Free Please Remember This by Kathleen Gilles Seidel Page B

ones.
    “Did you go to the birthing center in Kansas City?” That was the closest alternative facility.
    “Oh, no. I had him here. Duke and Nina have set aside a room in their house.”
    Matt had been stroking the baby’s little foot. His hand froze. “You had him at home?” He and Bailey were the only doctors in town, and there was no trained midwife. “Who delivered him?”
    “Sierra, of course. Sierra Celandine. She’s wonderful. She takes care of us all. She can treat anything. She has these herbs that you’ve never heard of, and they really do work. You don’t know her? You’ll have to meet her.”
    Matt had to force himself to keep his voice level. “I’ll have to do that.”
    “Is this any of my business?” he asked his father when he stopped by that night. The boys were still living with his parents, but Matt visited them twice a day.
    “How are you going to feel if something happens to one of the babies or if someone dies from a routine strep throat? Will you feel that you should have made it your business?”
    That made it easy.
    He went over to his mother’s kitchen phone. Fred Hobart owned a lot of the houses these people were renting, and so he called Fred’s wife. Mrs. Hobart flipped through her rental agreements. Sierra Celandine had a month-to-month lease on the little tenant house across from Fred’s grandparents’ place, the one that was rented to that writer Nina Lane.
    Matt knew where it was. He kissed little Ned’ssweet-smelling head, gave Phil a sticky high five, and walked home to get his car.
    The place was run-down. The front porch must have recently been torn off; the outer walls had pale outlines of the supports that attached it to the house. The door was weathered, and a couple of cinder blocks were serving as front steps.
    A girl with long hair and big glasses came around from the back of the house.
    “Hi.” Her greeting was full of life. “I don’t know you, do I?” She was petite and barefoot and wore a flower in her hair.
    “I’m Matt Ravenal.” And though he always felt like a pompous jerk when he said it, he added, “Dr. Matt Ravenal.”
    “What kind of doctor?’ She spoke teasingly. “Are you a poet with a Ph.D.? Or a psychologist who feels inferior because you aren’t a psychiatrist? No, I know. You’re the high school principal and you’ve got one of those night-school Ed.D.’s because you wanted to get your salary up.”
    In another context he might have enjoyed this. “Actually, I’m an M.D. I have a practice in town.”
    “Oh,” she said. “And you make house calls?” She wagged her finger at him. “I’m telling the A.M.A. on you. They won’t like that. They’ll revoke your membership.”
    “Are you Sierra Celandine?”
    “That’s not what’s on my birth certificate, but yes, it’s my name.”
    Matt wasn’t sure what point she was trying to make. “I’ve heard that you are out here practicing medicine without a license.”
    “Oh, no.” She shook her head. “I’m not practicing medicine. You’re practicing medicine. I’m healing people.”
    “But you’re attending at births.”
    “Two gorgeous baby boys.” She mocked a Yiddish accent. “The cutest little shmekels you’d ever want to see.”
    People around here didn’t affect Yiddish accents; they hardly knew what they sounded like. “That’s not legal.”
    “What, having a shmekel? I have been completely wrong about this country. What a great place it is, to outlaw penises. What do we get to do with all the suspects?”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “No, I don’t.” She was suddenly serious. “It’s illegal for a woman to give birth at home? You can be
arrested
if you don’t go to the hospital? What if the baby comes too fast, and you end up having it in the car on the Kansas Turnpike? Is that illegal?”
    “I was referring to your role.”
    “My role? I’m the woman’s friend. Is friendship illegal?”
    In truth, Matt was not sure exactly what the law was.