The Runaway Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  Then I begin to decorate her bedroom with her glass-beach-stone creations. I hang the mobiles from the curtain rod in the big window and cover the window ledge with her small sculptures. The smooth beach stones gleam like gems in the candlelight.

  “Kum ba yah,” I sing, feeling stronger than I have for months, maybe years. “Kum ba yah.” Strange to feel peace and contentment at such a sad time, but I suppose it is because I’m doing something that I imagine will bring joy to another person.

  That’s something I’ve missed since I left my midwifery practice and patients. Every time I went to work, I had the chance to make the day a little better for someone, to bring peace, to bring hope, to let them know that I cared. Sometimes it was as simple as telling the patient that she looked pretty today or that she made me laugh or that I was proud of her for keeping her chin up during such hard economic times. Sometimes it was just giving a hug.

  THREE TIMES DURING the night Nita has a coughing spell and I must sit her up and pat her back. She’s as light as a dried-up leaf. I wish we had oxygen or a suction machine to pull out the phlegm that’s in her airway, but Jed says Nita doesn’t want anything mechanical, not even for comfort and, anyway, if we had oxygen we couldn’t have candles.

  I reflect on the choices Nita’s making and wonder if I’d make the same ones. If I had a child, I would fight to hold on. I think I would anyway, up to a point. If all I had left was pain and suffering, I might choose to die like Nita, but I’m not sure I could be as brave. (Maybe I’d just ask someone to give me a shot and get it over with.)

  I do have a child, I remind myself, a grown child. As I sit at Nita’s bedside, I let Jessie’s face float into the candlelit room.

  Jessie as a toddler comes first with her round innocent face and firm soft little body. She crawls into my lap as I stroke Nita’s wrinkled brown hand.

  Sitting with my dying friend, I watch my daughter grow taller. She’s eleven and then twelve, still sweet and innocent. I close my eyes and wish I could hold on to those years, but they are long gone.

  Then trouble starts. Jessie rolls her eyes as if everything I say is stupid and she’s now a sassy little vixen. I blame myself. I was exhausted, in clinic all day, in the hospital every other night and running on empty, too tired to put my foot down. If she spoke back to me when I asked her to take out the trash, I’d ignore her and take out the trash myself; it wasn’t worth the hassle.

  Half the time, Richard was away in Alaska or at a conference, expounding on the effect of climate change on polar bears, and when he was home he was uninterested in discipline, preferring the fun part of parenting—movies, trips to the arcade, eating out, the occasional concert.

  Our childbirth practice was growing and Linda and I were each delivering eight or ten babies a month. So I marched on as I lost control of my daughter, my marriage and eventually my life.

  At dawn, as the sun rises, Nita wakes, her mind clear, almost like her old self. “Oh, look at the beautiful colored glass,” she says, clapping her hands. “Am I in heaven?” (I can’t tell if she’s joking or maybe she believes she’s at the pearly gates.)

  “They’re your creations,” I tell her. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought them in the bedroom. I figured if you couldn’t go to your studio, I would bring the studio to you.”

  “I wish I could work. There’s a big project I left half-done . . .” She starts a coughing spell again just as Jed pops his head through the doorway.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fit as a fiddle,” Nita says, catching her breath. “As good as a dying old lady could be surrounded by friends, a pussycat and colored glass. Can I have some peppermint tea? Just a sip?”

  “I’ll get us all some. Be right back. Want a piece of the Baa Baa Bakery’s blueberry pie for breakfast, Sara? I’ll warm it up.”

  “Sure,” I answer on automatic, thinking . . . Fit as a fiddle. As good as a dying old lady can be . . .

  “Nita, you make me happy,” I say, lying down on the bed with her. “And I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  “Well, you better hurry,” she says, “because you’re going to have to take charge when I’m gone.”

  I blink in surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, you’ll be the keeper of the green trees, the yellow sunflowers, the blue waters, the red fire, the white seagulls, the brown earth, the purple sky at sunset.” I have no words, but I squeeze her hand as Jed comes back with a tray.

  When I stand to look at the sunrise out the window, the large green glass beach stone falls out of my pocket and drops on the carpet with a clunk. “Oh, look, I have something for you! Something I found on the beach.” I hold it out to show her.

  “Have you ever seen a bigger glass beach stone than this?” Nita doesn’t reach for it. Her arms are limp at her sides. “Nita?” I think maybe she can’t hear me or maybe she’s dead, and I lean over to take her pulse, but her hand opens and then closes again.

  “I was just talking to my husband, Lowell.” (Hallucinations are common when a patient’s on morphine, but Nita hasn’t had any medication in the last six hours.)

  “What color is it?” she asks, her eyes still closed.

  For a minute I don’t know what she means and think she’s confused, but she turns her hand over and opens it.

  “What color is the glass?” she asks again.

  “Green, a deep rich green. Look.” Her breathing is shallower now. “Nita . . .”

  From somewhere a breeze enters the room and curtains sway as if the pressure has changed, a door or a window opened.

  “Give it here.” That’s Nita, lifting her hand, and I place the sanded flat green glass on her palm. She closes her fingers. “It’s a beauty,” she says, her eyes still closed. “Is it cold in here?” I tuck the covers around her, thinking I should check the windows in the other rooms.

  “Can you lay down with me, honey? It keeps me warm.”

  I climb into bed and get under the covers, warming the woman with my bare arms, then Jed’s at the door. “Blueberry pie, anyone?”

  “Sure,” I say softly, putting my hand around Nita’s soft thin old lady’s hand, which still holds the green glass beach stone. Jed takes the bedside chair and starts cutting pieces of pie. The warmed berries oozing out of the thin golden crust make my mouth water.

  I move two of my fingers under the bedcovers to Nita’s wrist and take her pulse. By the clock on the dresser it’s very slow, but her respirations are regular and unlabored.

  “Can I have some?” Nita surprises us with her request. She hasn’t eaten a bite for days. “Can I have some pie?” I look at Jed. She’s really his patient. He can decide.

  “Just a little. But it’s nice you feel up to eating.” He takes a straw from her water glass and dips it into the berries, then touches it to her lips.

  The tip of her pink tongue comes out and she licks the berries. Jed puts a little more on her tongue and she makes a small smacking sound.

  Then Nita dies.

  Amazing Grace

  On Sunday, we have our first hard frost. The lawn is covered with white so thick you’d think it was snow and every golden or red leaf is rimmed with lace. By noon, it’s in the fifties and by three, when Molly Lou and Big Chris pick me up for Nita’s funeral at the cemetery in the north end, it’s warmed up.

  Molly Lou is dressed in black slacks and a flowing black tunic, and Chris even wears a sports coat and tie. Myself, I’m just wearing my black knit pants, a turquoise long-sleeved T-shirt, the rainbow scarf and the heavy sweater I got at the yard sale. (Maybe I should have dressed nicer, but the fact is, this is all I’ve got.)

  It’s five days after Nita’s death because she had to be flown in a special plane to Windsor to be embalmed and then flown back. The casket was constructed by Dolman out of plain polished oak and Jed has placed a framed photo of Nita and Lowell on the top.

  Reverend Easton, the part-time clergyman from Molly Lou’s church, is officiating and he begi
ns in that singsong way of a cleric. “Nita Adams has been part of the island community for years . . . She was a woman of faith and had no doubt that she would be with her husband, Lowell, and live in God’s house when she crossed over . . .”

  My mind wanders to the last funeral I went to. It was at the Lutheran Church in Torrington and I sat through the service dry-eyed, watching photos celebrating my friend’s life flash on the big screen behind the podium. There was Karen, larger than life, as a baby, a young girl in a ballet tutu and then graduating from medical school. In every picture she had a big toothy grin. There was even a photo of Karen and me taken just a month before her death. We stood proudly holding twin infants we’d delivered together, both of us laughing.

  That was the trouble. Whatever dark sorrow pursued her was a secret she kept from everyone. Even me. When she died, I was cut off at the knees and, I realize now, I’m still walking around on the stumps.

  The reverend’s voice brings me back to Nita’s service . . . “Shall we pray . . .” I bow my head but then take a peek to see who’s got their eyes closed. Some people are dabbing their faces with tissues. Some clasp their hands. Officer Dolman, like me, is surveying the crowd and he catches my eye, but I look away.

  Finally the casket is lowered by ropes into the grave and we all walk slowly past. I take a handful of sandy dirt and sprinkle it on the coffin. “Goodbye, dear friend. If I had a grandmother, I would want her to be you.”

  Then from out of the trees, at the edge of the cemetery, comes the shepherd Austin Aubrey, dressed in a bright red-and-green plaid kilt and playing a bagpipe. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me . . .

  The lump in my throat is as big as the green glass beach stone that Nita held in her hand as she died. I bite my lips to keep from crying but the tears come anyway. I’m crying not just for the loss of Nita or Karen or Robyn Layton. I am crying for the whole messed-up beautiful dance we call life.

  CHAPTER 38

  Township Meeting

  What possessed me to go, I don’t know, but the township meeting made me question democracy!

  “The island needs something big.” Chris explains his point of view as we drive north on Sunset toward the Black Sheep Pub. “If there aren’t more opportunities, Little Chris, like the rest of the kids, will leave when he grows up.” It’s getting dark early now and only a few red clouds linger on the horizon. “When I went to high school here we had six boys my age, enough for a basketball team. Now there’s just ten kids in the whole school from five to seventeen.”

  “But aren’t you worried about the environment? A casino is a big operation . . . all those people coming down Grays Road?”

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” He barks a short laugh.

  When we get to the pub, half the tables are full of people I don’t know. Dolman is there and Terry Jacob and Helen Burke and her husband, Eugene. Earl Prentiss, a slim man with salt and pepper hair, who’s the manager of the Cider Mill Farm, sits on the aisle and Austin Aubrey, the shepherd, and his wife, Elsa, sit up front. Jed is hunkered down in the back with his knit cap almost over his eyes. I sit with Molly and Chris.

  The session began with a prayer, which surprised me. (I don’t know what the laws are in Canada about such things, but in the US anything religious at a government meeting wouldn’t fly.)

  Eugene from the store stands and asks us to bow our heads. “Oh God of all, bless this community as it seeks to move forward. Help us listen to each other with respect and an open mind. In the name of all that is holy. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the group repeats.

  After that, it’s all downhill, beginning with Mayor Nell Ambroy, a petite dark-haired woman wearing a black jacket with a pair of wings embroidered on the left breast. She’s the pilot that Rainbow told me about and she reminds me of a few female surgeons I’ve met, small and determined.

  “I want, at the very beginning of this gathering, to clear up some false rumors that are going around. Someone is saying that I get a kickback from any development on the island. Someone is saying that I’m going to financially benefit from the casino at the Gull Point, but it’s not true, so you can go to hell, Earl Prentiss!”

  “Gosh,” I whisper to Molly. “That was personal!”

  “It’s just getting started,” she whispers back. “Nell’s a pistol.”

  “While you’re on the subject, I’ve got some questions,” someone pipes up.

  “Point of order,” the mayor yells, and the man sits back down.

  THE MEETING GOES on like this for an hour, a creek running wild and I think of leaving, but it’s dark and cold out tonight and I’d have to walk home. Finally we break for coffee and I slink to the back to sit next to Jed. “I can see why some people wouldn’t come to these things,” I whisper. “Are all these folks residents?”

  “No. About half are summer people. The summer people and retirees always have a lot to say and some of it’s worth listening to, but locals don’t want to hear it.

  “The way I see it is,” Jed goes on in a low voice, “the rich folk from Toronto, Michigan and Ohio can go home to their good jobs, their nice schools and their paved highways whenever they want. The rest of us need jobs here, a good school here and the roads graded and plowed. You know what conditions were like here last winter. It was like living in the Yukon in the 1920s.”

  “I kind of liked it.”

  “You would. This is a vacation for you.”

  “Come on, Jed. I’m kidding.” I give him a nudge with my elbow and he nudges me back, all forgiven.

  After cookies and coffee, the residents sit down to sling mud at each other again. The owner of the Old Oak Bed and Breakfast complains that a hotel and casino on Gull Point won’t help her small business any. She barely gets by as it is.

  Earl Prentiss of the Cider Mill, representing the Nature Conservancy, points out that there have been sightings of the endangered gray fox on Gull Point and if that can be validated, Environment Canada won’t allow the casino to be built, but he’s shouted down.

  “Screw Environment Canada,” someone mutters and someone else yells, “That’s right. Screw ’em!”

  “I have some questions,” says a tall man in a blue V-neck cashmere sweater and khakis. He stands and waits until the room quiets.

  “We rent our four cottages now, mostly to people who come here as ecotourists, or people into biking, the arts or meditation. Every year we get more requests and I think the island should market itself that way. People in the cities are hungry to get away to a quiet, beautiful place like this.”

  “People who live here year-round are just plain hungry,” a smart aleck comments, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “So what’s your question, Dr. Marco?” The mayor is edgy.

  “Well, has the township thought about marketing to people interested in the arts and as an ecotourism destination?”

  “I’ll give you a copy of our ‘Ten-Year Development Plan’ after the meeting,” Ms. Ambroy cuts him off rudely. “I don’t want to go over all that again. Tonight we’re focusing on the casino.

  “Charlene and Jake Nelson submitted their architectural plans a month ago and hope to break ground next spring,” the mayor continues. “But again, the plans have to be approved by the council and an environmental audit must be conducted. There’s also been some opposition. A woman, an outsider, who’s against the casino, has threatened to take the Nelsons to court.”

  A ripple goes through the room. “Who?” “What?” “I hadn’t heard.”

  Are they referring to me? I shrink down in my chair. Talk about false rumors! I’m not taking anyone to court! I’m trying to stay out of court.

  Finally someone respected by the community rises and the room goes quiet.

  “Who’s that?” I whisper.

  “You know,” Jed whispers back. “It’s Austin Aubrey, big sheep man on the island, also the head of the Sheepdog Association of Essex County. That’s how we end up getting the s
heepdog trials here every year.”

  (I remember him now. He’s the shepherd who blocked the road with his sheep and also the fellow who played the bagpipes in his kilt for Nita’s service. He’s not wearing a kilt now, just a worn blue plaid flannel shirt and old jeans.)

  “I think we all have to calm down.” Mr. Aubrey holds out his hands as if gathering us in. “Everyone here, sheep farmers, fishermen, bed-and-breakfast owners, cottagers and fruit growers . . . we all want the same things: peace, happiness and success.

  “A great deal has been said tonight and a lot of points made, but there’s nothing else to do but wait for the environmental report. There may be something lost from development, but a lot can be gained. We just have to make sure things are done right. So now let’s go home, take off our boots and open a beer . . . I mean a bottle of hard cider.” He grins and nods to Earl Prentiss because that’s a new product the Cider Mill is marketing, Seagull Island Hard Cider.

  “Hear! Hear!” a few people shout.

  The mayor doesn’t ask for a motion to adjourn. She just uses her gavel and raps three times.

  After Death

  All the way back to Gull Point, I worry about the story that some woman is suing the Nelsons to block their casino. Who could have started it? The Nelsons? But what would that gain them?

  “Thank you for bringing me home,” I tell Peter Dolman as we pull in my drive. “It really wasn’t necessary. Chris and Molly had room in their Subaru.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about the rumor that someone is taking the Nelsons to court. I feel responsible somehow because I gave the original will to a lawyer in Windsor, but word must have gotten out and someone misunderstood.”

  “Are the meetings always that awful?” I ask.

  Dolman laughs, surprising me. “That was one of the better ones!”

  “Mint tea?” I ask. Then, still wearing our jackets, we sit on the side porch.

  “Smell the air. It’s the dead leaves, the smell of fall . . . Your yard looks nice,” Peter observes. It’s odd, I think, to be sitting here with the cop like we’re friends. I forget he’s someone who could put me in jail, have me deported and sent back to Torrington. I must remember to be careful.