Page 112 of The Frozen River

I am still standing near the door, medical bag in hand, when she waves me forward. “Martha. If you don’t mind.”

I go to the window instead of the bed and throw the curtains open. Afternoon sunlight floods the room, and I can finally see the doctor’s wife. She is curled into a ball in the middle of the bed. Pale as a ghost. Half asleep. Sweating.

“Mrs. Hendricks?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Can you stay?”

“I can.”

“Good. The first thing I need you to do is go to the kitchen and get this woman something to eat.”

“How will that help?”

“If she is to deliver a child today, she must wake up. And there are only two things in all of creation that wake a human. Sunlight and food.”

Dr. Page snorts. “That is preposterous. Coffee—”

“Only increases heart rate,” I tell him. “But if you have some, by all means go make it. She’ll need that too.”

When Mrs. Hendricks reaches for his ear again, he jumps off the bed and speeds from the room. She follows. Only then do I approach the girl.

“Hello, Mrs. Page,” I say, sitting beside her.

“Hello.”

She is young. Eighteen or nineteen perhaps. And small boned, like a girl. It does not surprise me that Page chose a diminutive wife. Someone he could intimidate. But that fact will not make my job any easier. If she is as small of hip as she is of shoulder, we might well be in trouble.

“I am here to help. I have delivered many hundreds of babies. Would you like my assistance in delivering yours?”

She nods. Then groans.

“Good. But before I can help you, I must ask one thing of you.”

She looks at me, eyes wide. “What is that?”

“You must give me your trust.”

“How do I do that?” she asks.

“You do everything I say. No matter if it doesn’t make sense or if your husband argues with me.”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Only two things for now: eat what Mrs. Hendricks brings you, and then get up and walk the room. I will help you with every step.”

“But I’m so tired.”

“I know. Did your husband give you medicine? Laudanum perhaps?”

She nods. “Yesterday.”

My guess is that it was a lower dose than he gave Grace. Otherwise, she’d be dead. But I don’t dare hope the man has learned anything about messing with the natural order of a birth.

“It probably hasn’t fully worn off. But there is one thing I can promise you. If you stay in this bed, if you eat nothing, you and your child will die. It will be slow and painful. Exhaustion will swallow you both. And there is nothing I will be able to do for you.” I grab her hands. “But now? Now is not too late. So. Will you trust me?”

It is easy to assume that for a birth to go badly, something specific must go wrong. A breech presentation. A hemorrhage. An infection. I have faced all these difficulties, and more, but it is often the mortal threat of exhaustion that can cause a woman’s life to ebb away. There is no condition on earth more draining than that of labor, and few ways to rouse a woman once she has succumbed to exhaustion.