The Mountain Midwife

by Laurie Alice Eakes

  “Yes, he is.”

  “What’s he doing hanging around Brooks Ridge?”

  “It’s not for me to say.”

  Mary Kate didn’t press. People on the Ridge respected others’ privacy.

  They might know most of what all went on, but they didn’t push to learn what couldn’t be found out from looking.

  How long would Heather escape the gossip? She worked with an OB doctor and other midwives. They would know too soon how far along Heather was and someone would remember that Ian had been out of town.

  Ashley thumped her head against the icy glass of her door. She couldn’t help her friend’s marriage heal. She couldn’t help Mary Kate heal. She couldn’t get her SUV out of the mud. She was supposed to be in charge of situations in her work, and control slipped away with every turn.

  Med school. She would concentrate on med school. If she were a doctor, she could help Mary Kate—if Mary Kate came to see her. She knew she needed a doctor for her respiratory condition, not a midwife.

  Only because her midwife told her so and Mary Kate trusted her.

  Ashley snatched up her phone. She needed to do something, even if it was play a game. But she couldn’t shut Mary Kate out like that.

  She dug through the glove box instead, seeking her emergency stash of granola bars. She found her gun and two candy bars instead. “Do you want one?” She held a chocolate bar out to Mary Kate.

  Far from the nutritious fare she recommended, but better than nothing.

  Mary Kate shook her head. “You save it for Mr. Hunter.”

  Mr. Hunter McDermott didn’t know what he had gotten himself into other than deep mud. If he or a tow truck took too long, they would all have a problem—ice on gravel was dangerous on flat surfaces, let alone hilly ones, darkness wasn’t far off this time of year, and they would run out of gas. Ashley checked the gauge. Less than half a tank. The Tahoe was necessary in the mountains for its power and four-wheel drive—useful under normal bad conditions—but fuel efficient it was not. She did keep many blankets in the back for emergencies like transporting patients to the hospital. They could keep warm. Hunter couldn’t get warm, though, soaked through as he must already be.

  Ashley shivered in sympathy and sent up a prayer for protection for him and help for them.

  “Someone’ll be by,” Mary Kate said. “Folks gotta use this road.”

  “I’m hoping.”

  She needed to be believing.

  She broke off a square of the candy bar and let the sweet chocolate melt on her tongue. Momentary pleasure. Momentary reduction of stress.

  Once it was gone, though, she wanted to get out of the car and run laps around it.

  She found some soothing music downloaded instead, plugged her phone into the car charger, and let the concerto fill the Tahoe loudly enough to drown the drumming rain, but not so loud she couldn’t talk if necessary. Then she closed her eyes and tried to think, make some plans, think how to help Heather, how to help Mary Kate, how to get Rachel to stop smoking. She wondered how Sofie was really faring back in Texas and if her mother would end up in prison. Ashley wasn’t sure Sofie’s mom had legal status in the U.S. If she had broken the law, she could wind up in a federal prison. Ashley missed her assistant and friend. She talked to Sofie about her patients since they worked together. Without her, Ashley was on her own. She needed to find someone to take over her caseload.

  She kept seeing the black truck in her mind. It probably wasn’t the same one. This was the country. Lots of country folk had pickups, including jacked-up black ones. She was being paranoid. Still, she would tell Jason about this. He wouldn’t give her further information about the baby, even if he had it. Nor had he said anything about whether they had found the girl. Ashley feared the worst for her. Possibly her bleeding had ceased, but Ashley feared it could not have without some kind of medical intervention. What sort of intervention that might have ended up being sent chills through her, with thoughts of Mary Kate’s suggestion she go to Granny Parrish for an herbal concoction.

  Behind her, Mary Kate shifted on the seat, coughing with deep, barking gasps.

  “Would you like to lie down?” Ashley reached for her door handle. “I can get you a blanket.”

  “I’m all right, but Boyd’s getting kinda heavy.”

  Before Mary Kate could protest, Ashley was out of the Tahoe and tramping around to the back to fetch the blankets. They were wrapped in paper after she had washed and sterilized them. She didn’t unwrap them until she was back in the SUV, where she wedged herself between the seats and spread a blanket on the backseat. “Lay the boy down, then spread the other blanket over him and yourself. You rest now.”

  “I think I will.” Mary Kate looked exhausted, more so than usual.

  Ashley kicked herself for not making her go to a doctor when her cough first appeared. She knew it had seemed better on Mary Kate’s last visit. Still, the woman worked too hard and slept too little.

  Ashley rested her head against her window. The Tahoe rumbled through the glass, a soothing purr. Another rumble sounded, rougher, louder.

  Ashley shot upright, peering through the windows. Her heart raced, fearing the return of the black truck.

  The truck swooping up behind them was red, not black. Its lights blazed a path through the Tahoe’s back window for a moment, then it shot past and disappeared around the curve.

  “How could they?” Mary Kate cried out, then commenced coughing.

  “I don’t know.” Ashley leaned forward, peering through the trees and the rain, straining her ears. Surely she spotted lights coming back, a flash through bare branches, the distant thunder rumble of a powerful engine.

  Yes, she had. The truck returned, slowly now, and drew up with its tow hitch to the back of the Tahoe.

  “They went past to turn around.” Ashley tumbled out of the Tahoe and slogged her way up toward the truck. To her surprise, Hunter climbed out, looking a bit like a drowned rat with his hair dripping in shaggy tendrils over his face and collar. He held out his hands to her. “These gentlemen say they can get us out.”

  Ashley took his hands. They were freezing, and she experienced the impulse to keep holding them until they warmed. “They met you on the road, I take it?”

  He nodded, then released her to turn toward the two men climbing from the pickup’s cab. They were tall and rangy, wearing heavy coats, boots, and billed caps over sunbaked faces enough alike they must be cousins at the least.

  “We’ll git ’er out.” The one who’d been driving nodded at the Tahoe. “Got a tow bar?”

  “Tow package, yes.”

  “I told them I don’t see how they can get it out with all this mud,” Hunter began. “They need a tow truck with more power.”

  Ashley looked at him and laughed. Later she would tell him he had said the exact right thing to ensure that these two men, with accents as thick as the mud beneath their feet, would get the Tahoe unstuck if it meant they had to lift it themselves. Nothing got a man from Appalachia going on a project faster than telling him it couldn’t be accomplished.

  “What do you want us to do?” she asked the men.

  “Y’all git back. If this tow strap breaks, we don’ wanta hurt nobody.”

  “Mary Kate can’t get out.” Ashley glanced to the Tahoe. “She’s sick and pregnant and has a little boy with her.”

  The men exchanged a glance. “We knows Mary Kate. She can get in the cab.” He went to the back door and opened it. “Y’all need ta git out now, Mary Kate. We’re fixin’ to haul this out.”

  “Hey, Sonny, what you doing over here?” Mary Kate sounded downright flirtatious.

  Sonny didn’t answer, just reached up and lifted her down. “Git in the truck. I’ll bring the boy.”

  With Mary Kate and Boyd, the latter still too listless and quiet for a toddler, tucked up in the cab of the truck, the men, Hunter included, connected a tow strap between the hitches on the Tahoe and the truck. Ashley watched from a dozen yards away atop
a rock break. The rain had lessened, but darkness had fallen. From where she stood, the men were mere shadows moving in the red glow of taillights. But they managed to accomplish the task in a few minutes, and Hunter joined her on the rock break.

  “I can hardly understand a word they say, but they seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “I hope so.” Ashley stared at her beloved Tahoe, envisioning it flying to pieces. “Did you call a tow truck?”

  “They stopped and offered me a ride before I got enough cell service.” He removed his hand from his coat pocket and curled his fingers around hers. “So what was up with that black truck?”

  “They were in a hurry.”

  “You looked scared.”

  “Of course I was. They nearly smashed right into us.”

  “You looked scared after they passed us. Did you recognize it?”

  “No. Well, maybe.” She held his hand too tightly but couldn’t stop herself. “Lots of black trucks around here. Still—”

  The engine on the truck roared. The tow strap tightened. For several agonizing moments, nothing happened, then mud began to fly, dark clumps in the taillights. The Tahoe shuddered, seemed to shake itself like a wet dog, and slowly, inch by inch, crept from the ditch and onto the more solid bed of the road. A hoot of triumph rang from the cab of the truck.

  Ashley started forward, but Hunter held her back. “Something’s coming around that curve.”

  “I didn’t hear it.” She’d been concentrating on her SUV’s progress, but she heard the engine now, roaring around the curve farther on like the driver expected the road to be empty. The headlights flared, too bright, too high. She caught her breath and held it, fully expecting the impact of metal crunching against metal, flying glass.

  “Mary Kate,” she cried.

  She and the baby were in the cab of the truck.

  But the second vehicle slammed on its brakes and slid to a halt yards from the smaller red pickup. A man stuck his head out and shouted, “What’re you doin’?” to their good Samaritans. The response was a friendly, “Hold your horses.” And the driver of the larger vehicle drew back, idling his engine with an occasional revving.

  Ashley pressed her hand to her middle, sure she was about to be sick. She took several deep breaths, drinking in clean, cold air to calm herself.

  “You all right, Ashley?” Hunter asked.

  “I will be.” She stepped off the rock break and headed for her Tahoe. “Can I take it now?”

  “Yes ma’am,” one of their rescuers called back to her from the rear, where he unhooked the tow strap. “She oughta be good for ya now.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Should I offer to pay them?” Hunter asked.

  “Not unless you want to offend them.” Ashley glanced longingly at the driver’s door, then continued back to help Mary Kate and Boyd.

  Hunter stopped her with a light touch on her arm. “I’ll get them. You get in.”

  “I’m going to drive.”

  “If you like.”

  She wanted to get out of there faster than she thought Hunter would feel comfortable driving. She couldn’t outrun the black pickup if it returned, but she knew a couple of side lanes to patients’ houses they wouldn’t dare follow her down.

  They won’t want to anyway, she told herself.

  She wished she believed it.

  She climbed into the Tahoe and adjusted the driver’s seat for her lesser height. The others got in and settled, Mary Kate coughing again, Boyd sounding nearly as bad.

  “Ready?” She glanced at her passengers. “Then hang on.” She stomped on the gas. The Tahoe shot forward, rocketed around the second dogleg curve, and started down the ridge. No lights followed. The red pickup would have to back up and turn around before the black one could continue, giving Ashley precious minutes to get ahead.

  You are being paranoid, she reminded herself.

  She wished she were. She still intended to take no chances.

  The Tahoe swooped down the ridge a quarter mile, headlights glinting off of gray-white rock breaks, glinting in a swollen stream, absorbed in a patch of foliage. Past the tree stand, a narrow lane dipped down. Without slowing, Ashley swung the wheel and turned onto the track.

  “What,” Hunter asked in his calm, deep voice, “are you doing?”

  “Not now.” She drew a few yards farther off the main road, then cut the lights.

  “Is something wrong?” Mary Kate asked in a small voice.

  “I’m letting that monster truck go past us.” The truth. “I don’t like vehicles that big and aggressive behind me going downhill.”

  They accepted her explanation and waited with her in silence for a time so short the truck must have been flying well above a sensible speed, let alone the limit of forty-five. Lights blazing on high beams, it roared by the end of the lane. Five more minutes passed according to the dash clock, then Ashley flipped on the lights and backed onto the road. “Let’s get Mary Kate and Boyd to the hospital.”

  “After all this,” Mary Kate said, “I think I mighta been better stayin’ home.”

  “You might have been.” Ashley kept her eyes peering ahead for taillights and glancing behind for headlights. No eyes glared in the night. The rain ceased, and other than Boyd waking and interspersing his coughing with increasingly louder wails, they drove smoothly into town, to the hospital that was little more than a clinic. She called ahead a few minutes before they reached the emergency room, and an orderly and nurse met them with two wheelchairs. The instant the nurse took Boyd from Mary Kate, his cries grew deafening.

  “Can’t you take Boyd for me?” Mary Kate cast Ashley a panicked glance.

  Ashley shook her head. “I don’t have hospital privileges. I can’t do anything here but visit or consult with a doctor if he likes.”

  “B-but—” Mary Kate resisted sitting in the chair. “Do they know I ain’t got insurance?”

  “They know. Don’t worry about it. They have special funds.”

  Of course Mary Kate would worry anyway. “Let them take you in, okay?” Ashley rested her hand on Mary Kate’s.

  “Should I come with you?”

  Mary Kate nodded.

  Ashley glanced to Hunter. “I’m so sorry to keep you here. You can always drive my Tahoe back to my house to get your car and I can get a ride home with someone.”

  “You may need it to take Mary Kate home.” He strode into the waiting room behind them. “I’ll wait.”

  “But—” Ashley gave up protesting so she could follow Mary Kate into one of the exam cubicles.

  The advantage of the small town and her call ahead, along with the presence of a sick child and pregnant woman, made their waiting time minimal. The doctor, who didn’t look old enough to shave, let alone be making life-and-death decisions in an emergency room, sent for an obstetrician—Dr. White—for Mary Kate and a pediatrician for Boyd.

  “I think we may admit him. His fever is high.” He stopped talking and looked at Ashley.

  “You are family?”

  “I’m her midwife.”

  “Oh yeah? I’ve heard about you. Maybe we can talk sometime. I’m curious about how you work.”

  “Sure.” He was rather good-looking with soft blond hair and hazel eyes, a warm smile, and compact build. “Give me a call. We can have coffee or something.”

  He grinned, then attended to his patients.

  In the end, the physicians pronounced that Mary Kate had a case of bronchitis and elevated blood pressure, and Boyd had a serious case of the flu. Both were dehydrated. Dr. White wanted to keep Mary Kate overnight in the hospital, and the pediatrician wanted the same for Boyd.

  “I’m glad you’re cautious enough to bring your patients to the hospital,” Dr. White told Ashley.

  She gave him a blank look. “I don’t think birth usually needs a physician’s intervention, but for those that do, of course I call on a doctor.”

  She turned her attention to Mary Kate, told her she would ch
eck in with her in the morning, and exited to the waiting room. She fully expected to see Hunter gone, having found a ride somehow. But he sat watching a couple of talking heads on the wall-mounted TV.

  He rose at her entrance. “How are they?”

  “Sick. They’re staying.”

  He looked concerned. “That sick, or precautionary?”

  “A bit of both.” Ashley rubbed her arms. She was still damp and chilled. So was Hunter. “Let me get you back to your motel so you can get some dry clothes. Or would you prefer to come out and get your car?”

  “I think I’d like to get dry first. Perhaps you can pick me up in the morning?”

  “Or wait for you and take you on out after that.” She felt oddly reluctant to go back to her house alone.

  Or maybe not so oddly considering what she had seen. She hadn’t seen a person, just heard that voice, rough like he’d smoked too many cigarettes.

  “If you’ll be all right that long.”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  The motel was only moments from the hospital. Ashley climbed out with Hunter and entered the lobby. The desk clerk was just starting a fresh pot of coffee. While Hunter took the steps up to his room two at a time, Ashley hovered around the coffeemaker, resisting the urge to warm her hands on the carafe.

  “What happened to you?” Jason’s voice rang across the lobby.

  Ashley turned. “Just the man I want to see.” Shivering from cold and her odd sense of foreboding, she closed the distance between herself and her old friend. “I saw him tonight.”

  “Saw who? That guy from up north you were—”

  “No, the guy who assaulted me in my house.”

  CHAPTER 16

  ASHLEY DIDN’T NEED Jason’s look of exasperation to tell her the spotting of her midnight visitor was useless. She had too few answers to all his questions. She hadn’t gotten the license plate number of the truck. She didn’t know the man’s name. She hadn’t seen him going into any particular location. In truth, she hadn’t seen him at all, just his truck, one not uncommon in the mountains.

  “But I recognized his voice, and he went down Gosnoll Holler Road.” It was the best information she had. “Then he returned about an hour and a half later. And he literally ran us off the road.”