by BJ Hoff
“If he can rouse the fool what minds the place,” Moira grumbled as she heaped more pillows and a quilt under Vangie’s torso. “From what I’ve heard, he’s in his cups more often than not.”
Susanna closed the door behind her as she left the room. In the kitchen she forced a smile for the anxious faces turned toward her, but she feared her voice was less than convincing as she attempted to reassure them. She managed to persuade Nell Grace to stay out of the bedroom, but Conn MacGovern would have none of it. Before Susanna could even protest, he was on his way back to his wife.
Once outside the cottage, she practically ran the distance to the house, heedless of the rain and the muddy water splashing onto her skirts. Heedless of everything except Moira’s words, which continued to echo ominously in her head:
“They’ll never get here in time…
8
THE FADING CRY
Little children, tears are strange upon your infant faces,
God meant you but to smile within your mother’s soft embraces.
SPERANZA (LADY JANE FRANCESCA WILDE)
Bitter cold engulfed Vangie, numbing her limbs and stealing her breath, while flashes of lightning bore down upon her in dizzying succession. Torn and battered by the force of the wind and brutal waves, she felt exhaustion take over and knew she could no longer keep herself afloat.
The cries from the shore were growing fainter now, the face of the wee baby boy fading from view. He was wailing, crying out for her, and Vangie extended her arms to him, knowing even as she did that the distance between them had widened and she had no real hope of reaching him. She hadn’t the strength to go forward or backward, could do nothing but give in to the wind and let the sea carry her where it would.
A terrible grief seized her, but she was too spent even to weep as the storm made one last crushing assault on her. She had lost them all, lost her loved ones left waiting on the shore, lost the tiny babe now gone from her sight—the infant boy, her son, taken from her before she ever knew him. She could still hear his fading cry, a litany of loss, and it intensified her grief.
Suddenly, without warning, the wind seemed to turn. The angry roaring of the sea began to subside. The lightning dimmed, and the very air grew thick and still. Vangie felt herself lifted and held secure, cradled in the waves that only a moment before had threatened to destroy her. Released from the numbing cold, a gradual, renewing warmth began to spread over her.
But nothing eased the hollow anguish of her soul. Vangie was sure she could still hear the babe calling out for her. She searched her line of vision for the infant boy who had been there only a moment before, but there was no sign of him. Her arms—her heart—felt empty and bereft as the gently rocking waves carried her back to shore.
The weak cry of the babe seemed to echo over the water. He was near, as close as a whisper breathed softly upon her cheek…and yet beyond her grasp.
“Mother…Mother…”
No, this wasn’t the cry of a babe, the voice of an infant. This was the imploring voice of a man, a man hidden in the mists that had settled over the sea at the edge of the storm.
“Mother…Mother, ’tis Aidan.”
Not a babe, but Aidan, her firstborn son, a man grown.
And he, too, far beyond the reach of her flailing arms.
“Toxemia,” Bethany Cole said, her voice tight as she straightened from her examination of Vangie MacGovern. “And the baby is breech.”
Andrew Carmichael nodded, tossing his suit coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves. “Let’s get a table brought in here. I don’t want to move her.”
“You’re going to do a caesarean? Here?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Andrew said. “She’s bleeding, and she’s going to start seizing any moment. It’s too late to try to turn the baby.” He looked around him, assessing the resources available. “Why didn’t they send for us sooner? She must have been this way for hours.”
“Apparently they didn’t send for Susanna and Mrs. Dempsey right away either.” Bethany shook her head. “They’re recent immigrants, don’t forget. Everything is strange to them, and probably frightening. They most likely didn’t know what to do. Actually, there wasn’t much they could do. Susanna said the closest doctor is recovering from a stroke and may not return to his practice. That’s why they sent for us.”
Andrew expelled a long breath. “Well, she’s scarcely conscious. This could hardly be a worse situation.” He didn’t so much direct his words to Bethany as to himself. He felt exceedingly frustrated by the circumstances and more than a little anxious about the treacherous delivery he was about to undertake.
He ran a hand across the back of his neck, knowing what he had to do but reluctant to do it. “I suppose I should speak with MacGovern.”
“Andrew?”
He looked at her.
“Do they have a chance? Either of them?”
Did they? He didn’t know how to answer her. He knew himself to be capable, but this would be no ordinary delivery. A breech birth. Toxemia. A mother nearing forty years. He shook his head. “The risk is as great for one as the other,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can, but we both know that ultimately it’s in God’s hands.”
“Yes,” Bethany replied quietly. “I know. Well, I suppose you should talk with Mr. MacGovern now. And Andrew—I expect they’ll want to send for a priest.”
He swallowed, finding it painful against the raw dryness of his throat. “Yes,” he said. “They’ll want to do that.”
He turned and started for the door. There were times—and this was definitely one of them—when he wished God had called him to the ministry. Or the mission field. Anywhere but medicine.
Bethany brushed a shock of dark hair away from Andrew’s face, then blotted the perspiration from his forehead with a towel. She had never been more impressed with the man who was her partner in medicine—and the man she loved—than during the long ordeal with Vangie MacGovern. Even in circumstances that could not have been much more trying, she could only watch him with admiration.
His long, lean face was set in intense concentration, his hands quick and sure. Working on a table that was solid but not quite large enough, with only the most rudimentary of necessities—including kerosene lamps for light—on a patient who was clearly in a mortal state, he performed a caesarean delivery that was nothing less than astounding in terms of brevity, control, and skill.
From the moment Bethany placed the towel soaked with chloroform to the mother’s face until Andrew made the quick, deft incision, then lifted the tiny infant from the patient’s open womb, he never faltered. Bethany knew his hands were giving him grief throughout the process—there was no mistaking the swollen joints and redness of his skin—but he remained steady, as calm and seemingly confident as if he had performed this sort of surgery numerous times under the same primitive conditions.
He was, in her eyes, magnificent.
He gave the baby’s bottom a smart slap, which produced only the weakest of cries. Then he handed him into Bethany’s waiting arms, draped by a warm towel.
This was by far the smallest infant Bethany had ever seen. “Will he be all right?”
She had to ask, even though she anticipated his reply.
“I honestly don’t know,” Andrew said, beginning to suture. “Cleanse him as well as you can, but try to keep him securely wrapped as much as possible. Massage his limbs, but very carefully.” He glanced up. “You know what to do. There’s only so much we can do.”
The door opened just then, and a tall, silver-haired priest stepped inside. Andrew frowned and shook his head, lifting a hand as if to indicate “not yet,” then went on suturing the incision. The priest nodded and moved to stand in a shadowed corner of the room.
After Bethany had washed the infant, she wrapped another prewarmed towel around him, hugging him close to her heart as she rubbed his tiny legs through the thickness of the cloth. He began to wail, a frail cry like that of an abandoned kitten.
Her throat threatened to close when she saw Andrew motion for the priest. The man stepped out of the shadows and came to stand beside the bed.
Andrew glanced at the exhausted mother, then at the infant in Bethany’s arms before he responded to the priest’s unspoken question.
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice weary, his shoulders slumped. “I expect the mother would want last rites for them both.”
Bethany drew the infant boy a little closer, as if she could strengthen his thin, fluttering heartbeat by pressing his tiny form closer to her own heart.
When the priest gently lifted him from her arms, it seemed that the baby’s feeble wail continued to echo deep inside her own spirit.
9
VALE OF SHADOWS
Lead me through the vale of shadows,
Bear me o’er life’s fitful sea…
FANNY CROSBY
By midafternoon the next day, Susanna faced an unsettling certainty—that the previous night had changed her forever. It had evoked a formerly unknown fear that now threatened to shake a fundamental conviction about herself and what she wanted from life.
How would she ever again entertain the thought of giving birth without remembering Vangie MacGovern’s swollen form, her distorted features, and the agonized cries that reflected a torment unlike anything Susanna had ever imagined? After this, how could she ever bring herself to give Michael the family he so desired?
He had made no secret of the fact that he’d always longed for a “house filled with children.” He had grown up as an only child and was emphatic about not wanting the same kind of childhood for Caterina. Papa Emmanuel, too, often made mention of how he looked forward to more grandchildren, even hinting at the possibility that those grandchildren might be the very inducement that would keep him in the States.
As Michael’s wife, Susanna would only naturally be expected to share this desire for a family. And up until now, she had shared it. Before last night, however, she had never given much thought to what exactly was involved in bringing a baby into the world. Even though she’d grown up on a dairy farm, her parents had done their best to keep her and her sister, Deirdre, fairly unenlightened about such things as mating and giving birth.
For the first time, Susanna realized that perhaps her mother—for it had been mostly her mother’s doing, as she recalled—had done her no favors by sheltering her so closely. What she had witnessed with Vangie MacGovern might not have been such an immense shock had she been better prepared. Uninformed as she was, she had been badly shaken by last night’s events. Indeed, she was still struggling to suppress the fear they engendered, along with her disgust at herself for reacting as she had.
She crossed her bedroom and sat down on the side of the bed, unable to stop thinking about Vangie MacGovern. Such suffering—and the poor infant might not even survive. Simply watching Bethany and Andrew with the MacGovern family after the delivery had confirmed her own suspicions that the baby’s grasp on life was tenuous at best.
As for Vangie herself, Andrew Carmichael had not attempted to minimize the seriousness of her condition, although it seemed to Susanna that he considered the mother’s survival more likely than the infant’s.
Incredibly, as if there had not been agony enough for the MacGoverns during that dreadful night, in the early hours of the morning had come the devastating news that their oldest son, en route to America, had been lost at sea.
Susanna shuddered, her own personal anxieties receding in the face of the tragedy that had fallen upon the MacGoverns. How much more must that poor family bear? How much more could they bear, Susanna wondered, sick at heart for them all, but especially for Vangie, who might yet have to face the terrible blow of losing not only her firstborn son but her newborn as well.
And that was assuming Vangie survived to learn of her loss.
By sheer force of will, Conn MacGovern sat still as a stone, watching his wife sleep. He wanted nothing so much as to flee the small room that reeked of sickness and despair. The despair was his own, for Vangie was as yet unaware that the life of their tiny infant boy was in jeopardy and that they had already lost their eldest son to the sea.
Conn felt as if he were being torn in half, willing Vangie to come to while at the same time dreading the moment when she would revive.
If she revived.
And if she did, would she survive the dire news he must lay upon her? Weak as she was, the loss of Aidan, their firstborn and ever so dear to her heart, might be the final blow that would destroy her, even before she learned that death might also await the new babe.
He tried to reason with himself that perhaps, if the wee boy should live—perhaps that might strengthen Vangie’s will enough to make her want to live.
As quickly as the thought arrived with its fragile trace of hope, just as quickly did it flee, leaving Conn’s spirit as bleak and chilled as before. Even the doctors could not say whether the babe would last through the day.
How could he not fear the worst? Although Mrs. Dempsey had had some success in getting the infant to suckle from a knotted cloth soaked in sweet cream with a little sugar water, the babe appeared desperately frail, his blue-veined skin thin as paper and just as fragile. Even his wail was pitiful, as weak as that of a sick pup.
To lose two sons, their eldest and their youngest—why would he think that Vangie could bear it, in her own dangerous condition, when he wasn’t at all convinced that he could?
He had tried to be strong, to cling to his faith, ever since his first glimpse of the babe after the birthing, and even after the word came about Aidan. No doubt Vangie’s counsel would be the same steadfast reminder as was her custom to offer in a dark time such as this: “What seems a disaster when left to our own means,” she would say, “can be turned to a glory when touched by our Lord.” Or something to that effect.
But Vangie was the one with the faith of a saint, not himself. He did his best not to bring shame to his Savior, but the dear Lord knew his faith was a feeble thing indeed compared to Vangie’s. She was the one who kept them all from flying apart when things were bad. Like any man, he liked to think he was the bedrock of his household, strong enough and brave enough to meet whatever might come. But in truth, Vangie was his bedrock. His flame-haired darling feared nothing. Well…except perhaps for bats and spiders.
His spirit groaned to think of ever living a day without her.
Oh, sweet Savior, what would I do…what would any of us do if You were to take her from us? Please, Lord, have mercy, not simply for my sake, but for the children. How could I possibly care for them all and give them what they need without Vangie? How would they ever manage without their mother?
Struck with terror at the direction his thoughts had taken, Conn felt he would surely strangle. He squeezed his eyes shut and began to knead his temples with his hands, hoping to relieve the ache that wreathed his skull.
The rain had finally ceased, but the wind was still up. Dazed with exhaustion and nearly numb with fear, he thought at first the faint moan was naught but the wind rustling through the great pines that ringed the property. But when it came again, he opened his eyes to see Vangie watching him.
He shot out of his chair and bent over her, catching her hand in his.
“Conn…”
Her voice was thin, scarcely more than a tremulous whisper, but to Conn it sounded like music. “I’ll go and get the doctors, love! You must lie very still now.”
“No…wait. The babe, Conn…is the babe—is he all right?”
Conn swallowed, squeezing her hand carefully. “He…he’s a wee thing, love, but a fighter. Sure, he’ll be fine in no time at all.” He stopped, studying her. “How did you know we have ourselves another boy, Vangie?”
She gave the slightest shake of the head. “I just…knew. I dreamed about him. I…think I saw him.”
Suddenly, she shook her hand free, grasped his arm and pulled herself up, clinging to him.
“Vangie, you mustn’t—”
“Aidan! Oh, Conn, I dreamed of our Aidan, too! Has there been any word of him?”
Conn’s blood seemed to halt its flow. His heart pounding, he sat down beside her on the bed, supporting her with his shoulder as she continued to cling to him. Her eyes burned with the flame of fever, and her hand on his arm was like a claw.
“Vangie, you mustn’t do this, you must not strain yourself so—”
She ignored him, beginning to ramble as if she hadn’t heard. “He was calling for me, Conn…on the sea. There was a storm…he kept calling but I couldn’t reach him! At first I thought it was the babe, but it wasn’t. It was Aidan! Oh, Conn, he was calling out for me, and I couldn’t—”
She stilled, her sunken eyes enormous against the pallor of her skin. “Conn?”
His name on her lips was harsh and laced with fear.
It was too soon to tell her…she wasn’t strong enough…it might drain what little strength was left in her…
He tried to calm her, knowing as he did that Vangie, even weak as she was, could strip away all his pretenses like the skin of an onion and look into his soul. She knew him too well. She had seen what he could not say. Much as he longed to, he couldn’t lie to her. Not now. Not ever.
“What is it?” she said, her feverish eyes searing his own, her grasp tightening on his arm. “The babe?” She twisted to better study him, and the panic in her gaze wrenched Conn’s heart.