They Called Her Mrs. Doc. (25 page)

Samuel had been called away on an emergency one day in late November and Cassandra paced the kitchen floor, lifting the curtain to look out the window every now and then. Her eyes would always go to the sky. It looked as if a storm was brewing and Cassandra did not like the looks of it.

“Please, Father,” she prayed. “Let him have time to make it home first.”

But the darkness of evening closed in around them and still no Samuel.

Christina sensed her mother’s uneasiness. “He’ll see the storm coming and stay put,” she tried to assure her mother.

“I do hope so,” said Cassandra, running a nervous hand over her hair.

“Would you like me to go to meet him?” asked Thomas, now a strapping youth with wide shoulders and almost as big a grin.

“No,” responded Cassandra quickly. “It would just be one more to worry about out in the weather.”

“I’d go with him,” offered Peter.

“No,” said Cassandra firmly and paced to the window again.

The night had fallen and along with it had come the wind. It tore at the limbs of the trees in the yard, and lashed out at the drain pipes that extended to the rain barrel. The swing, now hanging unused in the yard, swung back and forth in dizzying arcs, now lifting this way, then flipping that, then crashing blindly into one of the side poles that suspended it. The gate creaked and strained against each new blast. Cassandra feared that it might be pulled from its hinges.

Then the snow came with swirling, obscuring gusts, completely blotting out the outside world when at its peak and then falling back to give the viewer a look at what it was burying in white. Cassandra could soon tell that even the children were worried, though none of them confessed to the fact.

She was nearly wild with concern when the newly installed phone rang once—and then again. It was their number.

Thomas was the one to answer it.

“Hello. Hello,” he called. “Yes … I can’t hear you.” A pause. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear.” Another longer pause. Cassandra felt her whole inner self twist.

“Pa? Is that you? Yes. Yes.”

“Let me talk to him—please,” pleaded Cassandra and Thomas handed her the receiver.

“Samuel?” said Cassandra. “Where are you?”

The phone line sputtered and cracked. It seemed forever before Cassandra heard his voice.

“—here at Lawsons’,” he was saying. “Think … stay … storm …” Cassandra could pick up only a word now and then.

“If you are safe, stay where you are!” she shouted into the mouthpiece, not realizing that her words probably were no clearer to Samuel than his were to her. “Just stay where you are. We are fine. Come home when the storm is over,” she continued to shout to him over the crackling line.

“—go now,” she heard Samuel say and then, “Good-night,” and the snapping turned to a buzz.

Cassandra stepped back and hung up the receiver. Three pairs of eyes studied her face.

“He’s safe—at Lawsons’,” she explained even though she was sure they already had the information. She had to say the words for her own comfort. “He’s fine. He’ll stay there until the storm is over.” She read the relief on their faces.

“We’d better get to bed. Thomas—bank the fire, please. Peter, make sure the door is fastened securely. That wind could rip off anything. Christina, move the water pail over here away from the window. It could freeze if it’s left there.”

And Cassandra scurried about the room, making things secure and ready for the night and the raging storm.

She slept fitfully. Again and again she awakened to listen to the wind howl around them. Off and on she would think that it had abated, and then another gust would come, shaking the windows and rattling the eaves trough. Every time she heard its fury she thanked God again that Samuel was safe, and tried to get back to sleep.

It was toward morning when a new sound roused her. At first she dismissed it as just another sound of the storm and then she knew it wasn’t so. It sounded more like knocking than the hammering of the wind. Someone was pounding on their door.

She climbed from bed and reached to light the lamp. Her bedroom held a chill in spite of the banked fires. She fumbled with the matches and finally got the wick to catch flame. Then she hurriedly wrapped her woolen robe around her and hastened to the door. On the way she met Thomas. He, too, was carrying a lamp. He had already been to the door and was coming back to get her.

“It’s Mr. Hick. His wife is having her baby. They want Pa.”

Cassandra looked at the window. She couldn’t see out into the darkness, but she could still hear the wind blowing.

“But he isn’t here,” Cassandra said unnecessarily to her son.

“I told him. He wants to talk to you.”

Cassandra passed on to the kitchen. She found a nervous man pacing the floor and stopping now and then to rage at the storm and the darkness.

“Mr. Hick?” said Cassandra, thinking to herself that prayer might work much better than cursing.

He swung to face her.

“The baby’s on the way,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to get back to Esther.”

“But the doctor isn’t in,” repeated Cassandra, setting her lamp on the kitchen table. “He has been storm-delayed at the Lawsons’.”

“I know—yer boy told me—an’ I’m sorry to be askin’ you to go out in this weather but—”

“Me?” said Cassandra incredulously.

“We need to hurry—beggin’ yer pardon.”

“But I’ve never delivered a baby,” blurted out Cassandra.

“You know a lot more about it than I do, ma’am,” insisted the father-to-be, and Cassandra had to concede the point.

“I’ll get dressed,” she replied in a shaky voice and picked up the lamp to head back to her bedroom, forgetting that she was leaving the man in the dark.

“Mama,” said Thomas, appearing again with his lamp in his hand, “surely you don’t intend to go out on a night like this.”

“What choice do I have?” replied Cassandra. “If it were me lying in that bed, I’d want someone, anyone, to come to me.”

Thomas realized she was not to be swayed and he moved toward the kitchen, determined to have her coat and boots warmed by the fire before she slipped into them.

Cassandra felt that they would never fight their way through the tearing wind. Several times, Mr. Hick had to stop and take her arm, almost pulling her through the storm. The snow swirled around them, adding to the already knee-deep drifts that hindered their progress. Icy chips struck them in the face, stinging cheeks and chin cruelly. Wind pulled at her clothing, threatening to tear her coat from her body. Cassandra clung to her garment, vainly trying to keep its protective warmth wrapped securely around her.

It seemed as if they would never make the short trip through the snow-camouflaged streets of the little town to the house that Joseph had helped to build, but eventually they managed to stumble up the walk and fight their way through the door.

Cassandra was out of breath and slumped into a nearby chair, gasping for air while the sudden warmth of the building threatened to suffocate her.

A groan from the bedroom reminded her of the reason for her coming, and she stiffened and looked to Mr. Hick, who had already cast his coat aside and was reaching for the lamp on the table.

“She’s in here,” he said to Cassandra, and she knew that she must somehow find the strength to follow him. With a quick prayer for guidance, she forced herself back onto her feet and followed the man, dropping her coat on the floor somewhere along the short journey.

Cassandra knew very little about assisting a birthing, but she did judge, and correctly so, that the woman did not have much longer.

“Some clean linens,” she told the man. “And warm towels or blankets for the baby. Place some of them on the oven door and warm them up. This is a cold night to be welcoming a little one.”

The little bit of action seemed to settle her and she drew a few deep breaths and approached the woman.

“This your first?” she asked and the woman shook her head.

“I lost one,” she answered, fear in her voice.

Cassandra felt her body shiver. She prayed that the woman would not lose another baby.

“We are going to do our best to make sure that you and your baby are fine,” she said, and knew that it was the most she could promise.

“We? Is Doc here, too?” asked the woman.

“No,” admitted Cassandra. “No, just me. But I—I never work alone. I—I—” Would the woman understand? she wondered. “I always ask God to be with me,” she said evenly and the woman looked at her blankly and then nodded her head in understanding. Cassandra saw tears in her eyes, but she didn’t know if it was from the pain of childbirth—or some other pain that troubled her more deeply.

A baby girl was born just as the clock on the bedroom mantel said eight. Cassandra waited for a moment, tied and cut the umbilical cord, bundled the little one in a warm blanket that her father held out, and hastened off with her to the warmth of the kitchen. She looked fine and Cassandra prayed that it might be so.

She wasn’t sure just what to do next, but she remembered Samuel cleaning up each of her babies.

“Little one,” she said to the complaining infant, “you don’t have the best welcoming committee in the world. Oh, not that we aren’t glad to see you—it’s just that we don’t know the proper rules of etiquette in welcoming the newborn. If only Samuel were here—”

But Samuel and his black bag were somewhere out there in the new day, waiting for the storm to release them. Cassandra did the best she could, bundled the small baby up warmly and passed her to her father while she went to attend the new mother.

“She’s fine,” Cassandra smiled. “I think she’s going to look just like you.”

The young woman was in tears.

Cassandra moved to smooth the hair back from the mother’s face and look into her eyes.

“Are you all right?” she asked earnestly.

“I’m fine—now,” the young woman answered.

“I think the storm has passed,” went on Cassandra. “We have nothing to worry about now, except for you to get some rest. Do you think you can do that?”

“I’m sure I can,” replied Mrs. Hick. “I feel like I’ve done five laundries.”

Cassandra smiled at her description of labor.

“I’ll send Dr. Smith over to see you as soon as he gets home,” she promised. “And if you should need me in the meantime, get a neighbor boy to come for me.”

The woman nodded. She was already looking sleepy.

Cassandra left the room and went to the kitchen.

“She needs to rest now,” she said to the father, who sat by the kitchen stove with the baby in his arms. “If the baby fusses, take her in to her mother. She might want to nurse. If she sleeps, let your wife sleep, too.”

He nodded.

Cassandra pulled on her heavy boots and found her coat lying across a kitchen chair.

“I’ll send my husband over to check on both of them as soon as he gets home,” she said and he nodded again.

She was about to pass out into the cold morning air when he called softly after her, “Mrs. Doc?”

She turned to look at him.

“Thanks,” he blurted. “Thanks more than I can say. It woulda killed her to lose another baby.”

Cassandra nodded and closed the door tightly.