Читать книгу Talking About My Baby - Margot Early, Margot Early - Страница 10
ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO
I’m praying hard, praying I can do it.... I know
I can’t last much longer, that I’ll end up going
to the hospital, except for we have no money, no
insurance. Rowdy’s applied for a job at a gas
station in Logan, but he doesn’t think he’ll get
it. Gabriela talks to me, says I’m doing good.
She’s just a kid, younger than me, but she helps
her mom with midwife stuff. She’ll never do
what I did, though I’ll never call this precious
baby a mistake. Anyhow, when Ivy checks me
again the baby’s coming....
—“Alison Angelina’s Birth,” Devon Workman, age 16, Guyandotte, West Virginia
TARA SWITCHED BREASTS, moving the feeding tube as well. Her nipples already protruded from nursing. He noticed one of them was malformed and circled by shiny, puckered tissue. Burns?
With difficulty, he kept from staring. “Widowed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s been five years.”
Silence folded in on them.
She juggled Laura and her piece of pie, trying to eat and paying more heed to the baby than to covering her breasts. If she’d been Heloise, he would have fed her bites between kisses.
As it was, he found her sexy, prodding, earthy. She’d descended on him like a forest spirit and made herself comfortable in his disordered home. Mouseridden—a haven for hantavirus. He shuddered slightly. Wishing her quick exit from his life, he asked, “How long will you be visiting your mother?”
“We’re moving here. Need a babysitter?”
“No.” He’d already decided. There was a school bus. The kids could handle it. In some ways, Oliver was older at thirteen than the adults of Precipice.
But tragedy and bloodshed didn’t really mature a child.
And what to do with Danielle in the mornings?
“I have references. I went to junior high and high school here.”
He pictured her employed as nanny to Sleeping Beauty and other fairy-tale children. Not his kids. Time for this day to end. The children would be spending the weekend with his mother in Silverton; he’d drive them over Thursday night. Friday was his extra day off before the weekend, and he’d told the schools this would be an educational absence. Only six months in the U.S.? Everything was education.
On the kitchen counter, his pager buzzed, and he found it between pie plates. “This is new for me.” He eyed the device. “Can’t say I love it.”
Tara turned on the couch and laughed. “I love mine. A baby on the way is good news. Oh, no—I mean, I just dumped the pie on your couch.”
Blood awakened his penis. Her voice? Another glimpse of her breasts? Or just having a woman in the house? “Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up.” He gazed at the number. The answering service. “Excuse me.”
While he was out of the room, Tara dabbed at the couch, then laid out a protective pad to change Laura. “We need to get you more clothes, kiddo.” The baby watched Tara’s eyes, and Tara smiled back, her mind on Isaac.
He was gone long enough to give her more chance to study the chalet. There were two primitive masks on one rough wooden wall, with a photo of a mountain gorilla between them. On the table beneath was a woven blanket.
When he returned, she asked, “What took you to Rwanda?”
“Doctors Against Violence. I was an intern and resident with them, then worked for them till last year.” They’d paid his way through medical school, too, in an accelerated program starting just after high school. And they’d gotten him and his children out of Rwanda on twelve hours’ notice.
Briefly, he remembered his fellow intern in Kigali fourteen years ago—twenty—four-year-old Heloise Nsanzumuhile. In three days, he’d known he was in love. With Heloise, her country and medicine.
He curtailed the conversation. “I have to go to the hospital.”
Doctors Against Violence. Back in the late ’80s, Tara had spent three weeks in Rwanda with her father and one of his friends, a biologist, and the mountain gorillas. On the way back to Kigali, Tara had seen the massacre of a Tutsi family. She was nineteen and had already lived in Chile for eighteen months, training in a hospital there as a matrona, a midwife—and reaching out, trying to create a link between the classes, between the few rich and the many poor, stirring the wrath of her friend Matilde’s patrón.... That day in Rwanda, her father had clapped his hand over her mouth and wouldn’t let her move. He knew her too well.
Weeks later, back in Chile, she landed in prison.
Not something she wanted to think about.
Feel the hope. Feel the possibilities. Isaac had wanted to hold Laura. Marry a doctor, adopt Laura. “Would you like me to stay and watch the kids?”
“We manage.” There was an intense, private protectiveness in his words. Tara gathered her things hurriedly, not meeting his eyes. Okay, he doesn’t want me for a sitter.
Which meant he wouldn’t want her for a wife, either.
LAURA’S CRYING penetrated her dreams later that night. Tara’s eyelids struggled open. How could any woman do this after a long labor? She’d started in great physical condition, yet she was exhausted.
She changed the infant’s sodden diaper. Precious little legs. Cuddle her in a blanket. But Laura cried all the way to the kitchen. Francesca had called some other new mothers earlier that day, and the freezer and refrigerator were stocked with fresh milk. It would keep for 48 hours in the fridge, two to four weeks in the freezer.
“I’ll hold her while you warm the milk and set up.”
Tara hadn’t even noticed her mother entering the kitchen. I’m dead on my feet. But it seemed important to manage alone.
As Isaac did.
“I’m fine.”
Francesca was already reaching for the baby.
“Mom, you really don’t have—”
“Don’t be so stubborn, Tara. You don’t need to prove anything to me.”
Why did people always think she was trying to prove something? She’d been told the same thing before—by Danny, especially. What are you trying to prove, Tara?
Danny, Dan McCrea, Danielle McCrea. The little girl must be named for her uncle.
Reluctantly, Tara let her mother hold Laura while she put the kettle on for fenugreek tea. Maybe she didn’t have anything to prove to Francesca, but she had much to prove to herself, especially where Laura was concerned.
Her mother turned in a slow circle, Laura against her shoulder. Gently, Francesca patted the crying newborn’s back. “Tara, how are you going to handle her records? You can’t just pretend this child dropped from space.”
“I’ll homeschool her.” Ready to nurse, Tara took the baby from her mother and settled in a chair at the kitchen table. The immaculate house contrasted with the chaos at Isaac’s.
“Eventually, someone will want to see a birth certificate.” Francesca perched on the edge of another chair. Tara rarely saw her mother relax, rarely saw her sit back and just be. Even now, she seemed poised to spring up, to try to make Tara more comfortable.
But Francesca was right about Laura. “It’ll work out,” Tara promised. Laura’s soft cheek was curved, her little mouth suckling hard. Long ago, Tara had adopted the philosophy that things work out. She’d been jailed in one Third World country for defending the poor and in another for—bad luck. She never spoke of those times, seldom looked back.
Look forward, Tara.
Laura’s birth certificate, birth certificate... Oh, good grief! Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? “You could write a birth certificate.”
“That would be fraud.”
Tara heard. Francesca hadn’t said, Not on your life. She hadn’t refused.
“It’s the perfect solution, Mom.”
“No. I won’t do it. I wouldn’t even consider it, Tara.”
She had considered it. Tara knew but didn’t argue. Instead she began singing softly. “Golden slumbers kiss your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry....”
Francesca had rocked Tara to that song in Hawaii thirty years ago. Tara had been born in a homemade birthing tub beside a dolphin lagoon. She’d been born with the sac intact over her head, a symbol of good luck and strength. Francesca knew her daughter’s strength—but good luck?
More than a decade ago, Tara had survived a Chilean prison. Two years later, it was Mexico. In the United States she’d been arrested for protesting a nuclear waste dump and for protecting a palm grove in Hawaii from bulldozers. Francesca could scarcely conceive of what her daughter had survived in those instances. Especially Chile. But Tara’s eyes always shone, overflowing with enthusiasm, never betraying fear.
Francesca was afraid on her behalf. Always.
Tara never talked. She’d married Danny Graine, a contractor, and Danny had left her for her partner, for a fellow midwife. Francesca knew Tara couldn’t be held wholly innocent in the desertion. But all Francesca’s sympathies rested with her daughter.
Tara and Ivy. Besides midwifery, her vocation, they were her life. With Ivy, it was a little different. Ivy had joined their family as an adult. Brain damage, permanent amnesia, had robbed her of her past. She’d found it now. But back when Tara had suggested adopting Ivy, it had seemed natural. Francesca loved Ivy as a daughter. She is my daughter, like Tara and unlike Tara. Ivy’s levelheadedness was a counterpoint to Tara’s Charlie Marcus ways.
Ivy lived in West Virginia now. She was reunited with the husband and daughter she hadn’t been able to remember.
Fake a birth certificate for little Laura, precious Laura with her mouth latched so hard to Tara’s nipple? Francesca had seen her daughter wince while nursing Laura Estrella. I’ve already helped her round up more milk. So many generous mothers willing to help. Was the birth certificate so much more?
Yes.
And it was just what Charlie would have suggested. No interest whatsoever in obeying the law. Francesca abided by rules and regulations, had seldom found it difficult to do otherwise.
But Tara...
Nursing a child someone had abandoned in the back seat of her car. Holding inside the consequences of flouting the law in other lands.
I don’t want her hurt again. Not by another Danny Graine. Not by authorities who would take little Laura from her arms.
There must be a way to make the adoption legal. First, a home study. But where was Tara’s home? She couldn’t be legally employed as a midwife in Colorado until she became licensed. Maybe it was time to convince her to take that step, if not for her own sake then for Laura’s. “Tara, the law has changed. It’ll come into effect next year.”
“What law?” But Tara knew. Midwives would no longer be required to qualify as nurses. Instead, they’d have to verify that they’d attended a certain number of live births and take a test... “Oh, I know about it.” Just as she knew there were eight or nine different titles for midwives, titles with little meaning to the consumer. Professionally, she was direct-entry, meaning she’d come into midwifery without pursuing nursing school. By choice, she held no credentials.
As far as Tara was concerned, midwife would do.
Matrona.
“As of January, you can be licensed. It’s just a matter of paperwork and passing the test.”
“We’ve covered this one, Mom. No test, no certification. Sleep, pretty baby, do not cry...”
“Why not? Tara, the certification process will be nothing to you.”
“This isn’t about me. Birth is a natural process, and women should be able to have their babies however and with absolutely whomever they choose. That is a basic human right, and that is why I’ll never certify—to uphold that right. Not my rights. The rights of mothers and fathers who want homebirths. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is out to take away their rights.”
“Becoming licensed won’t keep you from homebirths.”
“You want me to go on? We could talk about how, in some states, CNMs can’t attend homebirths and licensed midwives can, and how Colorado is becoming one of those states—”
“This isn’t about me, it’s about you.” Francesca was a certified nurse-midwife. “And no one’s asked you to become a CNM.”
“Okay, me. I’m against regulating midwifery. Word of mouth is the best regulation there is. Word of mouth and community, something this country needs to relearn.”
Francesca kept her voice even. “I can’t let you do homebirths out of this house, Tara, or under my business name. It compromises my reputation, my position in this community. And I refuse to risk your going to jail when you have that child to raise.”
“Ah, we’re getting somewhere,” Tara told Laura. “She admits you’re mine.”
Francesca sighed.
She might as well have said, You’re just like your father, which Tara had always known wasn’t really an insult, just something to be accepted. Like her parents’ divorce, her father’s desertions.
“Tara, I don’t see how you can legally adopt her. You’re single. You’re poor. You’re unemployed—”
“And I’ve just moved to the perfect place for finding a rich husband.” She tried to banish Isaac McCrea from her mind. Isaac and his family, their cats and their mice.
Francesca looked thoughtful. “I suppose if you fell in love with the right man, the two of you could adopt. -Not that I’d favor marrying for money—”
The phone rang.
Millie Rand was due. This must be it.
“A birth,” exclaimed Tara. All thoughts of marriage and adoption fled. While Francesca answered the phone, Tara gathered up Laura and filled a new bag for the feeder. She would accompany her mother to the hospital, though she wouldn’t be allowed to assist as a midwife—with or without certification. But she could help in other ways. She eavesdropped on the conversation, and when Francesca got off the phone, Tara said, “Fill me in. I’m coming along.”
Her mother’s lips pressed shut. Shaking her head with a rueful smile, she held Tara’s head between her hands and said, “When are you going to make things easier?”
“That’s why I’m here, Mom!”
Her mother’s sigh could have reached the back of a stadium.
FRANCESCA’S CLIENT AND her family hadn’t yet arrived when Tara and her mother reached the hospital’s small labor and delivery suite. Francesca and Tara and Ivy, her sister, had provided the toys and books for the children’s corner with the help of former clients whose children had outgrown the toys.
Laura was restless, so Tara walked her through the hospital. Isaac McCrea rounded a corner from the cafeteria, and they both started, between giant oil paintings of elk in the aspens.
“Hello, Tara.” Uncomfortable, Isaac recalled Tara’s visit to the chalet—as he had every hour since she’d left.
“I hope your emergency had a good outcome.”
His emergency had been a battered wife. He and two ER nurses had talked her into going to the shelter in Montrose. It had taken four hours. Danielle, who’d begged to come to the hospital with him, was asleep on the floor of the playroom on the maternity unit; the boys were at home. He’d been about to collect his daughter, but suddenly he was in no hurry.
He nodded ambiguously as his brother, Dan, paused beside him in the hallway.
“Well, well, well. Look who’s back.”
Tara held Laura toward Isaac. “Help me out, doc.”
A second later, he was holding the infant while Tara embraced Dan, exclaiming, “Hi, Dr. McCrea! The other Dr. McCrea,” she added, beaming as though at a long-lost friend.
Better friends than enemies, Tara told herself. If her sister, Ivy, had been there, Ivy would have accused her of insincerity. Tara and Dan weren’t friends; friendly adversaries was the best you could call it. But Tara believed you caught more flies with honey than vinegar. The midwives and Dan McCrea had often clashed over a patient’s care; no doubt it would happen again tonight, at Millie Rand’s birth.
Dan eyed the baby in Isaac’s arms and addressed Tara. “Surely, that’s not yours?” His gaze swept up and down her body.
Subduing an inner twinge of hurt, rising to it, Tara grinned. “Surely, you’re not implying that it couldn’t be.”
“No one would imply that,” Isaac cut in—and wished he hadn’t.
Tara’s expression was...mollified. He wanted her in a purely physical way; every man she met must want her. He couldn’t forget about her nursing that child who wasn’t hers. He couldn’t forget her.
Tara saw a pregnant woman passing in the hall, her hand linked through her husband’s arm. Was that Francesca’s client? Trembling, she reached for Laura, carefully taking the infant from Isaac’s arms.
It felt more intimate to him than it should.
“Thanks, doc. I’d better go.”
Dan’s eyes had followed Tara’s—then drifted to her ass. “In that case, I better go, too, to oversee this delivery.”
“My mother will have this labor and delivery well under control.”
“But I love to watch you in action.”
Isaac’s throat knotted. His brother’s girlfriend of five years had moved out last winter. Still, the word “unprofessional” came to mind.
She invited it She can deal with it.
Yet the situation violated some sanctity of mother and child—woman and child. Tara held that infant like it was her own. Checking the baby’s face, tucking the blanket around her, her own eyes so involved in the child. Vulnerable.
“You know, I’m hungry,” she murmured. “I think I’ll get something to eat.” She started in Isaac’s direction, toward the cafeteria, then tossed a glance at his brother. “Join me?”
A wolf smile creased Dan’s face. “I think I can spare the time.”
They like each other. Fine. Isaac was glad to write her off.
Then she said, “And you?”
“Sure.” So much for writing her off, Isaac.
Now, Dan was looking him up and down. “Damn, you’re tall.”
They loaded their trays scantily, no one genuinely hungry, and found a table at the side of the room. Realizing they’d forgotten napkins, Isaac went after them, and Dan smiled at Tara over a cup of coffee. “You know and I know that you’re really trying to keep me out of the delivery room.”
“The birthing suite.” Tara tried some iceberg lettuce, the hospital’s finest. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You’re going to fail. You know your problem, Tara? And I mean you and—” with his fingers, he indicated quotation marks “—‘midwives’ like you. Everything is black and white.”
As her jaw dropped, Isaac returned to the table. When he sat down, his leg touched hers, and they both scooted back their chairs.
“In your eyes,” Dan continued, “all obstetricians are bad, and we all want to burn you alive. This isn’t the Dark Ages. You’re the ones who want to stay in the dark. Why won’t you let us guide you instead? What gets you so riled up about technology?”
Tara felt sweat droplets gathering on her forehead. Birth was sacred. What could she say about a roomful of people staring at the Broncos instead of a woman having a baby right before their eyes? How could she make Daniel McCrea, M.D., see the difference between a vibrant, powerful woman, laboring beautifully in the peace of her own home, and a woman on an epidural, plodding indifferently through the birth of her child? These were the images she saw. And others—from her time in a Chilean hospital. In Chile, like the U.S., traditional midwifery was all but destroyed. It needed a comeback.
But all she said was, “Because technology, in my experience, leads to unnecessary cesarean sections.” Not to mention that you can’t catch a baby without causing genital mutilation.
Well, okay, that was putting it strongly; everyone had to do episiotomies in certain circumstances. But every time, Dan?
Isaac sipped his coffee, a Quaker silence keeping him out of the fray. He pictured births in Rwanda. Went far away, into himself. No, think about something else. Mice. When it turned cold, they’d flocked inside, and the local vet had given him two homeless cats. But there were too many mice for his cats to kill. He needed exterminators.
“Do you know that some women prefer C-sections? And some women prefer painless births.”
Try vacuuming once in a while, Isaac. If the mice have nothing to eat... Right. Orkin. Pest control. That was the answer.
Tara wanted to scream. Dan was right. And probably some women had great memories of the baby arriving at halftime, and who was she to say that wasn’t best? Hey, the Broncos were great. Besides, how many times had Francesca and Ivy reminded her not to judge one birth experience over another? Again and again, they’d said, It’s not your birth, Tara.
Oh, she hated hospitals almost as much as jails—and for similar reasons. “I acknowledge the necessity for some cesareans, and I support the right of women who want painless births to have them, Dr. McCrea. But I also support the right of women who want homebirths to have homebirths.”
“Don’t get me started.” With an uneasy glance at Isaac, Dan changed the subject. “Tell me about this little tyke. You seem more suited to motherhood than the role of crusader. Especially, since you’re still not legal.”
Dan McCrea’s eyes gleamed, and Tara knew it was all about power, about establishing power over her. Good luck. Dan McCrea wasn’t scary, and she would stall him here in this cafeteria as long as she could and count on his wanting to get some sleep before office hours tomorrow.
Homebirth. Isaac had tired of the company before his coffee cooled to drinkable. He got up. “I’ll see you later.”
Both seemed surprised.
But he’d barely left the table before his brother said, “You know, Tara, there’s such a thing as being too natural. Too earthy. Too Eastern. Taoist, Zen, whatever you are. Ultimately, too folksy and backward. You’re all of the above.”
Isaac shook his head as he left the cafeteria. Homebirth. Have at her, Dan.
HE LEFT! DAN McCREA finally left.
After forty-five minutes of innuendo, a litany of the latest peaks he’d bagged, and a genuine invitation to dinner—no chance—he finally said, “Well, Tara, till next time,” and departed...for the hospital doors.
Folksy and backward. She’d thought it was a compliment before he said that.
Waving at Pilar Garcia, a labor and delivery nurse, who had just filled a tray, Tara rose to speak to her old friend.
Pilar glanced at Laura, then toward the doors. “Not a new romance?”
“No. I was trying to keep Millie Rand from an unnecessary C-section. An epidural, anyway. How’s she doing?”
“Just fine.” Pilar’s expression was mildly disapproving. Of Tara’s methods? Again, her eyes drifted to the baby, almost as though she knew the state of Tara’s womb.
Tara thought deliberately of other things.
There were so many Dan McCreas in the world, she was used to meeting them on their own terms, flirting right back or treating them like flies. But Ivy had told her several times that she was courting trouble.
Pilar’s response made her feel worse things—that she’d teased Dan and somehow let down every woman at the hospital. She wondered how Isaac had reacted to her performance with his brother, if he saw her as Dan did—that she viewed things as “black and white.” That she was a hotheaded “crusader” for a trivial cause?
Damn it, it wasn’t a trivial cause, and she’d been trying to do the right thing.
“Okay,” she told Laura as she carried the baby toward the maternity unit, “so maybe I’m a little folksy and backward. I can live with that.”
DAN McCREA HAD BEATEN her to the labor and delivery suite, and he and the anesthesiologist were busy trying to talk Millie Rand into an epidural. “You know, I just think you’ll be more comfortable if you try the epidural, Millie. Maybe dilate faster.”
Tara wanted to step in, to say, This woman wants a natural childbirth. No drugs, no epidural, Too black and white for you, Dr. McCrea?
Francesca said, for perhaps the tenth time, “My client has expressed her desire for natural childbirth.”
“Francesca, what if I can’t do it? I never have before.”
This was Millie Rand’s third child; the other two were staying with a friend. Her husband had gone to childbirth classes with her. Compared to what Tara had seen daily in Sagrado, this birth promised to be a piece of cake. If the boys would just get out of the room.
Millie’s adrenaline must be pumping now. Who could have a baby with someone terrifying her? And all this chitchat is stimulating her neocortex, just when she needs one of the older parts of her brain to take over. Time to get primal. Why hadn’t she had this conversation with Dan when she had the chance? As her buddy Star in Sagrado always said, Don’t fight—engage.
Millie’s husband put in, “Millie, I know what you’ve been talking about since you knew you were pregnant, and an epidural wasn’t it.”
“She’s in pain,” Dan exclaimed.
Tara tried to evoke some feeling of compassion for Dan McCrea. A flicker was as good as it got. The man sent her straight into radical midwife mode; Ivy called it “RMM,” as in “Tara, you’re in RMM.” So be it. Dan, I bet your brother was born at home and you weren’t. Your mother must have been drugged, because you can’t tolerate pain now. Circumcision wouldn’t have helped, either.
There. She felt better. The man suffered from hospital birth.
“You’re five centimeters dilated, Millie,” Francesca encouraged. “You’re doing great. How about walking some?”
Millie’s husband gave her an encouraging smile, and she began to climb out of bed, just as another contraction came. She moaned through it, and Francesca said, “That’s right. Keep your mouth loose.”
“I’m going to order a monitor, Millie. I’ll feel better about your baby if we know how it’s doing all the time,” said Dan.
“I can use the fetoscope, Dr. McCrea.”
“We don’t want a monitor.” Millie’s husband supported his wife’s body as she labored.
Tara watched his tenderness for only a moment. It was all she could stand before unwanted emotions bubbled up. Just a man to love her like that, to want her to have his children. Down on the border, she didn’t see this—just women alone, women like her.
She paused in the doorway. As the doctors in the birthing suite pressed their case, two people approached from the end of the hall.
Isaac. And Pilar, her musical laughter preceding her. Tara’s heart thudded, and Laura stirred against her, then began to cry.
Isaac’s gaze avoided Tara’s as he peered in the door of the playroom, and the nurse continued down the hall without him.
“Back to work.” Squeezing Tara’s arm affectionately, Pilar sailed past, into the birthing suite.
Laura fussed, rooting for the nearest breast. There were too many people in the room, anyway, another labor-wrecker. Tara left. Noting Isaac’s new coolness, she hurried by him, to sit in the waiting area and nurse. She wished she didn’t care what Isaac McCrea thought of her. She didn’t care.
Isaac checked on his daughter. Danielle was fast asleep, her braids against the green nylon of his North Face bag. He could hear a woman moaning in labor. Francesca Walcott’s voice came from a room several doors down, the birthing suite. “You’re doing wonderfully. Millie. You’re such a good mom.”
Sometime, Isaac hoped to ask Francesca how her daughter had gotten so screwed up, but he reminded himself it was 1:00 a.m. And what had Tara really done except come on to an attractive man and talk too much about homebirth?
There were things about her he liked. Her simple clothes—corduroys, T-shirts and sweaters. Her nursing that baby. And the quality he’d once found in all beings—nobility of spirit.
Leaving Danielle, Isaac went out to the waiting room, found Tara and joined her.
He sat forward in the next seat, long forearms on long thigh bones.
Laura had not been nursing well, crying most of the time. Tara wondered if maybe the baby wasn’t really hungry. Ignoring Isaac, she moved the tube away and put Laura to her nipple. As the baby latched on, she felt a strange tingling, new and unfamiliar. She was lactating! Her breasts were producing milk. Probably just drops, but... “This is incredible! I think I have milk.” And much sooner than she’d ever dreamed.
Isaac felt the miracle, shared her pleasure. Inducing lactaction wasn’t easy. But his breath was shallow, his stomach muscles tight, as she switched the baby to the other breast, reached under her shirt and sweater, and brought out a sticky drop of milk on her finger, then licked it off. He said finally, “When is the mother going to take over?”
“What?” Tara recalled what she’d told him, that she was raising Laura for Julia. She’s not going to take over. “I’m not sure.” Why the sudden urge to level with him, to blurt the truth?
The appearance of her own mother, obviously steaming, forestalled any confession.
But Laura was still nursing, and Isaac lingered. “I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “About babysitting. We could talk about it more.”
Could we talk about marriage? Oh, Tara, get real. “Yes. Yes to everything.”
His eyes never left her face.
Knowing Francesca wouldn’t say what was on her mind in front of Isaac, Tara used her finger to break Laura’s contact with her nipple. “Okay, pumpkin. Let’s go see your grandma.”
“Grandma?”
Tara flushed. “Sometimes I forget she’s not mine.” She had brought Laura’s car seat inside, and she settled and strapped the newborn in it.
When she stood and lifted the car seat, he stood, too, but Tara didn’t raise her eyes again until she reached her mother.
FRANCESCA SPOKE IN a low voice to Tara. “If I have to see another woman deliberately frightened by those men...” Francesca knew she was overstating the point. It was hard for physicians like Dan McCrea to see women in labor and not want to relieve their pain. Dan wasn’t a drug-pusher, he was just trying to help, in the way he believed was best.
But it’s just unnecessary interference. If Millie had asked for pain relief, had asked for a monitor... Francesca had seen a few women stuck at seven centimeters dilate to ten in an hour on an epidural. But most of the time she felt it slowed labor.
If only obstetricians and midwives could truly coordinate their efforts. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said homebirth was unsafe. All over the country, midwives were attending homebirths with no physician backup—because there was none to be found. Ivy’s situation in West Virginia was unusual; her backup physician, Mata Iyer, saw the need for a midwife who would visit homes in her impoverished rural area—and undoubtedly, Mata had never said the word “homebirth” to her insurance provider. Francesca’s own backup physician had retired a year before, after battling endless hospital politics.
Francesca appreciated the risks. For years, she’d kept all homebirths within five minutes of the hospital, attending women at the Victorian if they lived too far from town. The more she saw, the less sorry she was to work in the hospital.
Until she actually worked in the hospital.
I am so tired of all this. Maybe it was time to quit, or take up nursing full-time.
“Did they leave?” Tara asked, knowing the answer.
“He’s ordered the epidural and monitor. I’m going back to see how she’s doing.”
“We’ll come with you.” She and Laura.
“Tara, it won’t help. Please go home and sleep. You need it. And Laura needs you.”
“If Millie doesn’t mind, I’d like to stay. I’ll wait till the boys have done their thing and left, so we won’t crowd the room.”
Tara’s dark eyes were eager, yet failed to hide her fatigue. Francesca knew this aspect of her daughter too well. Tara relied on births for some kind of spiritual recharge. But now she needed physical recharge.
“Tara, you’re trying to produce milk, and you need rest for that.”
Her mother was right. But Tara longed to see Millie’s labor through to its magical conclusion. There was nothing more intense, more complete, than birth. It fulfilled something in her that nothing else ever would. Except, perhaps, Laura.
“I’m really wide-awake, Mom.”
Francesca knew that was untrue. But Tara was an adult. “Millie asked where you went.” She sighed. “Let’s go see how she’s doing.”
THE BABY’S HEAD crowned four hours later. Francesca caught the head when it emerged, and Tara guided Millie’s hands toward her child. She remembered Laura’s birth, Julia’s apathetic eyes. But there was nothing like this joy. The experience of meeting a person never met before.
No cord. More pushing.
“Ahhh... ahhh... ”
“Hey, you handsome guy.” Admiring the newborn—and double-checking Francesca’s quick suctioning—Dan smiled at Millie and her husband. “This one’s going to play for the Broncos.”
“My baby! Oh, sweet baby!”
In the bliss of seeing mother and child, Tara could even feel warmth for the obstetrician, could even appreciate that he was smiling over the newborn. She settled in a chair at the edge of the room and savored the experience of the birth.
But her eyes dropped shut.
Snow...
Walking with Isaac. He asked her why she’d become a midwife.
It’s what I am. It’s all I am.
There are other parts of you.
They’d stopped, and he touched her.
“Tara.”
Her eyes opened. It was her mother. Laura slept in the car seat at Tara’s feet, while Millie Rand dozed on the bed, her newborn in a bassinet beside her.
No Isaac.
Just herself, aroused by a dream of him.
Francesca spoke softly. “Time to go home.”
Silently, Tara gathered her things. As she lifted the car seat, Laura’s eyes opened. Don’t cry. Carrying the baby and her diaper bag, Tara slipped through the door with her mother. Outside the suite, in the bright lights of the hall, Francesca said, “I didn’t want to waken you.”
While Tara paused to transfer Laura to the sling, Francesca collected the car seat.
The clock at the nurses’ station read five-thirty, and Pilar was talking to the nurse on the next shift. Moving on, Francesca and Tara waved, and she waved back.
“Thank you for the sleep, Mom.” Tara covered her yawn with her hand.
Francesca caught her peering up and down the halls. “What are you looking for?”
Tara hid any reaction in drowsiness. “The way out.”
BY THE FOLLOWING afternoon, her plan was set in stone.
She wanted to adopt Laura legally, and she knew the other midwives at the birth center in Sagrado would help her. But in her case, the authorities would insist on a prerequisite. A husband.
Tara didn’t have time to “fall in love,” as her mother had suggested the other night. It would take a century. But a “suitable” man to marry lived two miles away, and she had the tool to bribe him. Herself. She could care for his children, and she could clean that chalet. Isaac wouldn’t be likely to toss his new mother-in-law out in the street, either.
Are you crazy, Tara? What made her think he’d marry her because he needed childcare—or a housekeeper? As far as she knew, he didn’t even like her. His brother was a better choice.
No.
It had to be Isaac. He’d said they could talk again....
And, in some way she couldn’t define, he seemed safe.
Stretching out with Laura on the downstairs couch, preparing for a half-hour nursing session, she said, “Yes, kiddo, I’ve got it figured out.”
Francesca, who’d been working on an article for a midwifery journal at her computer, asked, “What have you figured out?”
“How to adopt Laura.”
When Francesca turned her chair and waited, Tara realized her mother expected the whole story. “I’ll explain after I know it’s going to work.”
“Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”
“Because you’re a pessimist. Millie Rand’s baby could have been born at home, and we both know it.”
“That was a smooth change of subject, Tara. How are you planning to adopt Laura?”
“You’ll feel better about it once it’s accomplished. Hey, do you care if I carve those pumpkins on the counter?”
Francesca hid her alarm. “More pie?”
“Pumpkin bread.”
“Not for Isaac?”
“The way to a man’s heart.”
Francesca was aghast. When she’d imagined Tara finding a husband, it was something that would happen slowly. Friendship blossoming to love. But not with—
This was a disaster. She didn’t know why, but it was. That reserve of Isaac’s was strong, as strong as Tara’s outgoing passion. He had lived in Rwanda, and his wife had somehow died in Rwanda—and Tara was so...heedless. She and Isaac McCrea were loaded freight trains that ought to pass on separate tracks. Instead, they were going to collide.
When she abruptly remembered Tara and Isaac sitting together in the waiting room at the hospital, Francesca realized something had already begun.
And there was nothing she could do to stop it.
“ISAAC, ARE YOU really all right?” Dan asked for the second time since Isaac had called, after his return from Silverton.
“Sure. Mom’s giving me a breather this weekend. I’m stronger than I look.”
“Yeah, right. What stunted my growth anyway?” Dan was six-one.
“I’ll die sooner.”
“I think Tara prefers you.”
Well, he hadn’t had to say her name first.
“You know, I can’t stand her,” Dan added. “I hate her clothes. I hate her politics. I hate the way she uses her body. She flirts with me for an hour, and then, I ask her out, and she says no.”
“That makes my ears hurt.” All of it.
“No kidding. She’s a thorn in my side. I thought if we got it on, things might improve. What about you? Do you like her?”
Isaac traced the inside of his cheek with his tongue. “I don’t know her.”
The doorbell rang, and Isaac headed to answer it, the cordless in his hand. “Hey, Dan. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I was getting around to that. I’m on call. Rich had something come up.” Rich Scarborough, the Chief of Obstetrics.
They’d planned a climb, but Isaac wouldn’t mind the solitude.
He opened the door, and the black cat, the one Danielle called Meow, shot in from the cold. She found the tabby kitten he’d adopted outside the market and began hissing.
Tara, with Laura in a sling against her breasts, held two foil-wrapped packages. The night had sprouted stars behind her.
Isaac spoke into the phone. “I’ve got to go.”
The alpine cold was numbing, and he let her in. She handed him the still-warm loaves of bread and continued into the living room with its rustic furniture.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I have a visitor.” He shut the door behind her. The tabby had retreated to a recess beside the broom closet. Meow rubbed Isaac’s legs, but he knew better than to touch her. They all did.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Dan found the chalet beautiful but lonely. His own place was actually farther from town, in an enclave. The locals called it “on the mountain.”
“Bye.” Isaac switched off the phone.
“Sorry,” he apologized and sniffed the foil-wrapped loaves. Pumpkin. “What did I do to deserve this?” My brother likes you. Even if he says he doesn’t.
“Nothing.” Tara’s smile was mischievous. “Yet. Where are the kids?”
“Silverton. Spending the weekend with my mother.”
Tara helped herself to a seat on the ancient couch. The disarray had worsened, if anything. Lunch boxes, probably not empty, sat in various places, and the laundry mound now extended to the floor. She spotted a bread crust under the opposite couch. “He sold both houses furnished, didn’t he?”
The former owner. “Yes.”
Tara sensed his impatience with her visit. It gave her a bad feeling, but it was too late to stop. She couldn’t stop—and couldn’t think of a better approach. Not here, in his presence, under that gaze. “I have a proposition for you.”
Isaac’s eyes darkened. He pulled a footstool toward him and dropped down on it.
It would be easier to speak without that hot feeling in her chest, the feeling that wouldn’t let her stop, the feeling that made her tremble. “I’d like to propose—” she waited a beat, trying to read his face “—a marriage of convenience.”
