nothin’ more important than Elise. You’re gonna come help her.”
“If you don’t leave, I will call the police and have you put out.”
Curt reached for the telephone resting on the desktop, but the man’s hand closed over his wrist before he could pick it up. “You’re comin’ with me—”
“Let me go, or I’ll—” He tried to free his arm, but the man held it only more tightly. “Turn me—” There was a moment’s struggle, and at last Curt managed to free himself, moving quickly to the fireplace set into the wall nearby to take up a poker from the stand at its side. He turned back to the man, holding it between them. “Now, go on, I told you.”
The man stared at the poker for a minute, but did not move. The muscle worked again in his jaw, and then his eyes lifted to meet Curt’s over the short distance.
“Go on,” Curt warned again, raising the poker between them to make certain the man understood the threat. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”
Still the man did not move.
“You’re not doing your wife any good by just standing there,” Curt said, watching the green eyes, feeling the uneasiness rise within him—the man was not going anywhere.
But suddenly he turned and strode from the office, and Curt heard the front door slam behind him as he left the building. Curt walked out of his office carefully, looking around the reception area to make certain the man was not simply lying in wait for him.
He moved cautiously to the exterior door, stopping for a moment to survey again the reception area before he reached to thumb the bolt that would secure the door against the man’s re-entry.
It was not until after the door was locked and he returned to his office that he at last put the poker down on the desktop beside his medical bag. He stood for a long moment staring down at it, then reached to take up his bag, knowing Patricia Eason would be waiting for him.
Dorrie Keith felt as if she were in a nightmare that morning as she stood staring out at the driving rain where it beat against the side window of Elise and Janson’s front room—but her nightmarish feeling could be nothing compared to what even now made Elise Sanders moan from where she lay on the bed. Dorrie made herself turn away from the window and move toward the bed to see if there was anything she could do for the girl, but she knew there was nothing she could do to help. Only time and nature could help Elise Sanders now; time, nature, and that husband of hers if he would only get here with the doctor.
Dorrie reached to take the cloth from the basin of water that rested on the table beside the bed, squeezed it out, then gently wiped Elise’s sweaty face. She smiled down at the girl and nodded her head, but did not say anything, then she turned and paced across the room, toward the window again, then back toward the front door—where was that doctor?
She heard Elise moan again as another pain came, and she tried to shut her ears to the sound—Elise was little more than a girl; she ought to be worrying about new dresses and returning to school next year, not a husband, a house, and a baby so soon. Dorrie looked toward the bed, seeing Elise twist and knot the sheet in her hands as the pain peaked and then began to lessen—she just looked so young lying there, her reddish-gold hair soaked with sweat and sticking to her forehead. She was little more than a year younger than Dorrie had been when Wheeler James had been born, but she seemed so much younger, so unaccustomed to the way the world was. Her husband had done this to her, and now he was taking all the time in the world in getting a doctor here to her now, while this baby was getting ready to be born all too soon—where was he, and where was that doctor? If this baby should decide to come before they got here, Dorrie had no idea what she would have to do to help the girl. She might have had babies of her own, but this was altogether different. She’d had little choice in the matter when she had been the one giving birth, and little idea of what the old, black granny woman had done to help her in each birthing. In fact, she had even forgotten the feel of the pain, the hurt, the tearing, especially so bad with the first, in the feeling of holding her baby in her arms for the first time—but now, here in this sticky, humid room, those memories had come back, memories of twenty-seven hours of labor, memories of pain so bad she had thought she would die, and those memories would not leave her now. She looked toward her friend where she lay on the bed, her eyes closed, exhaustion on her face as she waited for the next pain to come. Maybe it was better that it was going more quickly for Elise; Dorrie did not think the girl would be able to survive many more hours of this.
But if the child should come before the doctor arrived—
She paced across the room again, then back toward the door, wringing her hands before her. She was not accustomed to feeling useless, but there was nothing she could do now other than be with Elise—oh, Lord, where was her husband, Dorrie wondered as she moved back toward the bed, bending again to sponge Elise’s face off as another pain came and went. Elise took a deep breath and licked her dry lips once it was over. “He’ll be here soon; I know he will,” she said, reaching to take Dorrie’s hand.
“Sure he will, honey,” Dorrie said, making herself smile at the girl as she sat down at the edge of the bed. “An’, don’t you worry. Ain’t nothin’ t’ havin’ a baby. I was up cookin’ supper only a hour or two after I had each one ’a mine.”
Elise ran her tongue over her lips again, moistening them. “You’re a terrible liar, Dorrie,” she said, smiling for a moment.
“Ain’t I, though,” Dorrie said, and reached up to pat the girl’s cheek. “But, don’t you worry none. That man ’a yours’ll be here any minute with that doctor, an’ he’ll make sure you an’ that baby both have a easy time ’a it.”
“I know he will,” Elise said, moving slightly on the bed and releasing Dorrie’s hand, and Dorrie knew that another pain was beginning to build for the girl. Dorrie watched her face until she could take no more of it, then got up from the bed and moved again toward the window to stand staring out at the rain: I will cause it to rain upon the earth, she found herself quoting silently, forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. She looked back to her friend—Janson, for God’s sake, please hurry, she thought, please hurry.
She paced away from the window toward the bed, to the chifforobe across the room, and then back to the window, until she felt she would wear a path in the floor.
The door banged open and Janson came in, wet, muddy to the knees—and alone. He started toward the bed, his face a study in fear, but Dorrie intercepted him half-way across the floor. “Where’s th’ doctor?” she demanded.
“He wouldn’t come. Said he had a patient—” He looked past her, toward the bed and his wife.
“She’s havin’ that baby soon. You’ve got t’ get somebody t’ help her.”
“Damn it—don’t you think I know that!” he yelled into her face, then pushed past her and toward the bed, stopping to kneel beside it and take his wife’s hand in his own. “I couldn’t get th’ doctor t’ come, Elise. I tried—”
“I know you did.” Her voice was quiet, almost too soft to understand.
“I’ve got t’ go get Gran’ma. I got Mr. Brown’s wagon an’ team from up town; I tried t’ get th’ grocery delivery truck, but it was in a ditch at the edge of town because of th’ rain—”
“Your gran’ma’s too far off,” Dorrie broke in, and Janson
