in front of her face, Ashley knew the subject was closed. Instead, she told Heather to come in for an examination the next week, and they departed in their separate cars.

  Ashley went home feeling bereft and restless. She hadn’t heard from Hunter beyond a brief text thanking her for her help and saying he would be in touch when he had decided what he should do next, if anything. She hadn’t heard from Sofie at all. And now Heather had demolished Ashley’s belief that her friend’s marriage was solid and happy.

  “Why, God, why?” she wanted to scream.

  She reached the back door to her house, and then she did scream, but not at God.

  CHAPTER 12

  A HAND SMELLING of motor oil clamped over Ashley’s mouth, cutting off the scream. “Where are they?” A rough male voice rasped across her ears like a metal file.

  Clueless as to the identity of the “they,” Ashley bit at the palm compressing her lips. The greasy, salty taste gagged her. She coughed.

  The arm around her throat tightened, cutting off her breath. Spots danced before her eyes. She clawed at the arm. Her short nails were useless against the thick wool sleeve. Her ballet flats were useless for kicking a man whose body felt made of solid muscle behind her. So she went limp.

  The hand left her mouth and grabbed her braid, yanking her upright. Pain seared through her scalp, and she sought another form of escaping this stranglehold.

  “Answer me.” The man shook her by her braid without removing his choking arm. “Where are they?”

  “Who?” was the only word Ashley could manage past her constricted throat.

  “The Davises.”

  The Davises? Their name was really Davis?

  A bubble of hysterical laughter rose from Ashley’s chest. She tried to draw in a breath to stifle the inappropriate mirth. Air snagged in her throat, and the edges of her vision darkened. “Can’t . . . talk.” The words wheezed from her lips.

  If he didn’t ease up on his arm, she wouldn’t be able to breathe—ever.

  He let up a fraction. “What. Have. You. Done. With. My. Lady?”

  “Wouldn’t . . . tell you . . . if I knew.” Ashley’s chest heaved as though she’d been running.

  “You’re a useless—” He called her a vulgar name and threw her from him. She struck the leg of the kitchen table, the upturned leg. It knocked the air from her lungs, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor, gagging and retching and trying to gulp in lungfuls of cold mountain air streaming through the open back door, but smelling nothing beyond motor oil.

  Somewhere through her misery the man’s footfalls registered—hollow on the deck, crunching on the gravel. Diminishing until somewhere on the road, an engine roared to life, the kind of roaring diesel belonging to the truck that had nearly mowed her down the night she delivered the stranger’s baby.

  And he had asked about his lady.

  Winded, lying on the kitchen tiles amid the furniture tossed about like the toys of an angry child, Ashley questioned the wisdom of having opened that door. Never had she heard of a midwife in her family turning away a woman in need, but the world had changed, become more dangerous. Maybe the time had come to stop being so altruistic.

  The idea made her sick, and she half crawled, half stumbled into the half bath off the kitchen. Spent and shaken, she wanted to curl up on the soft rug before the sink and hide in the darkness. She had only been doing what had been bred into her, what was probably part of her DNA—catching a baby. Catching babies wasn’t supposed to disrupt her life, bring danger into her life.

  The time had surely come to leave the mountains, at least long enough to get an MD behind her name, a way to work where no one disrupted her sleep with the ringing of a doorbell and danger dogging their heels.

  And who would take care of those women in need of immediate care?

  Sick and shaking, she shoved that irritating question aside. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  She wanted to weep. She feared if she began, she would never cease. She needed to get ahold of herself and take care of business.

  Her hands gripping the cold marble edge of the vanity, she dragged herself to her feet and splashed cold water over her face, then pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She didn�
�t bother with 911 but called Jason directly.

  “Ashley?” Jason sounded surprised. “What’s up?”

  “I was j-just . . . assaulted.” To her own ears, her voice sounded like she had swallowed half the gravel in the driveway.

  Jason swore, apologized, then said something away from the mouthpiece before he returned his attention to Ashley. “I’ll be right there. Do you need an ambulance? Are you alone now?”

  “No and yes. But my house . . .” She would not cry. She needed to be strong, to think of every detail.

  She wanted to clean up her house, but knew she needed to wait until the police saw it and processed it. The idea of what might have been done to her examination room, to her equipment and files, curdled her stomach.

  She remained where she was, huddled on the bathroom floor, hugging her knees to her chest, until she heard tires crunching on the gravel drive. She tensed, realized the engine wasn’t loud enough to belong to her attacker, and then rose to greet Jason.

  “It’s like the night the Davises showed up all over again,” she greeted Jason, then she laughed, an edge to the mirth. “Their name really is Davis. He asked for the Davises. I thought they’d made it up, but—” She broke off at another bubble of laughter rising in her chest.

  Jason and another deputy were looking at her with concern. She needed to get ahold of herself. She was the local midwife who managed all sorts of crises with calm and aplomb. Ashley Tolliver, like her mother before her, like her grandmother before her, like a dozen generations back, did not get hysterical in a crisis.

  She curved her hands around the deck rail. “You may want to inspect the house first. Maybe it will tell you something, because I can’t give you any more information than I could before.”

  She could also tell them she no longer felt safe in her home. Yet what was the point of that? This house was the base of her practice; it was where people knew how to find her when they needed a midwife. And leaving next summer looked better with each passing minute.

  ASHLEY SWUNG OFF the tar and chip road onto Rachel’s driveway, happy for the appointments keeping her busy and out of the emptiness of her house. Although only the kitchen had been ransacked, the damage minimal, Ashley felt the presence of a hostile stranger within her home’s walls had violated every room, making them uncomfortable, making her uneasy.