The Secrets of Midwives

by Sally Hepworth

  24

  Neva

  When I arrived for my shift at the birthing center, I was already tense. Patrick had been strangely unavailable for a few days. He’d said he was exhausted from his week on night shift, and that was probably all it was, but … I missed him.

  It might have been everything that was going on with my family that was putting me on edge. After overhearing what Marie Ableman from the Board of Nursing had to say, Dad was furious with Grace. Gran and I had tried not to listen, but they were yelling pretty loud. At one point, I got up to go and set Dad straight. He was laying it on too thick—what she did was stupid, but ultimately a kind act. But Gran stopped me. People a lot weaker than Mom handled worse every day, she told me—it made them stronger.

  Something was up with her too, but I had no idea what.

  In any case, all I wanted to do on this shift was kick back with Susan and bring a life into the world. It was probably what I needed to restore my equilibrium. But I’d forgotten Susan was on vacation. And I was rostered on with Iris.

  Iris was my least favorite birth assistant. While she was patient and undeniably good with the clients, she had an irritating habit of talking to everyone like they were preschoolers, and today she’d taken to talking to me only indirectly, using the mother in labor as a medium.

  “Just breathe through the contraction,” she was saying to Brianna. “Good girl. When this one’s over Neva might suggest a nice bath to ease the pain. She’s in charge.”

  Brianna was on her hands and knees on the floor, clearly approaching transition. Her husband, George, was beside her, rubbing her back and generally looking out of his depth. I scanned the birth notes and saw that she was six centimeters dilated at the last examination and her water hadn’t broken. A bath wasn’t a bad idea.

  “How about a nice bath?” I said brightly when the contraction finished. If Iris heard the humor in my voice, she didn’t respond to it.

  “Wonderful idea,” she said, not meeting my eye. “I’ll go get it started.”

  Iris disappeared into the bathroom and I frowned after her. She seemed preoccupied herself. Had I done something to upset her?

  “Neva,” Brianna said, stealing my attention. “It hurts.”

  “This is the hardest part,” I said, squatting beside her. “Just a little bit longer and we are going to meet your little one. In the meantime, the water will help ease some of the pain. Did you bring your iPod with the playlist you talked about? A lot of women find music helpful at this point.”

  George was already searching in Brianna’s bag for the iPod, clearly grateful for something to do. I decided he could be useful. “How about I show George some of the pressure points in your feet? Some of them are known to reduce pain significantly.”

  “Bath’s ready,” Iris said, returning. “George, you come and sit at the end of the tub if you’re going to rub Briann’s feet.”

  “Brianna,” I whispered to Iris with a conspiratorial wink that she ignored. Weird. Something was definitely up with her. She was normally patronizing, but it wasn’t like her to be rude.

  “Uh … okay, let’s get this show on the road,” I said. “George, why don’t you help Brianna get undressed? I’m just going to get a few things ready out here.”

  Once Brianna was undressed, Iris wordlessly scooted her out of the room and into the tub. In the delivery room, I turned on the baby warmer and went about preparing my instruments.

  “Brianna wants to put her iPod on surround sound,” Iris said, alerting me to her presence behind me. “Do you know where the speakers are?”

  “They’re in the cupboard with the towels. Wait,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I don’t know. You just seem upset with me.”

  “Not upset.” She frowned, clearly contemplating whether to say more. “Just surprised. I’ll admit, I thought better of you.”

  “Iris, will you please just come out with it?”

  “Fine,” she said. “I heard about you and Sean. Having an affair behind Patrick’s back.”

  My mouth fell open but it took me a moment to formulate words. “What?”

  Iris folded her arms. “So it’s not true?”

  “Of course it’s not true! Who told you that?”

  “My sources are pretty credible.”

  “Iris, are we in the playground? What are people saying about me and Sean?”

  She pinched her lips together. “That your baby is his. That you two had an affair, and now you are pretending the baby is Patrick’s.”

  I was trying to grasp the magnitude of what she’d said when George appeared in the doorway and cleared his throat.

  “Um, excuse me, ladies. Brianna wants to start pushing.”

  * * *

  My sneakers squeaked against the linoleum floors. I hadn’t moved this fast since before I was pregnant. By the time I arrived at the elevator, I was jogging.

  When the elevator door opened, three nurses I recognized were inside. A brief glance told me they had heard the rumor too. They were probably delighted. Patrick Johnson would be available again soon. One of them would probably love to be the one to tell him. Thank God he wasn’t rostered on until tonight.

  I exited on the maternity floor. I scanned the halls and looked into each room I passed. Maybe Sean was on nights too? I was about to ask at the desk, when I heard his voice. I spun, and there he was, talking to a couple who carried their baby in a car seat, clearly about to be discharged.

  “Better start saving for college,” he was saying. “And remember, we have a no-return policy on babies. Even with a receipt.”

  The couple laughed and waved to Sean. As they walked away, Sean noticed me. “Hey, Nev. What’s up?”

  “There is a rumor going around that we are having an affair.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Iris told me this morning. Apparently, I’ve cheated on Patrick with you and the baby is yours.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Outwardly, Sean spoke in the arrogant, self-assured way that he had perfected, but I could tell he was nervous. “Who started the rumor?”

  “Iris wouldn’t tell me. But I think a lot of people have heard it. I’ve been getting funny looks around the hospital for days.”

  “Shit.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Have you been talking to the girls down at the birthing center?”

  I didn’t dignify that with an answer, and Sean didn’t wait for one.

  “Well, no one will believe it,” he said. “It’s gossip, pure and simple. We should just ignore it. Gossip dies down eventually. Especially when it’s not true.”

  “It isn’t entirely false, Sean.”

  “It is,” Sean snapped, then lowered his voice. “It is entirely false. We are not having an affair.”

  I took his arm and pulled him into the stairwell. I didn’t need Sean adding to the problem by participating in what might be misconstrued as a lovers’ quarrel.

  He threw off my arm as soon as we arrived in the stairwell and started pacing. “Sorry, I’m just pissed. People start these rumors for fun; they don’t realize they are messing with my life. Imagine if Laura heard this.”

  “And what about Patrick?” Sean could be such a selfish jerk, thinking only about how things affected him. “This affects me too, you know.”

  Sean wasn’t listening. “Laura had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor, for fuck’s sake. I won’t lose her now because of one reckless night that only happened because you were blind drunk and I was out of my mind with worry!”

  I shushed him, but the night was already flooding my mind. It was strangely vivid, given the fact that I was flat-out drunk. I could still see his face, staring trancelike at the wall in the staff room where, after a tip off from the nurses, I found him. He’d just been given the news about Laura’s tumor, and the prognosis wasn’t good. His stillness indicated he’d been that way for a while.

  Laura was spending the night at t
he hospital before going in for surgery, so I called Patrick, and we took Sean to The Hip for a drink. We thought a drink might loosen him up, allow him to talk, but when we got there, he just stared into space for hours. There was a vacantness to him that I’d never seen—not when his father died, not when he’d delivered his first stillborn baby. Sean and I drank beer after beer, wine after wine. It was the only time in my life that I’d ever felt really good about getting hammered, like drinking my weight in alcohol was showing solidarity to Sean. Patrick, who was working nights, remained sober.

  At closing time, Patrick went back to the hospital to start his night shift. I said I’d put Sean in a cab, but when we got onto the street, Sean suddenly started to talk. It spewed from him—how sick she was, how powerless he felt. After an hour of listening in the cold night air, I brought him back to my apartment. I made him up a bed on the couch and tucked him into it.

  “You’re a good friend, Nev,” he slurred.

  I nodded and continued tucking. Somehow wrapping him up tight felt like it would be a comfort—like swaddling to a newborn. Or maybe I was just too drunk to know what else to do.

  “Could you stay with me awhile?” he asked. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “I’ll sleep here in the recliner,” I said, feeling glad I didn’t have to make the journey back to my room. My head felt so heavy, I didn’t think I’d make it there. “Just wake me if you want to talk.”

  Sean opened the sheet that I’d just wrapped around him. “Could you sleep here?”

  Sean looked pale, wide eyed, like a little boy. So at odds with the arrogant, self-assured man I knew. The couch looked more inviting than the recliner, so sleepily, I rolled in beside him so my back pressed against his front. I think I heard the words thank you before Sean’s warm, heavy arm lulled me to sleep.

  When I woke, it was with strange urgency. It was still dark and I could hear whimpering. Awkwardly, I rolled over and frowned into the darkness.

  “Sean, are you okay?”

  “No,” he sobbed. “God, why is this happening?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, patting his shoulder. I willed my brain to snap into gear so I could find some words of wisdom to help my friend. But my words sounded as foggy as I felt. A favorite saying of Grace’s popped into my mind: Words are a poor man’s touch. And touch, even in my state, I could probably manage.

  It took some shuffling, but I managed to get my arms around Sean’s neck. He pressed his face into my chest. He cried a bit longer, and just as I was drifting into a light sleep, he spoke.

  “Nev?”

  “Mmm?” When I ducked my head to look at him he came at me like a hurricane: lips, hands, everything. At first I was stunned, and then … something else. As he rolled me onto my back, the pull of attraction was immediate, and fierce. Shapes floated before my eyes. And before I knew it, his body was heavy on mine.

  In the back of my mind, I knew something wasn’t right. But with our arms and legs snaking through the darkness, I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was like admiring beautiful, ornate coral while the rain rapped against the surface of the water eight feet above—I suspected something was up there, but with everything else I had going on, I didn’t bother to look.

  Sean was gone the next morning, and I was glad. Waking up alone gave credence to my theory that the whole thing was a dream.

  I didn’t see Sean for two weeks after that. After Laura’s surgery, he took time off to care for her. Without him around, I was able to pretend it never happened. And when he returned, that was exactly how we acted. It wasn’t until he found out about my pregnancy that he even acknowledged the night had ever happened. But now, we had to acknowledge it.

  “You won’t lose her, Sean. No one knows about that night, at least I haven’t told anyone. This rumor is probably based on someone seeing us together at the pub downstairs or whispering a joke in the hall or…” I trailed off.

  “What?” Sean asked.

  “Marion.” I swore under my breath. “Remember that day I came up here and told you my baby was breech? You hugged me. And after you left I saw Marion watching us. She’s obviously read more into it, and she’s not a huge fan of yours—”

  “And she’s hardly averse to a good rumor. Shit!” Sean reached for the door handle. “I’m going to put a stop to it now. Don’t follow me, for fuck’s sake! The last thing we need is people seeing us emerge from a stairwell together.”

  There was a whoosh of air; then Sean was gone. Headed to extinguish the problem. As for his tone, I couldn’t care less. As long as he was taking care of Marion, he could speak to me however he wanted. I reached for the handrail; then my breath stole away.

  “Patrick.”

  He stood on the landing below, a pillow wedged under his arm. He stared at the stairs ahead of him. “I brought this in for you. In case you decided to have another nap at the birthing center.” He lifted his eyes. They were vacant, cold. “You and Sean? Seriously?”

  I wanted to run to him, to throw myself at his mercy, but I was eight months pregnant, so instead I carefully made my way down the stairs. On the final step, I reached for his arm. To his credit, he let me hold him until I had both feet on the flat surface. Then he dropped me like a hot stone.

  “Let me make this clear,” I said. “There is no ‘me and Sean.’ It was a rumor started by Marion, we think. We are not having an affair.”

  “But you did sleep together?”

  I stared at him, and with no other choice, nodded.

  “And this”—he poked my stomach gently with his finger—“is his baby?” He watched me, waiting for confirmation.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  Now I was the one to drop my gaze.

  “When, Neva?”

  “Remember the night Sean told us about Laura’s tumor?” As much as I didn’t want to, I met his eye. Patrick’s face was completely frozen—not a flicker of an eyelid or twitch of a lip. I forced myself to continue. “He didn’t want to be alone. I said he could come back to my apartment and—”

  “I get the picture.”

  “No. You don’t.”

  Patrick began to pace. I stared at him. The angle of his jaw and the curve of his forearm. It was hard to believe that, only a few minutes before, this beautiful human being was mine. He wanted to share a life with me and my baby. I felt faint.

  “Neva?”

  I became aware of his face, close to mine. “Yes?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Just…” The walls swayed slightly. “… a little dizzy.”

  “Sit down,” he said.

  I started to shake my head, but Patrick’s arm went around my back and he lowered me onto the linoleum floor. “Just take a breath.”

  “I never meant for any of this,” I said as he propped me against the wall. “The last thing I wanted was to hurt you.”

  He sat beside me. “I know.”

  He sounded resigned. I wanted to say something more, but there were no words. I settled for sitting beside him. After what I’d just told him, I wasn’t sure if I’d have the chance to sit beside him again.

  A few minutes later, the door swung open and a nurse I vaguely recognized appeared at the top of the stairs. “Do you need help here?”

  “Yes, please, Rose.” As if awakened from a dream, Patrick sprang to standing. “Neva’s not feeling well. She’s thirty-six weeks pregnant, registered to deliver at St. Mary’s Birthing Center. I’d like you to check her heart rate and blood pressure for me.”

  The nurse started down the stairs. “Yes, Dr. Johnson.”

  Patrick pulled me to standing. “If everything looks okay, could you please order her a taxi?” He looked at me. “I don’t want you walking home in this weather, okay?”

  At first I didn’t understand what he was saying. Then, I did. “You’re not coming?”

  Patrick shook his head. “I’ll call the hospital when I get home, make sure you’re all right.”

  I
nodded. Somehow I even managed to choke out a thank you.

  The nurse linked her arm through mine. “I’ll take good care of her. Shall I send the results to the birthing center, Dr. Johnson?”

  “Thanks, Rose.” He looked at me. “Will you be okay, Neva?”

  I pretended I didn’t hear, and let Rose guide me up the stairs. I’d never been good at good-byes. And no matter what had passed between us, I still didn’t want him to see me cry.

  25

  Grace

  I got home just in the nick of time. The snow was coming down and the roads were slippery—not a good day to be driving. As I pulled up, the radio announced there had been an accident on the Beavertail Road and it was closed in both directions. I’d have worried that a client would go into labor tonight, but as I was no longer taking clients in secret, I had no other clients.

  I’d never seen Robert quite so upset. The way he’d looked at me—it was a hundred times worse than when I’d told him about the investigation. He’d used all the worst words—betrayal, dishonesty, disappointment. Initially I’d stayed quiet. After all, I’d earned it. But when he kept it up, banging on about how selfish I was, I got my back up.

  “Hang on a second!” I yelled. “I may have done the wrong thing, but what about you? You’ve been moping around here for weeks. Poor me, I might lose my job. Poor me, people got fired today. How about: Lucky me, I still have my job. Lucky me, I didn’t get fired today! And did it ever occur to you that I was doing this so I could support my family? I have an envelope full of cash in the study—”

  “Wonderful, so now we are tax evaders too? Fantastic, Grace. You’re right. I should be thrilled.”

  Eventually we’d reached a stalemate and gone to bed in separate rooms. We’d hardly spoken since, and I was still pissed off. Now, warm air hit my cheeks as I opened the front door to the house. A good, warm mug of soup was what I needed. Peeling off my scarf, hat, and gloves I hurried toward the kitchen. I was about to pass the sitting room when I heard Neva’s voice. I held back, out of sight. I hadn’t noticed her car. She sounded like she was crying.