Galore - Michael Crummey [77]
—You the father? Newman asked.
—I hope to be, the smoker said. He stuttered on the b and had to stamp his foot finally to move past it.
—That’s my wife, Druce, Patrick said, pointing to the woman with the child in her lap.
Lazarus took the doctor’s arm. —We’ll have time for all that now the once, he said and ushered Newman to a back room where the pregnant woman lay unconscious on the bed, her breath coming in long, ragged intervals. Newman turned the girl’s face toward the lamplight and saw froth speckled with blood at the corners of the toothless mouth. —Jesus Bride, he whispered. She must have been newly pregnant when he pulled her teeth his first day on the shore.
Mary Tryphena was sitting beside the bed. —The baby was coming along fine this afternoon, she said, but Bride’s eyes started rolling back into her head just after suppertime. She had a spell of convulsions then, before this come over her.
Newman swore under his breath. He couldn’t guess what kind of distress the baby was suffering but the mother had little chance of surviving the severe eclampsia. He looked around the tiny room and cursed again.
Mary Tryphena said, If swearing was any help, Doctor, Bride would be up and around this ages ago.
The bed was narrow and nailed to the wall and Newman called the men in to help carry Bride to the kitchen, clearing mugs and cutlery to lay her out. Patrick’s wife stood rocking her own crying child until Mary Tryphena ordered her home out of it. Amos went with her and Henley was headed for the door as well before Newman called him back. —You’ll have to help hold her, he said. He unpacked forceps and a scalpel and pushed the unconscious woman’s muslin shift high above her belly, cut the perineum from the vaginal canal all the way to the anus. Newman arranged the family around the table, each assigned an arm or leg. Henley weeping and whispering J-J-Jesus Jesus. Newman picked up the forceps and put one foot up on the table’s edge to brace himself. —Everyone hold tight, he said.
By first light the baby was washed and swaddled and asleep in a cradle beside the stove. Bride was back in her bed, drifting in and out of consciousness while Newman stitched the ragged folds of skin together as best he could. Mary Tryphena watching over his shoulder. —Do you think she’ll live, Doctor?
—With any luck.
—She’ve had precious little of that the last day or so. You’re a dab hand with a needle and thread, Doctor.
He guessed the midwife’s age at somewhere north of sixty. Small fine features, a thick head of gray hair shot through with filaments of the deepest black.
The men were sitting about the kitchen smoking as he came through. The table and floor already scoured clean. Lazarus had removed his wooden leg and Newman leaned over to examine the stump. A rough amputation from another lifetime. —Does it give you any trouble?
—Falls over every time I tries to stand on the bugger is all, Lazarus said.
Newman looked across at Mary Tryphena. His head swimming from lack of sleep and twelve solid nights of celebration. —Send for me if the girl’s no better by this evening.
It was a full week before he was sure of Bride and he engaged the Trim brothers for a call to Spread Eagle he’d put off to stay close to her. A day of still cold, clear skies and nearly windless, the sound of the dogs’ barking echoing crisp off the hills. They stopped in a sheltered valley to boil the kettle and Azariah said, So you been round to see the Devines.
—I have.
—Mary Tryphena says they’d have lost the girl and the baby both if you hadn’t come by.
Newman brushed the notion aside. —How did Lazarus lose that leg?
The brothers glanced at one another and shook their heads. They gave a brief account of the hard times that fell on the shore forty years ago, sneaking up on the details. How many seasons the new sealing vessel lay frozen in the harbor before it was able to make its maiden voyage to the ice. Everyone hungry and in debt and there was a fight for berths aboard