The Midwife's Secret (22 page)

Amanda hiked up the nightshirt to expose the rounded belly. She raised the scalpel.

“What are you doing?” Quaid hollered from beside Beth’s head.

Amanda’s hand trembled at his harsh rebuke. “A transverse lower incision.”

“
No.
Go with the classical. A vertical midline, straight down the abdomen from the belly button.”

“But some surgeons say there are fewer ruptures and infections with the transverse.”

“Some?” Quaid asked, stumbling back.

Amanda held firm to her decision but was forced to wait, knowing that as Beth’s husband, Quaid had the final, legal say. “We’re running out of time, Quaid.”

Tom patted Quaid’s shoulders, again nudging his brother.

“My God, man,” mumbled Quaid, almost incoherent. “I don’t want to be the one to…”

Amanda steadied herself and tried again. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve done this once before with my grandpa.”

“Let Amanda do her job,” Tom urged.

Closing his eyes, Quaid nodded, and with a slackening in her tense shoulders, Amanda began.

Within two to three minutes, the healthy baby was out.

“Ah-hh…” Quaid said, openly weeping now at his beautiful baby boy.

Smiling in joyous wonder, Amanda handed him the crying baby—around seven pounds, Amanda guessed—a bit subdued from the morphine given to his mother. Quaid placed him in a towel and rubbed his back. Without benefit of being squeezed through the birth canal, Cesarean babies
had more mucous left in the lungs, which needed to be drained.

With staggering relief that the worst was over, Amanda nodded to Tom to take over the anesthesia and hold the cloth over Beth’s mouth, while she delivered the placenta, then began suturing the uterus.

Tom was looking ill.

She stared at his off-color face. “Are you going to be all right?”

“As long as I don’t look.”

Quaid bellowed from across the room where he was suctioning the baby’s mouth with a bulb syringe. “What are you doing now?”

“I found these silver wire sutures in your office. I knew you’d have the latest, and the best.”

Quaid’s voice was low and gruff. “Another controversial decision that rests on my shoulders? If you stitch her up internally, we can’t remove the stitching when it’s healed. It may cause a heavy infection. The theory is you’re supposed to let her uterus naturally contract—no sutures—and let her stop her own bleeding.”

“She’ll bleed to death,” Amanda begged. “Max SaumInger’s recent paper proved it. And besides, Quaid, how can this amount of bleeding stop on its own?”

Quaid was near collapse. “Did you suture the other woman?”

“Yes, but not with silver wire.” She swallowed past her dry lips. “Silver wire has less chance of infection.”

Quaid took a moment to decide, then slowly nodded his approval.

Thirty minutes later, with Amanda drenched in perspiration, it was over. The baby was fine and Beth was stable, still under the effects of chloroform and morphine. Quaid placed the wrapped newborn at her side, but Beth didn’t stir.

They’d have to watch her carefully over the next few days, especially for postpartum fever, or any redness or oozing at the surgical site. Her blood pressure and edema should quickly return to normal. Amanda prayed she’d make it.

She watched the brothers coo over the infant, Quaid gently checking the baby’s chest and mouth and limbs for anything unusual, and finding all clear. It was touching to see two grown men tending to a tiny infant that either could fit into their palm.

“You were born to do this,” Quaid said softly in Amanda’s direction.

It was the first time he’d acknowledged her skill, and she gloried briefly in the shared moment of pride. Her wistful gaze locked with Tom’s. His warm look of respect sent tremors up her spine.

Amanda turned back to her task, seeing to it that Beth looked comfortable, giving her another dose of morphine. She’d be acutely sore for days.

When things were settled, and a nightly breeze hummed through the air from the opened window, Amanda watched Quaid and Tom with the newborn. It brought back aching memories of her own. She hadn’t held this baby yet and she would have liked to, but deferred the honor to the father and equally proud new uncle.

From the corner of the room, Amanda straightened Beth’s pillows and sheets around the sleeping woman, while trying to camouflage her own anguish. Looking on quietly, she wondered what a seven-pound newborn might feel like curled and sleeping in her arms.

Beth didn’t stir for four hours as they sat by her side. Trying to stifle his fears, Tom watched his tormented brother with renewed concern.

Quaid mixed honey with boiled water and fed it to his son, clinging to the baby as if by holding and comforting him, he could hold and comfort Beth.

If anything should happen to her, Tom knew Quaid wouldn’t want to go on. Quaid was the most emotional man Tom knew, and although he’d never say so, Tom’s heart ached whenever one of his brother’s did. This evening, he’d been privileged to witness the love Quaid felt for Beth, and he felt intrusive, observing their sacred vows of marriage.

Every time Tom looked at Amanda, he thought of marriage, too. How would
they
cope if faced with a similar tragedy? When he imagined Amanda lying there in bed, unresponsive and possibly near death…he wanted to lift her into his arms and never let her go….

His pulse took a trembling leap. He watched Amanda gently taking care of all three of them, silently tending to Beth’s wound, counting the baby’s soft respirations, making something for Quaid to eat and watching to make sure he drank his tea.

Finally, in the middle of the night, around three o’clock when another dose of morphine had knocked out Beth and Amanda declared she’d be out until morning, Tom urged Amanda to get some rest herself.

“I’ll take you home,” he whispered.

She blinked her tired eyes. “How can I leave them?”

“They’ll be fine for four or five hours.” He yawned. “You can come back and check on them as soon as you wake up. You need your rest, too. Won’t your grandmother be worried?”

“You’re right about that.” Amanda brushed back her silky hair. Candlelight caught her smooth face and the upswing of her lashes, which fringed her weary eyes. “I told
Grandma I was coming to town to check on Beth, then I’d pick up the kerosene that I’d forgotten at your house. I sent her a message by Mrs. Garvey’s grandson that Beth was in labor, but she’ll still be concerned.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Mrs. Garvey had a sister who lived nearby, and that sister came to sit with Beth, promising she and Mrs. Garvey would rotate in shifts. Quaid was content to remain at his wife’s bedside, sleeping in a cot next to the baby’s cradle, with instructions to be woken every hour to check on his wife.

As they left Quaid’s home, the balmy night air lifted Tom’s hat and rattled his shirt, taking some of the sting out of his eyes. During the past several hours, he’d tended to his horse and Amanda’s, and they were now unsaddled in Quaid’s small stable. He put an arm around Amanda’s shoulders as they strolled over the beaten grass.

Would it be fair to open up the conversation now, when she was so tired? How should he begin to tell her how he felt?

She turned quiet at his touch. “The evening turned out so differently than how it started.”

“I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

“I’m glad I was here to help.”

“Quaid is especially grateful.”

Amanda’s lips curled into that soft, sensual smile he’d come to know intimately. She looked as though she wanted to say more, too, but then glanced at the quiet houses surrounding them, and seemed to change her mind. “I can ride myself home,” she said. “You’re too tired. You need your rest, too.”

“I’ll ride with you,” Tom insisted. “I can’t let you ride alone.”

“Really, Tom. Banff is a safe place. Everyone’s sleeping. Sometimes I get other medical calls in the middle of the night, and I go out alone for those.”

“But whoever comes to get you rides back with you to wherever you’re needed.”

“But when I’m finished, I ride home alone. If I’m serious about my practice, then I’ve got to be able to do what the men doctors do. And that is, get myself to and from wherever I’m going. Alone.”

Although he saw her point, his instinct was to protect her. When he brought their horses, saddled and ready to go, she was staring up at the half moon.

Maybe this wasn’t the proper time or place to talk to her, and he could use some sleep himself, but he yearned for a quiet moment alone with her. “Can I show you something at the sawmill before you disappear?”

She rubbed her arms in the chill, shivering, but perking up from her fatigue. The cool air kicked up his energy, too. “Do you think it’s proper?”

“No one in town is awake, so they won’t know it. And I promise to keep my hands off you.”

She stared up at the stars again, teasing him with that tantalizing expression. “Well, I still do need that kerosene,” she said with exaggerated worry. “We’re right out and we’ll need it in the morning to light the lamps.”

“Well, then you’ve got to come,” he said with equal humor. “We can’t have you stumbling around in the dark. You might stub your toe.”

Her soft laughter filled the air and pleased him. They both knew what might happen when she reached the sawmill. He groaned with the thought of making love to her. Groaned louder still with the thought of not being able to.

“What’s all the groaning?” she asked from atop her
mare, looking down at him with amusement as he marched to his own horse.

He choked back his real response and said casually, “I’m feeling sorry for myself, up till four in the morning.”

“I could make it worth your while,” she said boldly.

“Really?” His wayward eye traveled down her legs in the stirrups, playing to her innuendo. “What on earth do you think you could possibly do to make it worth my while?”

“Well, I could make you a cup of tea.” She feigned innocence. “They say I have a special knack with tea leaves.”

He shook his head. “Not worth my while.”

Her eyes widened. “I could fry up some ham.”

“Wouldn’t satisfy me.”

“Hmm. Let me see.” Her lips grew rounded, her mouth slackened. “How about a long, soothing back rub?”

He cocked his brows. “Now you’re getting warmer.”

Her shoulders dipped with laughter. There was something enchanting about the way she moved on her horse. It was a slow, easy glide, and it made him think of another time, when he’d watched her,
felt her,
gliding on top of him. His muscles tensed with pleasure, thinking of it.

He wouldn’t keep her, though, he promised himself. He wouldn’t tarnish her reputation. His log cabin nearby had been rented to a couple from Scotland, and although they were strangers, they might spread rumors.

Wolf barked softly from the other side of the back door when Tom and Amanda reached it. It was dark inside. Tom lit the closest lantern, and it filled the sawmill with an orange glow.

“What is it you want to show me?”

In a burst of boyish enthusiasm, he motioned to the corner. “Your bicycle.”

She looked to where he pointed, then let out a small scream of delight. “Ah-hh!”

It was standing upright, leaning against one of the saw tables, looking much different than the broken wreck they’d dragged here. “I wanted you to see it, but I can bring it ’round for you tomorrow.”

“What did you do to it?” She was breathless as she walked to the newly repaired bicycle.

“I had it fixed.”

Her blue eyes shimmered with glee. “How?”

“The blacksmith welded new tubes of metal for the shaft. He replaced the gripping bars. He also fixed the spokes, welding the top pieces together again. It doesn’t look quite the same as it used to, but it’s stable and it works.”

She ran her fingers eagerly along the handles, then slid them down the sleek lines of the seat. “The crack in the seat is gone.”

He backed against a worktable and sunk his palms into the rough wood. “The bootmaker stretched a new skin of leather over the old one. I should have fixed the crack a while ago.”

She came back to face him. Her eyes misted. “You did this for me?”

He nodded.

“No one has ever done anything like this for me before.”

“Then I’m glad I’m the first.”

She furrowed the smooth bridge of her nose, staring at him with open admiration.

His voice was low and deep. “I’d like to be the first at a lot of things, Amanda.”

The top of her unbuttoned blouse riveted his attention. God, if he touched her now, he’d never let her go. He
couldn’t let that happen. She needed sleep. She’d have to help Quaid in the morning. Beth would need her. Just four hours of sleep, he vowed, then he’d say everything he needed to say.

Amanda was too moved to speak. Her gaze dropped to the saw table, where his hand rested. She concentrated on the brown skin of his knuckles, as if trying to decide how to answer.

“I promised I wouldn’t touch you,” he said, “but I’m having a hard time keeping my hands off you.”

She had no smile for him this time, just a somber look. Her eyes traveled from his gaze, over his nose, then settled on his lips. How could he control himself when she looked at him like this?

He fought his urges. “If we start something now, I won’t be through with you till the morning, so you better get home while the gettin’s good.”

“It would be the sensible thing to do.”

“Very sensible.” He wanted to crush her against him, to feel her nakedness beneath the worn cloth of her blouse.

“Goodbye, then,” she said, as light as a caress, not moving an inch to leave.

“Goodbye.” He also stayed rooted where he was.

With a soft shuffle, Wolf made his way between them and whined.

Tom’s rumble of laughter met with Amanda’s. “I think we’re confusing him.”

With a sigh, she collected herself, brushed back her hair, and strode to the door.

Please stay,
he silently begged.

She struggled with her decision. “If I don’t leave now I won’t be of any use to anyone in the morning.”