“Charlotte? That’s your name, isn’t it?” Nathan washed his hands at the bedside basin, then shook off the water droplets. “Well, Charlotte, I’m going to help you have your baby. You go ahead and scream if you have to, call me any name you want. It’s going to hurt because the first thing we have to do is turn your baby around.” He kept talking, a gentle litany of instructions and praise, as he worked between Charlotte’s bloody thighs. Sweat trickled down his spine and beaded on his brow.
Lydia returned to the room and set a kettle of water in the hearth. She dropped in the instruments Dr. Franklin had used, then stood beside Nathan at the foot of the bed. She watched him work in silence, his mouth tight with the force of his concentration, his jaw clenched. There was tension in his profile and a muscle worked rhythmically in his cheek. Lydia picked up a damp cloth and wiped his forehead.
“Thank you.”
It took Lydia a moment to realize he was speaking to her. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She simply nodded once in acknowledgment.
“Take her hand,” Nathan instructed. “Talk to her. Make her help. I’ve almost got the baby turned. Is Ginny here?”
“Right here, sir,” Ginny said as she walked into the room. “I’ve got the linens.”
“Find something to wrap the baby in and bring it over here.” He turned his attention back to Charlotte. “It’s all right to push now, Charlotte. Next contraction. That’s it. Come on, darlin’. I can feel the baby’s head. No, don’t stop. Don’t…Lydia, get me the forceps; Charlotte’s not pushing any longer.” Lydia retrieved them quickly from the kettle, almost burning her hands in the process. “Easy,” Nathan cautioned. “I can only do one patient at a time.”
“Are you a doctor?” Lydia asked when the instrument was cool enough to give him.
He shook his head.
“But how do you—”
“Sheep.”
Lydia’s lips parted in surprise. Ginny giggled nervously.
Nathan continued working. He eased the forceps around the baby’s head and pulled gently on the next contraction. Though nothing of his fear showed on his face, the amount of blood loss alarmed him. If he somehow managed to bring the baby out, he wasn’t at all confident he could do anything to save Charlotte.
He glanced at Lydia once. She was stroking Charlotte’s hair, her lips bent near the young whore’s ear. Her voice was softly encouraging, lilting and sweet. Her eyes though were infinitely sad, tear-washed, and so dark in her pale face they appeared to be black.She knows,thought Nathan.She knows we’re going to lose Charlotte.
Losing the baby, however, was the first pain to be borne. Nathan held the tiny child in his palms, his own eyes closed briefly against the ache of his failure and the loss of something so precious. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “He’s stillborn.”
Charlotte nodded weakly. A tear slipped between her closed lids and she bit down on her waxen lips. Groping blindly, she found Lydia’s hand and held on tightly.
Lydia sucked in her breath and smothered a sob with the back of her hand. It didn’t matter that Charlotte had vowed all along that she never wanted the child; Lydia knew it did little or nothing to lessen her anguish now.
“I’ll take him,” Ginny said, slipping her hands beneath Nathan’s. “We’ll need the scissors to cut the cord.” Nathan got those for her and snipped the cord quickly. Ginny carried the baby to the basin and began washing him off while Nathan went back to working on Charlotte.
A few minutes passed before Nathan had the placenta. He wrapped it in the newspaper that Lydia was quick to provide. “Do you embroider?” he asked Lydia as he examined the damage Dr. Franklin had done to his patient.
“What?” She couldn’t imagine why he wanted to know at a time like this.
Nathan didn’t answer her question directly. “Look in the doctor’s bag and see if he has a curved needle and surgical thread.”
Suddenly his query made sense. Lydia hesitated. She couldn’t possibly do what he was proposing. Yet when Nathan repeated his order, rapping it out impatiently this time, Lydia knew she would do whatever she had to.
She did. And in the end it still wasn’t enough.
Ginny laid the baby in the basket Lydia brought and put it beside Charlotte’s still body, then she closed Charlotte’s eyes. “There’s nothing more you can do,” she said quietly. “I’ll see to everything from now on.”
Lydia couldn’t move. Her fingers trembled with exhaustion and she pricked herself with the needle she held. Her eyes widened slightly at the pain, but that was her only reaction. She simply sat at the foot of the bed, limp with weariness, her eyes vacant, and stared at Charlotte’s serene, finely wrought features.
Nathan used his forearm to push back the damp strands of dark hair that had fallen across his brow. He looked around for a clean towel and grimaced when he couldn’t find one. “Is there someplace we can go to wash?” he asked, holding up his hands for Ginny to see.
“My room,” Ginny said. “One floor down. First door on the left. Lydia knows where it is.” She looked at Lydia, then back at Nathan. “Is she going to be all right, do you think?”
Nathan had been wondering the same thing, but he didn’t say so. “She’ll be fine. She got in a little over her head this time, I think.”
“That’s Miss Liddy.” There was a certain fondness in her voice that did not go unnoticed by Nathan. “She has the heart of a lion.”
And the straight-thinking sense of a jackaroo,Nathan thought disparagingly. Hell, a tenderfoot on a sheep ranch hadmoresense than Lydia Chadwick. Nathan took the needle from Lydia’s fingers and gripped her firmly around the wrist, pulling her to her feet in a single motion. She didn’t resist him, a turn of events which Nathan accepted with mixed feelings. He led her into the hallway and down the stairs to Ginny’s room.
