The Midwife's Confession (25 page)

30

Tara

Wilmington, North Carolina
2010

I hadn’t been in Sam’s office since before he died. Ian had brought two boxes of personal items to me a few weeks after his death and I wished he hadn’t bothered. The spare pair of sunglasses, a couple of business awards, framed photographs of Grace and me and other odds and ends—I would have just as soon not seen them. Now Emerson and I sat on the sofa in front of the windows in Sam’s old office waiting for Ian. Sam’s desk still had a monitor and keyboard on it, but nothing else. The only other things in the room besides the furniture were the floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with law books and three gleaming wooden antique file cabinets. They were the file cabinets Ian had slowly been making his way through as he tried to determine which of Sam’s old cases needed his attention.

“You want something cold to drink?” he asked as he walked into the office. “Water? Soda?” He had a legal-size manila folder in his hands. It was neither thick nor thin. The edges were worn as though it had been beaten up a little over time.

“We’re good,” I said. I knew we both just wanted him to get to the point.

Ian sat down in one of the leather chairs in front of Sam’s desk. “Well.” He looked at me—apologetically, I thought. “Noelle continues to surprise us.”

“Ian,”
Emerson said impatiently. “What did you find?”

He held up the folder. “This was with Sam’s old cases. The name on the file is Sharon Byerton. It’s a made-up name, I’m sure.”

“Why a made-up name?” I asked.

“I’ve done it myself,” Ian said. “If I’m working with a client whose identity I want to protect from anyone who might stumble across the file, I’ll give it a false name. When I opened the folder, though…” He shook his head. He wore an expression of disbelief, as if he still couldn’t fathom what he’d found inside. He opened the file now and I could see a stack of the heavy, creamy sort of paper Sam used for legal documents. “Remember Noelle’s so-called ‘rural work’?” he asked.

We nodded.

“She wasn’t practicing midwifery then,” he said, “except maybe on herself.”

“What are you talking about?” Emerson asked.

“These are contracts,” he said, holding the papers in the air. “She was a gestational surrogate.”

“A…?” The words wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

“Five times. When she went away to do her rural work, she was actually in Asheville or Raleigh or Charlotte, finishing the last few months of a pregnancy and turning over a baby to that child’s biological parents.”

I couldn’t speak and Emerson seemed to have lost her voice, as well. It was too much to take in. Way too much.

“How can this be?” Emerson looked at me. “How can this possibly
be?
Why would she do this?”

“Oh…my…God,” I said slowly. “Are you sure?”

Ian leaned forward to hand us each a contract. I looked down at the pages of legalese. There were the names of strangers in the blanks marked
genetic father
and
genetic mother
. Noelle’s name in the blank for
embryo carrier.
I looked up at Ian. “Who
are
these people?”

He shook his head. “I have no information other than what’s in those contracts. The contracts are well drafted, but they’re not your typical surrogacy contract, not that I’ve seen a lot of them. Usually surrogates are married and have children and the husband would sign the contract also. Of course, that’s not the case here. She went into each contract prior to the in vitro fertilization, which I’m glad to see. She covered herself carefully. Or, I guess, Sam did. In each case, the parents paid all her expenses, of course, plus fifteen thousand dollars, which is low for this sort of thing, but I could see Noelle thinking that was just fine. She didn’t have many personal expenses.”

“We didn’t charge her much rent.” Emerson’s voice was husky.

“There’s the usual restrictions on the surrogate not interfering with the raising of the child or ever trying to assert parental rights. And there’s—”

“When did she start doing this?” Emerson asked.

“The first contract was signed in April 1998.” He cleared his throat and looked down at the contracts in his lap, and when he spoke again, his voice was thick. “Usually there’s something in a surrogacy contract about a psychiatric evaluation of the surrogate, but there’s no provision for that here, and I…” His voice trailed off and he lowered his head, his hand rubbing his chin, his eyes glistening behind his glasses. I felt so sad for him. I stood and crossed the room to lean over to hug him.

“She wasn’t right, Ian,” I said. “Something was off with her and none of us saw it.”

“I want to talk to some of these parents,” Emerson said. “At least the last couple. Can I do that?”

Ian lifted his head again and squeezed my arm in a little thank-you gesture as he regained his composure. “I’ll contact them and see if they’re willing,” he said. I stood next to his chair, my hand still on his shoulder. My own eyes had misted over, not for Noelle but for him, and I realized that I cared about him more than I’d thought.

“We missed her being pregnant,” Emerson said. “Five times!”

“The way she dressed, she could cover up a lot,” I said.

“Could this be why she and Sam were meeting at the restaurant in Wrightsville Beach?” Emerson asked.

“Possibly,” Ian said. “Although the last contract was from 2007 and she was forty-four when she died, so I think she was…finished. It would be very rare for someone to hire a surrogate her age.”

“Well, they hired her unmarried and without children,” I said as I sat down next to Emerson again. “How could Sam do this?” I asked. I was stunned by Sam’s involvement and especially by the fact that he’d known something like this about Noelle when the rest of us were in the dark. “Wasn’t this unethical of him? Shouldn’t he have tried to stop her?”

“He probably did,” Ian said. “I’m guessing he saw the contracts as the only thing he could do for her. It looks to me as though every
i
was dotted and
t
was crossed.” He held up the folder in his hand. “It bothers me that she had psychological problems none of us knew about, but if she was determined to be a surrogate and she refused to get therapy, I have to trust that Sam was protecting her interests the best way he knew how. Through the contracts…” He opened the folder again. “He has no notes in the file about any meetings he had with her, but that’s not uncommon,” he said. “I often toss those notes myself, especially if it’s about something sensitive. The only thing other than the contracts in here is this.” He held up the folder itself, open to the inside back page. From where I sat, I could see something written in pencil, but I couldn’t make it out.

“What does it say?” I asked.

“Just one word with a question mark,” Ian answered.
“Penance?”

31

Noelle

Wilmington, North Carolina
1993

She sat in the lounge of the women and newborn unit at the hospital, waiting for Tara. She was heartbroken, but trying to hold it together because the waiting area was full of anxious families and kids and she didn’t want to cry in front of them.

She’d left Emerson and Ted in the recovery room, where Emerson was still blissfully groggy after the D and C. Her first pregnancy had ended just before the twelve-week mark, but she’d made it eighteen weeks this time and everything had seemed to be going so well. Noelle would not agree to be her midwife the next time. It was hard enough going through pregnancy loss with one of her patients. With Emerson, the sadness was too much for her.

Tara nearly burst into the lounge, all energy and worry. “I ran a red light,” she said after giving Noelle a hug. “Where is she?”

“In recovery. Ted’s with her.”

Tara sank into the chair next to Noelle. Her dark blond hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail and she wore no makeup, a sure sign she’d rushed out of the house. “I can’t believe she has to go through this again,” she said. “It was so bad the last time, Noelle. This is going to be so much worse. I’m afraid for her.”

She was right. After her first miscarriage, Emerson had sunk into a dark depression that lasted weeks. She’d been unable to work in Ted’s real-estate office, which she’d been doing since before they were married. Unable to shop for groceries or straighten the house. Some days, she couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning.

“It’s the hormones,” Noelle said. “Postpartum depression. She may need some medication to get through it this time. I asked Ted if I could move in for a while and he’s all for it.”

“Oh, fantastic!” Tara grabbed her hand. “That would be such a relief to know you’re there. I can bring meals over.”

“Good,” Noelle said. “We’ll take care of her together.” She shifted her weight in the chair. Her back was seizing up as it did regularly ever since the accident. Sometimes it was impossible to find a position that didn’t hurt.

Tara glanced toward the unit. “Do you think I can see her now?”

Noelle nodded and got to her feet. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll ask them to let you in.”

They walked through the hallway toward the recovery room.

“Her miscarriages are scaring me,” Tara said. “She takes such good care of herself and does everything right, and…I don’t think I could handle it.”

“Of course you could.” Noelle rested a hand on her back. “You’re tough. But let’s hope you never have to.”

She knew that Tara and Sam were already trying to conceive and she wished them nothing but success. Their wedding day, nearly eight months earlier, had been one of the hardest days of her life. She’d felt sick that morning and wasn’t sure she’d make it to the wedding at all, much less be able to be a bridesmaid. Her illness wasn’t physical, though. She’d been sick with self-disgust. Why did people get so stupid when it came to sex? Why was it so hard to just say no? When she’d realized that night in Wrightsville Beach that Sam wouldn’t give Tara up, why didn’t she say, “I understand,” and leave? Then she wouldn’t have this unrelenting back pain or this unrelenting guilt.

Most of all, she wouldn’t have destroyed one of the richest friendships she’d ever known. Now, Sam kept his distance. He went out of his way never to be alone with her. Even Tara had noticed that something was different. “Did you and Sam have a fight?” she’d asked her a few weeks after the wedding. She’d looked concerned, not wanting a rift between two people she loved. Tara was so guileless. So trusting when it came to Sam. Noelle had laughed off the question. “Of course not,” she said. Then she’d hugged Tara hard, thinking as she held her in her arms,
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

She let Tara into the recovery room but didn’t go in herself. The nurses wouldn’t appreciate a crowd around Emerson’s gurney. Instead, she walked into the ladies’ room and swallowed a few of the pills she had stashed in her pocket. She leaned back against the cool wall and closed her eyes, anxious for the relief to kick in.

She’d told everyone a drunk driver had run a red light, crashing into her as she was on her way home after a middle-of-the-night delivery in Wilmington. Ian, whom she’d been seeing ever since Sam and Tara’s wedding, wanted her to sue, but she told him the incident had seemed so minor at the time that she hadn’t bothered to get the other driver’s name. She pleaded with him not to badger her about it. She wanted that night to go away.

A woman walked into the restroom and Noelle moved away from the wall. She washed her hands and left the room and walked straight through the corridor and the lounge and out to the parking lot. She needed to go home and throw some things in a suitcase so she could move into her sister’s house.

In her car, she felt the Valium and Percocet start to kick in.
Thank God.
She was taking more medication these days, playing around with the cocktail of drugs. She was careful, though, trying to find a balance between keeping her back pain to a manageable level and being able to function. She didn’t ever want to compromise her medical practice or put her patients at risk. She’d known drug-addled doctors and nurses and had vowed never to be one of them. She had more sympathy for them since her back injury, though. She’d tried acupuncture, Reiki, rest, heat, ice, but nothing worked as well as a nice healthy dose of narcotics. She tried to save them for those times she knew she wouldn’t be called on to catch a baby or manage a patient’s care. On those occasions, she worked through the pain. It was a pain she thought she deserved.

She took over the guest room at Ted and Emerson’s, dragging some clothes, her medical supplies, her heating pad and drugs and her logbooks with her. For the first time since leaving home eight years earlier, she felt part of a family. She cooked and cleaned and shopped and nursed her sister slowly back to life. She listened to Emerson talk about the lost baby, the plans and hopes she’d had for him—it had been a boy—how she’d allowed herself to imagine him starting school, graduating, marrying, having kids of his own. In Emerson’s imagination, he was musical and artistic, even though she and Ted were, to be honest, neither. He would have been kind and loving, though. Emerson was sure of that and Noelle didn’t doubt it. She listened to it all, thinking,
My nephew,
and she felt the loss herself.

She was the only midwife she knew who had no children of her own, and her dream of having a child, of creating her own family, was growing with every baby she delivered. That longing made her look at Ian with fresh eyes.

“I admire you,” he said to her in Emerson’s guest room one night. They’d just made love in the double bed, quietly, not wanting to be overheard. “The way you stepped in and took over to help Emerson and Ted.”

Ian not only admired her, he
worshipped
her, the same way a few other men had worshipped her over the years. Worship had never been much of a turn-on for her. Did she love him? Yes, the way she loved all her friends, and that would have to do. There were no Sam clones around and Ian would be a good father and a more faithful husband than she deserved.