The Mountain Midwife (34 page)

“But I don’t want it to be, God.” He cried the words aloud in the woods.

When his words seemed to echo back to him, he realized that he hadn’t heard the dogs since the afternoon he and Ashley had paid a visit. Cautiously curious, he walked in the direction from which he had heard the barking. With some hunting around, he found where they had been chained up, a place lousy with dog droppings, and beyond a screen of some kind of shrubbery, he spotted a trailer. No one had been there since the snowfall. Not a footprint, save for some small animal tracks, marred the pristine white covering. Someone had taken the dogs away and stayed away. Knowing that they might come back anytime now that the roads were clear, according to the news, Hunter returned to the house.

Sheila sat slumped in her chair, her head tilted against the wing of the back.

“Would you like some lunch?” He spoke softly in the event she was deeply asleep.

She didn’t respond. “Sheila? Mom?”

Hearing Ashley’s soft voice in his mind, he added, “Momma?”

Sheila didn’t respond.

Sickness crowding into his gut, he leaned down and touched her hand where it curled around the edge of the afghan. It was warm. A pulse beat in her chest, but it was thready and slow.

A
SHLEY WANTED TO
sleep. By Tuesday, she was so exhausted she thought she might just fall down in the middle of her driveway and not be found until she had petrified. But instead of curling up beneath her comforter, she stood in the hospital emergency room holding Rachel’s hand while the younger woman wept over the loss of her baby.

“It’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s my fault,” Rachel kept sobbing. “You told me to quit smoking.”

“We don’t know that’s why you miscarried.” Ashley knew her soothing words fell on deaf ears. “Lots of women miscarry.”

She had to stop herself from saying, “In their first trimester.”

Rachel was in her second.

“But I’m not healthy.” Rachel had been chastising herself since she called Ashley at three o’clock in the morning. “I could have done more to be healthy.”

“We can all do more to be healthy, and even healthy women have miscarriages. We don’t know why most of the time. What’s important for you to do is grieve this loss and remember you still have a baby at home and you can have more in the future.”

More than likely. Nothing seemed to be wrong with Rachel.

Ashley wished she had more words than the usual platitudes. No matter how much she read and how hard she tried, everything she said sounded trite in moments like this. Part of her held on
edge, coiled tight against the possibility that Rachel would claim if she had gone to a doctor, this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe not. Ashley doubted it. When a body rejected a fetus, doctors weren’t any better at stopping it than were midwives.

She remained with Rachel, letting her talk, letting her cry, giving her that all-important human contact, until the doctor showed up to evaluate whether Rachel needed to be admitted to the hospital. She would probably be sent home, but for now, she waited in her cubicle with Ashley handing out tissues and comfort as best she could.

She had been doing that a lot this week. Mary Kate’s news had shocked her, though, upon reflection, she should have seen it coming. She didn’t know what to say, so she held Mary Kate as she sobbed out her story of how someone from the hospital had contacted protective services, who learned about Mary Kate’s living conditions, how her son was too often left in the care of a woman who drank too much, often while watching him, and how Mary Kate’s car didn’t have a car seat.

“It’s not my fault he got sick. I gotta work and didn’t know Momma let the fire go out.” Mary Kate sobbed against Ashley’s shoulder. “And now they’ll take this baby too.”

Ashley stroked Mary Kate’s back and tried to think of a solution. None came to mind. The truth was, Mary Kate needed support she didn’t have and Ashley couldn’t provide it. The admission of that brought her sense of inadequacy rearing its Hydra head. This time she knew a medical degree wouldn’t solve the problem either. All the education and training in the world didn’t cure this kind of poverty.

Feeling sick with every word, Ashley said the only thing she knew at the moment. “Mary Kate, right now you need to concentrate on being healthy for this baby you’re carrying.”

She considered her lecture on how Mary Kate needed to stop working, then chose to save her breath. Mary Kate knew what she needed to do. She wouldn’t do it. And Ashley couldn’t make her.

Once the younger woman had calmed some, Ashley took her blood pressure. It wasn’t as low as she liked her patients to display, and it wasn’t as bad as it might have been under the circumstances.

“You seem to be getting better.” She wanted her words to encourage Mary Kate.

She, however, simply began to cry again. “I gotta change my life, but I don’t know how I can.”

Ashley was helpless. She had no idea what to say. Agreeing wasn’t the right move. If only she had a solution . . .

“I’m praying for you.” That was the truth and the only thing she knew to say.

“Thank you.” Mary Kate smiled through her tears. “When do you need to see me again?”

“Next week.” Ashley glanced at her calendar. “Not Thursday. That’s Thanksgiving—” An idea slammed into her. “What will you be doing for Thanksgiving?”

Mary Kate shrugged. “Sittin’ home, I s’pose. Lucy Belle will send home turkey and all the fixin’s with me, but I ain’t got no plans.”

“Would you like to spend it with us?”

Mary Kate stared at her. “You, Miss Ashley? You don’t want me with you and your family.”

“Not my family, Heather. We don’t have any family around here right now, and we can cook for three as easily as we can cook for two.” She clasped Mary Kate’s hand. “We’d love to have you, and your momma, too, if she’s around.”

“Not hardly.” Mary Kate wrinkled her nose. “She’s got a new boyfriend.”

She didn’t elaborate. Ashley didn’t need her to. She had heard talk before. A new boyfriend meant lots of partying.

“Then join us. I can come get you.”

“Well, if it’s okay . . .” Mary Kate blushed and ducked her head. “I can bring the pies from the diner.”

“Oh, please do.”

Mary Kate had departed looking less mournful than when she arrived merely for a simple invitation.

Ashley felt more mournful. She was alone for the rest of the day and the entire weekend. She had heard nothing from Hunter. She wasn’t sure she would. Their last conversation hadn’t exactly been warm. Yet her admiration of him, her feelings for him, deepened with the knowledge that he had gone to spend time with his biological mother. How amazing for a man like him to volunteer to spend time under such primitive conditions. She longed to see him again, talk to him about his feelings over everything that had happened to him in the past month. Just as well they were incommunicado. He would go north eventually, probably sooner rather than later. She was here for the next year—or forever if she couldn’t find someone to take over her practice. They could never build a relationship over the distance in miles and lives.

Heart and time weighing heavily upon her, Ashley called Heather on Saturday to see if she wanted to get together. After shopping for a Thanksgiving feast, they bought a pizza and ate it and popcorn while watching two romantic comedies in a row. They had seen both films before but didn’t care.

Ashley spent the night at Heather’s and went to church with her in the morning. Doubting she would get a call from any of her patients, she wore a dress. She kind of hoped somehow Hunter
would come into town. Ridiculously, she wanted him to see her in a soft-blue dress with her hair down.

She saw Jase instead. Out of uniform himself, he stopped her in the vestibule to tell her how great she looked.

Jase concluded his compliment with, “Dressing up for that guy?”

“You are such a jerk.” Heather shot him a glare that should have withered him to the size of a toad and stalked off to talk to the pastor.

Jase’s gaze followed her, his face taut. “It’s a pity she’s not as beautiful inside as she is outside.”

“She is. She just covers things up,” Ashley said.

Heather had been hurt so much as a child and now was on her way to self-destruction—or at least destruction of all that was good in her life.

Jase snorted. “Haven’t noticed.”

Wow, where had that hostility toward Heather come from? Ashley’s heart began to race.

“Speaking of noticing things,” she said by way of changing the subject, “have you learned anything about that truck or Racey Jean Davis?”

“We have a lead on the truck. You didn’t mention it was registered in West Virginia.”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Nor did that friend of yours.”

“It was pouring down rain and everything was all over mud.” She laid a hand on his arm. “Let me know when you learn something, won’t you?”

“I will.” He squeezed her hand and strolled from the church. Briefly he stopped to say something to the pastor or Heather or
both, but Heather turned her shoulder to him in a way too obvious for anyone to miss. Jason laughed and swung out the front door.

And Ashley’s stomach rolled. Bile burned in her throat. She was crazy to be thinking in the direction she was. Yet she recalled how Heather had said something about a patient getting in an accident . . .

Not sure how—or if—to broach the subject, Ashley was quiet as they drove back to Heather’s. Heather, of course, noticed.

“What’s wrong? Did that imbecile say something to upset you?”

“No, he’s perfectly nice to me. It’s just that I don’t know why you seem to dislike him so much. We’ve been friends forever. He’s a great guy.”

Heather turned away. “I wish I’d figured out sooner that he’s not a great guy.”

“Sooner than when? The night your patient got into an accident?”

Heather pulled into her driveway and rested her forehead on the steering wheel. “So you figured it out. I knew you would. I feel sleazy just thinking about it.”

“Does he know?”

“Are you kidding?” Heather flung herself out of her car and slammed the door.

Ashley followed her friend into the house. “Don’t you think he has a right to know?”

“No, I don’t. Now drop it or go home.”

Ashley dropped it. She didn’t want to go home to an empty house. With calls forwarded to her cell, she was reachable at Heather’s, but not if someone showed up at her door. Right then, she feared who might. She didn’t want to be there alone, and she didn’t like leaving her friend alone either.

Monday she went home to feed the cats. The snow the meteorologists predicted hadn’t materialized, and the sky was merely heavy and gray like Ashley’s mood. She was too restless to stay home, but Heather was at work. So she went into town to get some early Christmas shopping done. At the library, she stopped to see if Hunter was there or had been there. No to both. Annoyed with herself for trying so hard, she retreated to Heather’s and welcomed Rachel’s middle-of-the-night call, if not the reason behind it, then drove her to the emergency room herself.

“What do I do if they want to admit me?” Rachel asked her.

“Do what they tell you to. It won’t be for more than a day or two, I expect. They just want to make sure you don’t keep bleeding too heavily.”

In the end, Dr. White did admit Rachel.

“Call me if you need anything, Rachel.” Giving Rachel’s hand one last squeeze, Ashley left the emergency room and pulled out her phone.

She hadn’t checked it for messages for a couple of hours. She had several—Heather, her brother in Atlanta, her sister-in-law in DC, and Hunter.

Her heart leaped with excitement and anticipation until she read the brief message: S
HEILA UNRESPONSIVE
. B
RINGING HER TO THE HOSPITAL
.

Ashley looked around the waiting room. He wasn’t there. Sure she must have missed him, not sure if she should call him, she started to text him back as she exited the hospital for her Tahoe. Head down, she didn’t see him until she walked straight into his back.

C
HAPTER
26

H
UNTER CALLED HIS
dad. He would have preferred to talk to Ashley, hear her calm, sensible words in his ears, if not have her close to him. But she had patients. Her patients came first.

So he called the man he had always known was his father and then thought wasn’t and now—

His head spun as he tapped his cell phone screen displaying his father’s number.

“Hello?” He sounded groggy.

Hunter glanced at the time. Eight o’clock. Since when was Dad not awake at eight o’clock in the morning on a weekday?

“Dad, are you all right? I can call back later.”

“No, no, had to get up to answer the phone. Had a late night is all. What’s going on?”

“Are you—” He should have thought this through before calling. He didn’t want this conversation over a phone at all, but he didn’t know when he would be able to see his father in person. “Are you alone?”

“Your mother’s downstairs cleaning before the housekeeper gets here, but I’m alone in the bedroom.” Dad’s voice grew cautious. “Why do you want to know?”