A Laird for All Time

by Angeline Fortin

  Susan and Margo arrived carrying towels, scissors and buckets to fill with water and heat by the fire. Margo also brought the medical bag Emmy had been given. “Alright, boys, out you go while Dory gets changed.”

  “But, but,” Ian stuttered.

  “You can come back in when she’s settled,” Emmy assured him and pushed all the men from the room giving Connor a strained smile as he left. “Show time.”

  He smoothed back her hair and kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry,” he whispered with assurance. “Ye’ll do fine, I know it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she whispered back though she was trembling with apprehension inside. Putting on her most professional face, she turned to her patient with a confident smile. “You ready for this?”

  Chapter 39

  Emmy handed Ian a glass of ice chips to feed to his wife before resuming her position at the end of the table. No need to check for anything new just yet. An examination five minutes before had shown her that nothing had changed. Dory had been in labor for many hours already, nothing outlandishly long, but painful nonetheless. What I wouldn’t give for an epidural, Emmy sighed as she watched her new friend suffer. I hate natural childbirth. Emmy had always been a promoter of child birthing drugs thinking that it never did a mother any good to suffer through her ordeal or for a baby to arrive in this world to the screams of its mom. A pain free labor allowed the mother to enjoy the aftermath so much more.

  But there was nothing she could do for Dory. Ether or laudanum, the only drugs readily at hand, would only cloud the minds of Dory and the babies and were likely to slow the labor.

  Emmy took up the old stethoscope and listened carefully again, hoping the babies weren’t in any distress. She had seen labors longer, much longer, but with Dory’s water already broken and the fact that she was carrying twins, Emmy was starting to worry.

  An hour of having Dory walk the room had done little to speed things along.

  “You know, Ian,” she began nonchalantly. “You’ve been up here a long time. Nothing is going to happen soon. Why don’t you go get something to eat?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he replied squeezing Dory’s hand who in turn looked up at Emmy with pleading eyes.

  “Well, I am,” Emmy continued. “Maybe you could get something for me?”

  “Call a maid.”

  Emmy raised her brows and mouthed ‘okay’ to herself. Going to the door, she opened to find Connor in a chair he had pulled into the hallway. Reading a paper and drinking a cup of tea. Nice. “Connor?” she waggled a finger as he rose and came closer.

  “Is everything alright? I’ve heard her crying out.” On closer inspection, she noted his pallor. What a sport.

  She grabbed him by the shirtfront and pulled him down to meet her face-to-face. “I need you to get your brother out of here,” she hissed.

  “Why, is something wrong?” he worried.

  “He is driving us crazy!” she bit out. “I might just have to cosh him over the head if he doesn’t stop fussing. I have never seen a father act like such a ninny before.”

  Connor released a breath and allowed himself a chuckle. “That is why men should never be allowed during childbirth.”

  “I always have the fathers present when possible, but he’s just getting on my nerves and Dory’s as well,” she insisted. “Please help? Get him outside for a while or feed him. Something!”

  It took several minutes to get Ian to leave but Emmy was finally able to shut the door behind him with a sigh. She leaned back against it and shared a look with Dory across the room. “Thank God,” Dory panted against the pain, “I thought you’d never get him to leave!”

  Emmy, Susan and Margo all shared a laugh as Emmy went back over to her delivery area. She examined Dory again briefly and found no change in the dilation.

  “There is something wrong, isn’t there?” she asked through gritted teeth an hour later when what seemed like Emmy’s hundredth exam was followed with a frown.

  “No, no,” Emmy soothed, “not wrong, it’s just not going as fast as I would like, Dory. You’ve had no change in dilation at all and there is nothing here that I can use to make that happen quicker. Babies just like to be born quickly and sometimes a mother’s body can’t keep up with that.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We need to get them out, Dory,” Emmy told her in a low voice.

  “But they won’t come out! Oh, God,” Dory moaned as another contraction started. “It’s punishment, that’s what it is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Emmy scolded lightly used to the ravings of a woman in labor. “I’m sure you’ve never done a thing in your life to be punished for. It just takes time.”

  “Yes, I have!” she wailed as the contraction peaked and started to fade away. “I don’t deserve healthy babies.”

  Emmy watched the tears pour down Dory’s face. She had been in hard labor for more than half the day was worn out. She was obviously nearing delirium. She would never have the strength to push for hours if necessary when the time came. And oddly where most women blamed a husband for getting them in such a condition by this point, Dory appeared determined to point the blame on herself. That wasn’t going to help at all. The moment Dory felt defeated was the moment they lost the entire battle.

  Making the decision, Emmy moved to the woman’s side. “Dory, I want to perform a caesarean section birthing, do you know what that is?” Emmy spoke in her most professional voice.

  “You want to cut them out,” Dory panted and moaned. She nodded. “It’s alright; I know I don’t deserve to live. Save my babies any way you can.”

  “Well, I don’t plan on you dying,” Emmy corrected sternly. “So stop thinking that way, will you please? I have never lost a mother during delivery and you won’t be the first. I will deliver your babies and you will be around to see them when I’m done. Understood?”

  Dory’s eyes focused on her face and frowned. “I’ve never heard of a woman surviving a birth that way.”

  “Well, we do it all this time where I come from so you’ll just have to trust me. Can you do that?” Emmy asked.

  Dory hesitated but nodded through her pain. “This is God’s punishments for my sins,” she wailed as another pain assailed her. “I have sinned against Him and He is taking His revenge on me,” she rasped out near exhaustion.

  “Dory!” Emmy patted her cheeks and got her attention. “A little positive thinking wouldn’t be amiss at this point. Stop thinking about yourself and focus on your babies, okay?” She turned to Margo and Susan who hovered nearby to help her. “I’ll be right back; I need to talk to Ian. Take this and these,” she pulled a scalpel, a needle and some clamps from the medical bag. “Boil them while I’m gone and get some freshly washed bandages, too.”

  Emmy found Connor and Ian in the study. Ian was pacing frantically in front of the fireplace, his hair standing on end. Wary of approaching such a hysterical looking father with the news that she was about to cut his wife open, she lured Connor out of the room with a wave of her hand.

  “Are the bairns delivered?” he asked but frowned when she shook her head and told Connor what she planned to do. He nodded gravely. She had spoken about the possibility before and promised to keep Ian away. “This is it then? What ye think Donell was speaking of?

  “I knew it was going to happen,” she confessed.

  “How is Dory?”

  “She’s a trooper but she’s loosing it, I think. Keeps trying to beat herself up about something she thinks she’s done.” Emmy embraced Connor and turned to go back to her patient.

  “I wish I could give you something for the pain, Dory,” Emmy said, her voice muffled by the cloth she had tied across her mouth. Susan and Margo had done with same though they did not understand why and Emmy had little time for explanations. “It’s going to hurt.”

  “It already hurts!” Dory moaned weakly.

  “I know,” Emmy patted her hand and looked about her making sure she had everything sh
e needed. She was nervous and sweating herself. Emmy didn’t want to have to do this but knew there was no choice. “Ready?”

  “I need a priest,” Dory gasped bracing herself.

  “You don’t need a priest,” she nodded to Margo and Susan, who took Dory by the shoulders and legs to keep her still, and cut.

  Mercifully, Dory fainted.

  Emmy looked down at the two infant boys unable to stifle a smile. One was bright red all over from screaming while the other stared up at her with as much fascination as she gazed back at him. Two wonderful, healthy – and fully developed – babies were a fair trade for any amount of pain suffered, she thought. She reached and caressed a downy cheek. Perfect, each one, with heads of thick dark hair. Emmy was certain that Dory had been a bit off in her calculations. These boys were no preemies.

  If Donell’s hints about second chances were the true reasons for her time travel and her interpretation of them were right, her work here was done. She had saved Dory’s life and that of her boys. There was little doubt in Emmy’s mind that Dory would have died without the surgery. It may have taken a day or more, but the babies would never have delivered naturally and all three would have perished. If she had been brought here to save them, then she was finished and could return home.

  Since nothing had happened as yet, Emmy was left wondering. Damn! Where had Donell disappeared to?

  Ian came into the room and rushed to his sons with a joyful holler. He stroked their cheeks and hands but looked terrified at the thought of scooping one into his arms though the two nursemaids Dory had hired encouraged him to do so. Instead he just looked down at them with awe and wonder.

  Turning, Emmy went back to her main patient and checked Dory’s pulse as she slept the sleep of the exhausted. Dory had roused herself not long after her faint and had gone on and on as though she were in a confessional, begging forgiveness for her sins and such. It had gotten to the point that Emmy could barely make out her words so incomprehensible were they. She had concentrated on delivering the babies handing them off in turn to Susan and Margo to bathe and wrap. As she had been stitching her incisions though, she thought Dory had said something in her semi-conscious delirium that had stopped Emmy in her tracks.

  Now she stared down at Dory in confusion as she had in that moment before she had recalled herself and continued her work. Could she have possibly meant what she said or had she been hallucinating? Emmy studied Dory’s face, it’s similarities to her own and wondered if she had heard correctly and if she had what it meant to everyone in this house.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Connor whispered by her side.

  “I think so,” Emmy sighed leaning back against him. “She’ll need to take it easy for a long time and hope there is no infection. I have a few Tylenol in my bag I can give her for a fever, but not much I can do for the pain. Did you see the boys?”

  He grunted noncommittally. “They’re not much to look at.”

  Emmy gaped at him. “How can you say such a thing? They are beautiful!”

  “Ye’re beautiful,” Connor dropped a kiss on her forehead. “I am so proud of ye. Ye look worn out, though. Shouldn’t ye get some rest? Ye’ve been in here for more almost a whole day.”

  “I am beat,” she admitted, “and hungry. Maybe we could raid the kitchens before we go to bed?”

  “I will have Chilton send someone up with a tray.”

  “Dory needs someone to sit with her as well,” she told him. “I sent Margo and Susan to bed a while ago.”

  “I will have Chilton send someone up to sit with her.”

  “What about Ian?”

  “Shall I send Chilton up to see to him as well?” Connor teased. “Our valet will see that he gets some rest. He mothers Ian excessively.” McBride, the men’s shared valet, had been with them since they were boys, Connor had told her, but Emmy had not seen hide nor hair of the man since she had been at Duart. She’d often wondered where he hid himself.

  Emmy sent a long look back at Dory and finally nodded. She turned and went over to where Ian stood by the bassinet the two babies shared. “What do you think?”

  “They are amazing,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “Thank you, Em, Connor told me what you had to do. Thank you for saving their lives and my wife’s.”

  Emmy gave him a tired smile. “Just fulfilling my destiny,” she told him wondering again if it were true and she would wake up in the morning back in her own bed in Baltimore. “If Dory wakes, do not allow her to move around, she might rip her stitches. The babies will probably fuss as well…”

  “We have a full nursery staff ready for them,” he assured her and she nodded.

  “I’ll be back to check on her in the morning.”

  He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” he repeated.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Emmy ate by rote when returning to her room, bathed quickly before climbing into bed to wait for Connor. What if this was it? She thought again. What if in giving Dory and her children a chance at life, I am done here? What if Connor had absolutely nothing to do with it? But didn’t he deserve a second chance too? What else was she to do?

  Emmy didn’t want to wake up in the morning and have it all be gone. Connor slid into bed and Emmy rolled into him, clutching him desperately. “Tell me again how it is my destiny to stay here with you,” she begged. “Tell me you won’t let me go…”

  Connor’s hand fisted in her hair in surprise and her pulled her head back so he could meet her eyes, see her fear. “It is our destiny to be together, my love. Do not fear it. Have faith.”

  “I’m scared,” she confessed and told him of her fears.

  “Ye’ll save the lives of many babes in the coming years, my love,” he kissed her lightly and cupped her breasts in his hands. “Dory is but the first.”

  “You sound so certain.”

  “I am. I must be.” He lowered his mouth to hers capturing her lips in a kiss that promised the world and more. Connor rolled her under him and raised himself up on his elbows as she cradled him between her thighs. “Ye must be as well.”

  “I’m trying,” she whispered. “Give me another reason.”

  He did.

  Chapter 40

  Emmy woke the next morning in Connor’s arms and felt an elation unlike any she had ever known. She had remained! The joy plummeted as fast as it had come. Emmy moaned pitifully.

  She had remained.

  Connor had risen and left their bed urging her to get some more sleep, but Emmy had lie awake pondering the flash of desperation that had followed so quickly on the heels of the jubilation she had felt on awakening. She wondered where it had come from that dejection that it had flooded her so quickly. She wondered what it meant.

  Added onto that, now she truly had no idea how much longer she would be here. A week or a lifetime, she was back to wallowing in the unknown but without the optimism she had faced the last week with. She couldn’t get out of her head that this day might be her last. Whether that was should have brought anticipation or trepidation, she couldn’t decide. She wanted to go home, back to the safety of her perfectly planned future, yet Emmy wanted to stay at Duart as well with her new patients, with Connor.

  The indecision tore at her.

  She should be wholly, solely triumphant that she remained with Connor. She loved him and so there should be no doubts about what she wanted.

  What was is that had brought them on?

  And how was she to hide her reservations from Connor? Just twenty-four hours ago, she had been reveling in their love, happy and content. She had indeed taken each day as a gift. Should she confess her doubts or was he better-off not knowing? Still he could read her so well that if Emmy tried to hide it from him and failed…

  Emmy buried her head in her pillow, trying to smother her uncertainty.

  She wasn’t ready to leave him. She could provide that one assurance though she wasn’t sure it would be enough for Connor.

  Wh
at to do?

  Unable to find a solution to that problem, Emmy turned her thoughts instead to Dory.

  Her words from the night before echoed through Emmy’s mind. They had the markings of delirious ramblings, but there was an element of truth to them that Emmy knew she would have to confront. She wondered what Dory could offer in her defense.

  An hour later, Emmy strode around to the opposite wing to her patient’s room with Dory’s words pounding through her mind. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out, despite her musings that perhaps she had heard Dory wrong, but what would Dory have to say for herself? Emmy had breakfasted and dressed going first to the nursery to check the babies before moving on to Dory’s room. At her knock, Ian opened the door.

  “How is she?” she asked as he moved aside to let her in.

  “She had a rough night,” he confessed in worried tones. “She was in a great deal of pain and had a few nightmares.”

  ‘I’ll be she did, ’ Emmy thought with a twist of her lips. “I’d like to check her incision and change her bandages, if that’s all right.”

  He nodded tiredly. “I was just going to get something to eat anyway.”

  “Why not try for a nap when you’re finished?” she suggested. “You look done in.”

  He smiled and nodded as he left.

  Dory was awake when Emmy examined her, enthusing tiredly about her sons and thanking Emmy for saving them all. Emmy accepted her praise as she washed her hands. But after a long uncomfortable silence, she took a seat next to the bed as she dried her hands. She regarded Dory with a level stare that finally made the woman look away. “You were quite talkative during your labor last night, Dory,” Emmy commented.