Free The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman Page B

pointing at the window. She’s wearing the faded pink chenille bathrobe that Katherine gave her before she left town.
    I shove a few logs into the firebox.
    â€œHere, let me do that.”
    â€œNo, Bitsy. I managed to keep warm before you came. I’m not helpless.” She turns away hurt, and I regret my sharp words, but I stir up the coals with the wrought-iron poker. Then we both move toward the window.
    Outside, when the clouds part, you can see by moonlight that every branch and twig is covered with ice. The limbs are so heavy they droop to the ground, and as we watch a branch breaks and shatters like crystal. We look at each other with big eyes.
    Then the clouds close in again and everything’s black, like the curtain dropped at the end of a picture show. In the silence that follows, there’s a new sound, the crunch of footsteps in the distance, coming up Wild Rose Road.
    â€œYou hear that?” I ask, hoping I’m imagining it.
    The footfalls don’t frighten me. It’s the thought of someone being in labor on a night like this that makes my stomach turn. I do a quick review of the women who’ve already arranged for my services. Minnie Boggs is not due until Christmas. I shut my eyes and hope it’s not her. She’s only fourteen and the baby would be five weeks early. Then there’s Clara Wetsel, but she’s had four kids and shouldn’t deliver until mid-January. She’d be so early that her husband would know to go to Dr. Blum, no matter what his wife said.
    â€œCan you see anyone?” I wonder. “It’s darker than a coal mine. Wait . . . a man on a horse.”
    â€œHe’s leading another horse.” That’s Bitsy.
    â€œWe’d better get dressed. Light a lantern.”
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    Minutes later, Bitsy and I, each holding a kerosene lamp, stand in the doorway watching as Thomas ties two burros to the closest maple tree. The Proudfoot brother and sister give each other fierce hugs, and I see now how much Bitsy misses her family. Not having any relations myself, I hadn’t thought much about it. She misses her mother, with whom she’s lived her whole life. She misses her brother. She most likely misses the fellowship of the Liberty A.M.E. Church.
    â€œThey need you in Hazel Patch” Thomas finally says by way of a greeting. There’s no “Howdy” or big smile.
    What now? I don’t know anyone in Hazel Patch, an isolated village of about a hundred souls where mostly blacks live. Becky Myers, the home health nurse, told me their story, how they had migrated up from the southern part of the state to work the Baylor Mine near Delmont, then stayed on after the cave-in when seventeen men were killed. That was in ’21, before Mrs. Kelly and I got here. Most of those who weren’t killed won’t go back underground again and now make out a living as subsistence farmers.
    â€œWhat do those people want with Miss Patience?” Bitsy demands protectively. “It’s after midnight and a terrible ice storm. Those people got no call for us. Anyway, they have Mrs. Potts to help them.” She emphasizes those people a second time as if they are country and we are too good for them. Hazel Patch is also way on the other side of Spruce Knob.
    â€œCome in, Thomas. Is someone in labor?”
    The tall man, an oak like his mother, Mary, steps up onto the porch and ducks though the door. Cold radiates off his green mackinaw, and flakes of ice shed on the floor.
    â€œIt’s bad, Miss Patience. There’s a baby coming, or trying to come, but the arm’s coming first. It’s Cassie Washington. This is her fourth child, maybe fifth. I think one died. Mrs. Potts has been trying for three hours, and the aunties say the baby’s arm is turning blue. You got to come help.”
    â€œWe can take Raccoon Lick to Hope Ridge,” I offer, “and cut past the Harpers’ through the woods, until we