at th’ edge ’a town is even closer than that. You got t’ go get her, or, if she ain’t there, Granny Alice—”
“I will, just tell me where—” He started to rise to his feet, but Elise stopped him.
“No.” She held tightly to his wet sleeve, a look of near desperation in her eyes. He knelt again at her side, taking both her hands in his.
“Elise—I cain’t get th’ doctor t’ come; I got t’—”
“No, no, not that—don’t leave me; I don’t want you to leave me. I want you here when—” The last word was gasped out between clenched teeth and Dorrie saw her face wrench with pain again.
“Elise—” Janson’s voice sounded frightened. He held tightly to her hands even as she twisted his own, his eyes never leaving her pain-closed ones.
When it was over she licked her lips and looked up at him, the fear in her eyes almost more than Dorrie could bear. “You’ve got to be here. We’ll be okay if you’re here—”
“Elise, I cain’t. I got t’ get somebody t’ help—”
“No, I want you here—”
“I’ll go,” Dorrie stated, knowing she could take no more of this helplessness, no more of the sounds of pain, no more of this hot, sticky room. “I can drive a team an’ wagon just as good as you, an’ I know right where t’ go—”
“But, if—” Janson looked from her to Elise, and then back again, unable to put his fear into words. “What if—if the baby—”
“It won’t get here before I can get back. You just stay with her—” She started for the door, looking back to the man’s worried face for a moment before going out into the rain—he looked so young himself, so utterly lost and helpless, kneeling at the side of the bed, his wife’s hands held tightly in his own.
She hurried as fast as her size would allow to the wagon, getting up onto the driver’s seat as the horses moved skittishly to her presence. She closed her mind to the rain that soaked immediately through her clothes, making them cling warmly to her skin as she whipped the horses hard. They whinnied in protest and the wagon jerked forward, almost unseating her. Within seconds her dark hair was loose from its bun, hanging wet and heavy down her back as she whipped the horses even harder, hearing the protesting honks and curses of the driver of a car that she almost ran from the road and into a muddy yard alongside a village street. She knew that she had to get Mrs. Smith or old Granny Alice as quickly as possible, for she had lied again. Elise’s baby was coming very soon.
Janson had never felt so useless, or so frightened, seeing pain that he could not stop or control, wanting to help Elise, but unable to think of anything he could do that might lessen what she was going through. He knelt beside the bed, wet and muddy still, and he prayed—please, God, don’t let the baby come without somebody to help. Please, God—
She squeezed and twisted his hands when the pains came, digging her nails into his flesh until both hands throbbed. “I’m so sorry—” was all he could think to say over and over when each was finished. Though he did not know what it was he was sorry for.
He silently cursed the doctor for refusing to come, cursed Dorrie and the midwife for taking so long, and Mrs. Breedlove when she would not come to help—he should have made the doctor come, he kept telling himself.
He watched her face as another pain began to build, seeing her eyes close and her face set a moment before she wrenched at his hands again—please, God, help me, he prayed. Please, God—
It was over. After the hurt and the fear, after the cries of pain, and the scream of a new life—it was over. Janson sat beside the bed in the old rocker, moving only enough to keep the chair in motion slowly back and forth. He was exhausted, his mind dulled from lack of sleep and food throughout much of this day—but it was over.
He rocked slowly, his mind wandering over all that he had seen and learned today—he was a father now, the baby newly born and sticky still and screaming when Dorrie had arrived with the old midwife. Janson had been driven from the house immediately, told to go wait on the porch out of the way where he belonged until they called for him, but that did not seem to matter—he had seen his own son being born.
He rocked slowly, the warm baby wrapped in a faded hand-me-down blanket in his arms. The baby was quiet now, after his loud screams of protest at his entry into the world. He slept peacefully in Janson’s arms, his little hands curled into fists against his chest, and Janson watched him, just as he watched Elise where she slept in their bed. Dorrie would be back soon, bringing plates of food for him and Elise from the supper she was preparing for her own family. Janson had not eaten all day, but that bothered him little. He just wanted to sit and rock his son, sit and watch his wife sleep.
Elise smiled briefly as she slept, her face peaceful now after the nightmare she had lived through. He wondered what she dreamed, and if she dreamed, after the treatment she had suffered under his incompetent midwifery—she had seemed to forget it all as soon as the baby was born. She was crying and laughing at the same time as she counted the little fingers and toes, even as Dorrie and the midwife came in and drove Janson from the room—by the time they allowed him back inside, the baby was cleaned up and the bed changed. Elise was in a fresh cotton nightgown and the baby was in her arms. “He looks so much like you,” she kept telling him. “Don’t you think he looks just like you?”
She fell asleep holding the baby, and Janson took him gently from her arms so as not to wake her, then sat down in the rocker to watch her sleep, too exhausted to do anything but sit and watch the peaceful breathing of his wife and son. They had agreed months before to name the baby Henry Alfred if it were a boy, after Janson’s father and Elise’s brother, and Janson could not help but to think that his father would have been pleased when he heard Elise first use the name. “Hi, Henry—do you like your name?” she had said very softly, in a tone Janson had never heard her use before.
Before today he had never even held a baby in his arms, but it seemed such an easy thing to do now—he was a father, and Elise was a mother. He looked at the little face, seeing both of them there, the shape of Elise’s nose and mouth, his own dark hair and coloring. Elise’s child—he should have been born to the finest things in life, to the experienced care of a doctor, born in a soft feather bed, and wrapped in the finest linen blankets. Instead, her child had been conceived on the straw mattress of a narrow, sagging rope bed, and born into inept hands that knew nothing but hard work. He had been wrapped in a faded, hand-me-down blanket, never to know the comforts and luxuries of life to which Elise Whitley’s child should have been born. He would never have the fine education, the nice clothes, and the gentle way of life that could have been his birthright. There was so little Janson could give him compared to all he should have known, so little, except for one thing.
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