The Governor's Wife (31 page)

"The river wraps around three sides of this land and creates a peninsula. There are over one hundred
colonias
in the county, some completely surrounded by Brownsville, but the city will not annex them because they would not add to the tax base. Ah, we are here."

Jesse braked to a stop in front of a small white structure that appeared identical to the clinic in
Colonia Ángeles
.

"Four hours, that is not a bad time."

It was just before eleven.

"I trained a nurse/midwife to work here. Sister Sylvia, she is a nun."

Lindsay wrapped a green scarf around her head to cover her red hair.

"Will she recognize me?"

"Who would expect to see the governor's wife in a
colonia
outside Boca Chica?"

They got out and went to the front door where a sign was posted:
EL PROHIBIDO EL PASO. DANDO A LUZ.

"Yesterday there was death," Jesse said. "Today there will be life."

Pancho found a shady spot outside. Inside they found a sparkling clinic offering an antiseptic scent, six women in labor, and Wayne Newton's voice on a boom box.

"Sister Sylvia, she likes Wayne Newton. I am not sure why."

The clinic had been arranged like an old-time labor-and-delivery ward. Three women with bulging bellies lay in beds lined along one wall and three more along the opposite wall. There were no privacy curtains, but there was much moaning and groaning and occasional curses in Spanish. The joy of labor.

"No epidurals in the
colonias
," Jesse said.

A round, gray-haired Anglo woman wearing blue latex gloves, a colorful scrub top, and a big crucifix hurried over to them. She had a stethoscope around her neck and a relieved expression on her face.

"Doctor, thank God you have come. Six women, I could not do this alone."

"Sister Sylvia," Jesse said, "this is Nurse Lindsay Byrne. She works with me now. She is Irish."

A reminder to use her accent. The women greeted each other.

"Sister Sylvia normally delivers two or three babies each week, but six in one day, that is a bit much even for her. That is why she called me." To Sister Sylvia: "Any breeches?"

"No, thank God."

She made the sign of the cross.

"Okay, let us wash up and see what we have."

Jesse and Lindsay went over to a sink in the back and scrubbed their hands with surgical soap then put on latex gloves. They followed Sister Sylvia to the first woman. In this case, child.

"I've arranged the mothers by age," Sister Sylvia said. "This is Delilah Morales. She is fourteen. She is expecting her first child."

She did not look up from her iPhone. She was texting. Her nails were long and painted red. Her perfume overwhelmed the small space.

"We are close enough to town for cell phone service," Jesse said. To the girl, he said, "Hello, Delilah. I am Dr. Rincón. I will be delivering your baby today."

Like a waiter at a fine restaurant.

"
Gracias.
"

She groaned against a contraction. After the pain had passed, she resumed texting. Jesse put his hands on either side of her belly and felt for the baby.

"Delilah, I must check your dilation, to see how close you are to delivery."

She did not respond so Sister Sylvia put Delilah's left leg in a stirrup, and Lindsay did the same with her right leg. Delilah's full attention remained on the iPhone. Jesse put his hand between Delilah's legs. That got her attention.

"Hey! What are you doing?"

"I must check your cervix."

"Well, don't do it down there!"

Jesse chuckled. "That is where your cervix is. I have to feel it, to see how dilated it is, to know how close you are to delivery."

"With your fingers?"

"I am afraid so. It will not hurt much."

"I do not let men touch me down there."

One of the other women across the room laughed.

"You sure let Gustavo touch you down there or you would not be here now!"

"
¡Cállate la boca!
"

"Girl, do not tell me to shut up!"

"Ruby," Sister Sylvia said, "she is Delilah's mother."

"They're both pregnant?" Lindsay said.

"Yes. Ruby will become a mother and a grandmother today."

"Okay, ladies," Jesse said, "no fighting. It is, uh, not good for your babies." Back to Delilah. "I am a doctor. I have delivered many babies. I know you are scared since this is your first baby, but trust me, I know what I am doing. Okay?"

She shrugged and went back to texting. Jesse inserted his fingers into her vagina.

"
Dos
."

Two centimeters. Her cervix had opened only enough for him to slide one fingertip in. Delivery would occur at about ten centimeters. Delilah's labor would continue for some time. Sylvia recorded the information.

"Where are the fetal monitors?" Lindsay asked.

"We have no monitors, no sonograms, no incubators, no epidurals—"

"What do these women rely on?"

"Us. And prayer. Right, Sister Sylvia?"

She crossed herself again. They repeated the procedure with the other women. Rosie Ochoa was seventeen and having her second child; she was saying a rosary and was dilated six centimeters. Griselda Guzman was nineteen, dilated five centimeters, and crying silently through the contractions; this would be her first child. Marcela Vasquez was twenty-one, six centimeters, and having her third; her eyes were closed and an iPod was plugged into her ears. Luisa Chavez was twenty-eight and five centimeters; this was her sixth child. And Ruby Morales was thirty-seven and about to deliver her fifth child—soon. She was dilated eight centimeters.

"Okay," Jesse said, "Ruby will deliver first, and then Rosie, Griselda, Marcela, and Luisa will deliver close together, so let us move them to one side, in case we are delivering four babies at once. Delilah, she will be last and the most difficult."

"Why?" Lindsay said.

"Big baby and small hips." He blew out a breath. "It will be a long day."

They pushed Rosie and Griselda to the other side of the room and swapped them out with Ruby.

"No, no, no!" Delilah said. "Do not put my mother next to me. I do not want to listen to her."

"If you had listened to me, you would not be pregnant at fourteen."

Delilah groaned with a contraction.

"Remember the pain, child."

"Ladies," Jesse said in mock reproach. "Sister Sylvia, you watch that side, Nurse Byrne will watch this side. Let us eat lunch."

The promise of new life seemed to lift Jesse's spirits. He went to the small refrigerator at the back.

"Sister Sylvia, did you bring me shrimp poor-boys?"

"Of course. Six, in case we are here into the night. With the red sauce you like."

They checked that the mothers were comfortable then sat and ate lunch.

"Oh, Doctor," Sister Sylvia said, "Alexa Hinojosa, the newspaper reporter, she stopped in and asked me to have you call her the next time you are here. She is very pretty. She and you would make beautiful babies together."

The moment turned awkward, so Lindsay changed the subject.

"Where are the husbands?" she asked in a low voice.

"Not husbands," Sister Sylvia said. "Fathers. Except Ruby, she is married."

"The others aren't?"

"No. I am afraid that marriage is no longer a prerequisite to parenthood, in Hollywood or the
colonias
."

Two thousand miles north, Bode, Jim Bob, and Ranger Hank stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan. They had flown into New York that morning and checked in at the Plaza. After lunch, Mandy took the campaign credit card and the kids to Macy's. Jim Bob, Bode, and Hank took a cab. The Professor now spread his arms to the building rising in front of them as if it were a cathedral.

"The country was on the brink of disaster, we faced the same fate as the Roman Empire, but this place single-handedly saved America."

They were standing out front of the
Fox News
building.

"Tea party TV, Bode. Don't fuck it up."

"Ruby, you were born to have children," Jesse said.

"Yes, all you must do is catch. I have the wide hips. My mother, she also had such hips. Together, we have now made twelve children. And no epistle."

"Episiotomy."

"
Sí
. We are baby factories …" She grunted. "Let me push this
bebé
out."

She did. Jesse sat on a rolling stool at the foot of her bed. Lindsay stood next to him. The baby's head crowned and emerged from the birth canal.

"Catch my baby!"

He did. He held the baby's head with his left hand. Lindsay handed him a rubber syringe. He inserted the syringe into the baby's mouth and suctioned mucous and water. The baby's shoulder emerged next, and then the baby just fell into Jesse's waiting hands. Lindsay held a sterile towel out, and Jesse placed the baby on the towel. He suctioned the baby's mouth and nostrils. The baby took his first breath of air and cried. His voice and the smell of new life filled the clinic.

"Ruby, you have a fine new son," Jesse said.

Lindsay wiped the baby while Jesse clamped and cut the umbilical cord. Sister Sylvia came over with a warm blanket and took the baby. She wrapped him like a papoose and placed him in his mother's arms.

Three hundred fifty miles north, Eddie Jones sat slouched on the couch in Jim Bob's office in the Governor's Mansion, drinking a beer and watching the governor on a cable talk show on
Fox News
. Ranger Roy drank a root beer, the kind without caffeine. What a boy scout.

On the television, the boss was saying, "If you subsidize corn, you'll get more corn. If you subsidize Mexicans, you'll get more Mexicans. If you tell Mexicans that babies born in the U.S. will be American citizens, you'll get more anchor babies. And we have—six hundred thousand in Texas the last decade."

"So you were a merc in Iraq?" Ranger Roy said.

Roy was wide-eyed, like a kid talking to his baseball hero.

Eddie nodded and gestured at the television. "Hank's in New York guarding the governor—why aren't you there guarding the governor's wife?"

"She's not in New York."

"She stayed here?"

"She's not here, either."

"You're here, and you're her bodyguard."

Roy now looked like he might cry.

"She ran off."

"Whoops."

Roy drank his root beer like a man drinking whiskey to drown his sorrows. He swiped a Texas Ranger sleeve across his mouth.

"Guess you weren't around much, before she left."

"Nope." Eddie drank his beer. "She got another man?"

Roy shook his head.

"She wants to be useful."

"
Useful?
What the hell does that mean?"

Roy threw up his hands.

"How should I know? I've never been married."

"Hell, I've been married, and I don't know."

"Where's your wife?"

"Living with another man. I went to Iraq, she went to divorce court."

Eddie Jones was ex-special forces when he had hired on as a "private contractor" to the CIA in Iraq, which sounded better on the evening news than "mercenary." The pay was great, the work fit his skill set, and the independence refreshing after twenty years in the army. But one incident involving civilians, and Eddie found himself unemployed and unemployable. Hard to explain that sort of thing on a résumé.

"I'm worried about her," Roy said.

"My ex-wife?"

"The governor's wife. I don't want nothing bad to happen to her."

On the television: "Governor, you're not at all worried that that Mexican drug cartel might seek revenge?"

Eddie pointed at the TV.

"Roy—you best worry about the governor."

Jesse Rincón rolled on the stool from bed to bed, from birth to birth. Four babies were born within minutes of each other. Only the most difficult birth remained.

"
¡Hijo de la chingada!
" Delilah screamed with the pain.

The fourteen-year-old child was not ready to have a child. But have it she would. The baby was coming, ready or not. They gathered around her bed. The wall thermometer registered ninety degrees. The windows were open, and the fans were blowing, but only hot air. Everyone sweated.

"She is dilated eight centimeters," Jesse said.

Delilah screamed as the next contraction began.

"It hurts!"

"Remember that the next time Gustavo wants to romance you," her mother said.

"Not helpful, Ruby," Sister Sylvia said.

"
¡Jodale!
"

"Listen to the mouth on her," Ruby said.