Free Adrift in the Sound by Kate Campbell Page A

up to look out the window. “The lambs are dropping. He says my father would have wanted us to keep running sheep so we keep a small flock. I told him it’s too much work. Market prices are lousy right now.”
    Pulling up onto her toes, stretching and scanning the water’s surface, Marian said, “Looks like an orca’s hunting in the strait. I see a dorsal fin.”
    Turning back to Lizette, she babbled on, “One of the ewes pro-lapsed this morning while lambing. Greg went up to the pasture with our new dog Tucker to catch her and put her in the jug for safekeeping. I’ll take a look later. We may have to bottle feed a few of the babies. You up for that?”
    Lizette looked at her, head aching, indifferent.
    “You used to like that job. And we need to bake bread. We’re completely out, nothing in the freezer.” Marian got up to pace. “It’s cold in here. I’ll have Poland bring down some stove wood.”
    “What’s today?” Lizette said, staring into the plate, pushing at the food scraps with a bent fork, and feeling overwhelmed.
    “Thursday.”
    “When did I get here?”
    “Tuesday.” Marian looked perplexed. “You’ve been asleep for two days. It’s the middle of March. You’ve been gone about six months. What did you go through at the hospital this time? You seem totally out of it.”
    “Well.” Lizette held her head in her hands and wrapped her fingers around her skull, picked her words before she spoke, skirting what really happened to avoid Marian’s horrified response and inevitable probing. She couldn’t talk about it now, maybe never.
    “This skinny old woman, must have been seventy. She was in the room next to mine. She kept yelling in Swedish, said she was having a baby. She took off her hospital gown and got on her bed and pulled up her knees. Like this.”
    Lizette went to the cot and lay on her back, pulled her knees to her chest in a tuck, stretched out, stared at the cabin’s soot-covered ceiling.
    “The nurses didn’t know what she was saying. I could understand a little because she talked like my grandmother. She rocked back and forth, like this, and pushed. It went on all night. Panting. Grunting. Wailing. When it was finally born she balled up her hospital gown and rocked it as if it was a baby, singing lullabies and stuff.”
    Lizette got up and went to the chamber pot, squatted, peed. Marian turned her back, looking out at the water.
    “Thank God she didn’t think it was twins.” Lizette said. Marian snorted, shook her head in wonder.
    Lizette got back in bed and continued in a flat tone, propping her head in her hand.
    “This other woman started screaming she was on fire. It went on all morning. She started right after breakfast. She was in the day room. They were watching cartoons on TV and she just went off. Finally they got some male orderlies and a couple of nurses and carried her to the shower room. She was kicking and screaming. They put her on the tile floor and turned on the cold water. That put the fire out. She stopped yelling, just lay there and slept until after lunch.”
    “Were you in a private room?” Marian said, studying Lizette for damage, gathering her hair into a pony tail with both hands and wrapping a rubber band around the bunch. She stepped closer and examined Lizette’s skin and long neck, looking for puffiness, lymph node swellings, trying to assess the physical impact of the hospital stay, making metal notes like she was charting a patient.
    “Yes, the whole time … well, not at first,” Lizette paused to collect her memory. “I was by myself, then they brought this young one in, hair all black and curly, standing on end. She lay on the bed on the other side of the room. Put her face to the wall. That was OK with me. I fell asleep reading. When I woke up she was standing over the toilet bowl dangling dental floss with a tiny safety pin tied to the end.”
    “What was that about?”
    “Said she was fishing.”
    Lizette pressed her lips