Free The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard

his livelihood. He made the decision to return to England, and he wanted me to go with him. But I was engaged and in love and refused to leave.
    “You must come, Lizzie,” he urged in most passionate tones. “There shall soon be nothing left here. What will I do without you?”
    Indeed, our house was in disarray. He had packed as much as he could take on board ship, sold off some furniture, and let all but two of the servants go.
    Though I loved my father, I was of an age to love a man more. Jeb and I were soon to be married, and I would not leave him. Nor did I wish to leave my patients, for by then I had a goodly number—the same women who had called upon my mother to deliver them of their babes and more. They trusted and needed me. Although young, I was already renowned for being able to remove a stubborn babe.
    I had seen my mother many times reach into a womb and turn a babe or lift the head off the os pubis , where these little ones can lodge themselves like seals beneath a sea shelf. Reaching in and turning them caused mothers terrible pain. My mother hated to do it. Sometimes the womb cramped around her hand so firmly she had to withdraw and try again several times before she succeeded.
    But the mothers survived, and, in the end, they were grateful to her. None of them wanted Dr. Bullfinch to attend them, what with his frowns, his hems and haws, and his big metal forceps that looked more apt to crush the skull of the babe than draw it out safely.
    Between pain and harm, my mother taught me, lay a vast moral divide. Sometimes one must cause pain to avoid harm. This lesson was my mother’s great gift to me. After her death, I took a vow never to cause harm, if I could help it. I now reasoned that while I would cause my father pain, it would cause the women actual harm for me to leave them. My father and I reconciled ourselves to a parting that we believed would be of a few years’ duration, at most. If the Rebels won—an unlikely event, my father believed—those judges who knew British constitutional law might prove useful. If they did not—well, he would have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the Crown. In all, he was a fence-sitter hoping to climb down successfully on the winning side.
    But Providence had other ideas. My father left for England, caught pneumonia on board, and died soon after his arrival. I hardly had time to mourn him. His death, so far away, seemed unreal to me. For days after I received word of it, I wandered the upturned house, marveling at the spirit I continued to feel there. His books were still on the shelves—I had taken but two, a single volume from his eight-volume set of Shakespeare and my mother’s beloved edition of the Sonnets. His desk still held his papers. A portrait of my fair mother, which he dared not take aboard a ship, still stood above the parlor mantel. For a while, I even allowed myself to believe that my father had not in fact died, that he was alive and well and that the message had been written in error.

    Less than one month after Jeb and I moved to Braintree, my brother joined a privateer ship bound for the West Indies. He sent me a hasty word by messenger along with a curricle, and I bumped my way all night in that old chair to Boston Harbor, arriving at dawn.
    I pleaded with my brother to the last. “Why not come live with us?” I begged. “There’s plenty to do right in Braintree.”
    “Me, a farmer?” He laughed with a toss of his fair head. “I’d as soon be a midwife.”
    I smacked him, and he laughed some more. Then I nestled my face in his breast. “I’m afraid. I’m so afraid I’ll never see you again.”
    “Oh, you’ll see me, all right. I’ll be tan and hale, a stranger bearing gifts.”
    “The Greeks taught us to beware strangers bearing gifts,” I replied tartly.
    “Oh, Lizzie.” He sighed, casting a brotherly arm about me. “You really must try to be less intelligent. A handsome fellow has little use for a brainy woman.”
    But