87

Kumash County, Eastern Washington

MAY 18

Kaye’s contractions were coming regularly. Mitch called to make sure the clinic was ready and Dr. Chambers, the pediatrician, was on his way from his brick house on the north end of the reservation. As Kaye put the last toiletry items in the dopp bag and found a few pieces of clothing she thought might be nice to wear after, Mitch called Dr. Galbreath again, but the answering service picked up.

“She must be on her way,” Mitch said as he folded the phone. If the deputies would not let Galbreath through the checkpoint off the main road—a real possibility that infuriated Mitch—then Jack had arranged for two men to meet her five miles south and smuggle her in on a wash road through the low hills.

Mitch pulled out a box and dug for the small digital camera he had once used to record site details. He made sure the battery was charged.

Kaye stood in the living room holding her stomach and breathing in small huffs. She smiled at him as he joined her.

“I am so scared,” she said.

“Why?”

“Goo; you ask why?”

“It’s going to be fine,” Mitch said, but he was pale as a sheet.

“That’s why your hands are like ice,” Kaye said. “I’m early. Maybe it’s a false alarm.” Then she made a funny grunt and felt between her legs. “I think my water just broke. I’ll get some towels.”

“Never mind the damned towels!” Mitch shouted. He helped her to the Toyota. She pulled the seat belt low around her stomach. Nothing like the dreams, he thought. The thought became a kind of prayer, and he repeated it over and over.

“Nobody’s heard from Augustine,” Kaye said as Mitch pulled onto the paved road and began the two-mile drive to the clinic.

“Why would we?”

“Maybe he’ll try to stop us,” she said.

Mitch gave her a funny look. “That’s as crazy as my dreams.”

“He’s the bogeyman, Mitch. He scares me.”

“I don’t like him either, but he’s no monster.”

 “He thinks we’re diseased,” she said, and there were tears on her cheeks. She winced.

“Another?” Mitch asked.

She nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. “Every twenty minutes.” They met Jack’s truck coming from the East Ridge Road and stopped long enough to confer through the windows. Sue was with Jack. Jack followed them.

“I want to have Sue help you coach me,” Kaye said. “I want her to see us. If I’m okay, it will be so much easier for her.”

“Fine with me,” Mitch said. “I’m no expert.”

Kaye smiled and winced again.

Room number one in the Kumash Wellness Clinic was quickly being converted into a labor and delivery room. A hospital bed had been rolled in, and a bright round surgical lamp on a tall steel pole.

The nurse midwife, a plump, high-cheeked, middle-aged woman named Mary Hand, arranged the medical tray and helped Kaye change into a hospital gown. The anesthesiologist, Dr. Pound, a young, wan-looking man with thick black hair and a pug nose, arrived half an hour after the room was prepared and conferred with Chambers while Mitch crushed ice in a plastic bag in the sink. Mitch put ice chips into a cup.

“Is it now?” Kaye asked Chambers as he checked her.

“Not for a while,” he said. “You’re at four centimeters.”

Sue pulled up a chair. On her tall frame, her pregnancy seemed much less obvious. Jack called to her from the door, and she turned. He tossed her a small bag, stuffed his hands in his pockets, nodded to Mitch, and backed out. She placed the bag on the table next to the bed. “He’s embarrassed to come in,” she told Kaye. “He thinks this is woman stuff.”

Kaye lifted her head to peer at the bag. It was made out of leather and tied with a beaded string.

“What’s in the bag?”

“All sorts of things. Some of them smell good. Some don’t.”

 “Jack’s a medicine man?”

“God, no,” Sue said. “You think I’d marry a medicine man? He knows some good ones, though.”

“Mitch and I thought we’d like this one to come naturally,” Kaye told Dr. Pound as he brought in a rolling table with his tanks and tubes and syringes.

“Of course,” the anesthesiologist said, and smiled. “I’m here just in case.”

Chambers told Kaye and Mitch there was a woman living about five miles away who was going into labor, not a SHEVA birth. “She insists on a home delivery. They have a hot tub and everything. I may have to go there for a while this evening. You said Dr. Galbreath would be here.”

“She should be on her way,” Mitch said.

“Well, let’s hope it works out. The baby’s head down. In a few minutes we’ll attach a fetal health monitor. All the comforts of a big hospital, Ms. Lang.”

Chambers took Mitch aside. He glanced at Mitch’s face, his eyes tracking the outline of the skin mask.

“Fetching, isn’t it?” Mitch said nervously.

“I’ve delivered four SHEVA second-stage babies,” Chambers said. “I’m sure you know the risk, but I have to spell out some complications that might happen, so we can all be prepared.”

Mitch nodded, gripped his trembling hands.

“None of them were born alive. Two looked perfect, no visible defects, just...dead.” Chambers stared at Mitch with a critical expression. “I don’t like these odds.”

Mitch flushed. “We’re different,” he said.

“There can also be a shock response in the mothers if the delivery gets complicated. Something to do with hormone signals from a SHEVA fetus in distress. Nobody understands why, but the infant tissues are so different. Some women do not react well. If that happens, I’m going to do a C-section and get the baby out as quickly as possible.” He put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder. Chambers’s pager beeped. “Just as a precaution, I’m going to take extra care with spilled fluids and tissues. Everybody will wear viral filter masks, even you. We’re in new territory here, Mr. Rafelson. Excuse me.”

Sue was feeding Kaye ice and they were talking, heads together. It seemed to be a private moment, so Mitch backed out, and besides, he wanted to sort through some difficult emotions.

He walked into the lobby. Jack sat in a chair by the old card table there, staring at a pile of National Geographies. The fluorescent lights made everything seem blue and cold.

“You look mad,” Jack said.

“They’ve almost got the death certificate signed,” Mitch said, his voice trembling.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Sue and I think maybe we’ll have the birth at home. No doctors.”

“He says it’s dangerous.”

“Maybe it is, but we did it before,” Jack said.

“When?” Mitch asked.

“Your dreams,” Jack said. “The mummies. Thousands of years ago.”

Mitch sat in the other chair and put his head on the table. “Not a happy time.”

“Tell me,” Jack said.

Mitch told him about the last dream. Jack listened intently.

“That was a bad one,” he said. “I won’t tell Sue about it.”

“Say something comforting,” Mitch suggested wryly.

“I’ve been trying to have dreams to help me figure out what to do,” Jack said. “I just dream about big hospitals and big doctors poking at Sue. The white man’s world gets in the way. So I’m no help.” Jack scratched his eyebrows. “Nobody is old enough to know what to do. My people have been on this land forever. But my grandfather tells me the spirits have nothing to say. They don’t remember either.”

Mitch pushed his hand through the magazines. One slid off and hit the floor with a smack. “That doesn’t make any sense, Jack.”

*      *        *

 Kaye lay back and watched Chambers attach the fetal health monitors. The steady beep and pulse of the tape on the machine by the bed gave her confirmation, another level of reassurance.

Mitch came back with a Popsicle and unwrapped it for her. She had emptied her cup and took the sweet raspberry ice gratefully.

“No sign of Galbreath,” Mitch said.

“We’ll manage,” Kaye said. “Five centimeters and holding. All this for just one mother.”

“But what a mother,” Mitch said. He started working on her arms, pushing the tension out, and then moved to her shoulders.

“The mother of all mothers,” she muttered as another contraction hit. She bore down into it, held up the bare Popsicle stick. “Another, please,” she grunted.

Kaye had become acquainted with every inch of the ceiling. She got off the bed carefully and walked around the room, gripping the metal rolling stand that held the monitoring equipment, wires trailing from beneath her gown. Her hair felt stiff, her skin oily, and her eyes stung. Mitch looked up from the National Geographic he was reading as she duck-walked into the rest room. She washed her face and he was by the door. “I’m fine,” she said.

“If I don’t help you, I’ll go nuts,” Mitch said.

“Don’t want that,” Kaye said. She sat on the side of the bed and took several deep breaths. Chambers had told them he would be back in an hour. Mary Hand entered with her filter mask on, looking like a high-tech soldier prepared for a gas attack, and told Kaye to lie back. The midwife inspected her. She smiled beatifically and Kaye thought, Good, I’m ready, but she shook her head. “Still at five centimeters. It’s okay. Your first baby.” Her voice was muffled beneath the mask.

Kaye stared up at the ceiling again and bore into a contraction. Mitch encouraged her to take puffing breaths until the wave passed. Her back ached abominably. For a bitter moment at the end of the contraction she felt trapped and angry, and wondered what it would be like if everything went wrong, if she died, if the baby was born alive but without a mother, if Augustine was right and both she and her child were a source of horrible disease. Why no confirmation? she wondered. Why no science one way or the other on that? She calmed herself with slow breaths and tried to rest.

When she opened her eyes again, Mitch was dozing in the chair beside the bed. The clock said it was midnight. I will be in this room forever.

She needed to go to the bathroom again. “Mitch,” she said. He didn’t wake up. She looked for Mary Hand or Sue, but he was the only one in the room. The monitor beeped and rolled its tape. “Mitch!”

He jerked and stood up and sleepily helped her into the bathroom. She had wanted to have a bowel movement before going to the clinic, but her body had not cooperated, and she worried about that. She felt a mix of anger and wonder at her present state. The body was taking charge, but she was not at all sure it knew what to do. I am my body. Mind is the illusion. The flesh is confused.

Mitch walked around the room, sipping a cup of bad coffee from the clinic lounge. The cold blue fluorescent lights were etched into his memory. He felt as if he had never seen bright sun. His eyebrows itched abominably. Go into the cave. Hibernate and she‘II give birth while we sleep. That’s the way bears do it. Bears evolve while they ‘re asleep. Better way.

Sue came to be with Kaye while he took a break. He walked outside and stood beneath the clear, starry sky. Even out here, with so few people, there was a streetlight to blind him and cut back on the immensity of the universe.

God, I’ve come so far, but nothing has changed. I’m married, I’m going to be a father, and I’m still unemployed, living on the—

He blocked that line of thought, waved his hands, shook out the nervous jangles from the coffee. His thoughts drifted all over, from the first time he had had sex—and worried about the girl getting pregnant—to the conversations with the director of the Hayer Museum before he was fired, to Jack, trying to put all this into an Indian perspective.

Mitch had no perspective other than the scientific. All his life he had tried to be objective, tried to remove himself from the equation, to see clearly what his digging had revealed. He had traded bits of his life for what were probably inadequate insights into the lives of dead people. Jack believed in a circle of life where no one was ever truly isolated. Mitch could not believe that. But he hoped Jack was right.

The air smelled good. He wished he could take Kaye out here and let her smell the fresh air, but then a pickup truck drove by, and he smelled exhaust and burned oil.

Kaye dozed off between contractions but for only a few minutes. Two o’clock in the morning, and she was still at five centimeters. Chambers had come before her little nap, inspected her, peered at the monitor tape, smiled reassurance. “We can try some pitocin soon. That will speed things up. We call it Bardahl for babies,” he said. But Kaye did not know what Bardahl was and did not understand.

Mary Hand took her arm, swabbed it down with alcohol, found a vein and introduced a needle, taped it off, attached a plastic tube, hung a bottle of saline on another stand. She arranged little vials of medicine on a blue sheet of disposable paper on the steel tray beside the bed.

Kaye normally hated shots and needle pricks, but this was nothing compared to the rest of her discomfort. Mitch seemed to grow more distant, though he was right by her side, massaging her neck, bringing more ice. She looked at him and saw not her husband, not her lover, but just a man, another of the figures coming in and out of her squeezed-down and compressed and endless life. She frowned, watching his back as he spoke with the nurse midwife. She tried to focus and find that emotional component necessary to fit him into the puzzle, but it had been lifted away. She was liberated of all social sensibilities.

Another contraction. “Oh, shit!” she cried.

Mary Hand checked her and stood with a concerned expression. “Did Dr. Chambers say when he would administer pitocin?”

Kaye shook her head, unable to respond. Mary Hand went off to find Chambers. Mitch stayed with her. Sue came in and sat on the chair. Kaye closed her eyes and found that the universe in that personal darkness was so small she almost panicked. She wanted this to be over. No menstrual cramps had ever had the authority of her contractions. In the middle of the spasm, she thought her back might break.

She knew that flesh was all and spirit was nothing.

“Everyone is born this way,” Sue told Mitch. “It’s good you’re here. Jack says he’ll be with me when I deliver, but it’s not traditional.”

“Woman’s stuff,” Mitch said. Sue’s mask fascinated him. She stood, stretched. Tall, stomach prominent but balanced, she seemed the essence of strong womanhood. Assured, calm, philosophical.

Kaye moaned. Mitch leaned over and caressed her cheek. She was lying on her side, trying to find some position that was comfortable. “God, give me drugs,” she said with a weak smile.

“There’s that sense of humor,” Mitch said.

“I mean it. No, I don’t. I don’t know what I mean. Where is Felicity?”

“Jack came by a few minutes ago. He sent some trucks out, but he hasn’t heard from them.”

“I need Felicity. I don’t know what Chambers is thinking. Give me something to make this happen.”

Mitch felt miserable, helpless. They were in the hands of the Western medical establishment—such as it was in the Five Tribes Confederation. Frankly, he was not at all confident about Chambers.

 “Oh, goddamn SHIT,” Kaye yelled, and rolled on her back, her face so contorted Mitch could not recognize her.

Seven o’clock. Kaye looked at the clock on the wall through slitted eyes. More than twelve hours. She did not remember when they had arrived. Had it been in the afternoon? Yes. More than twelve hours. Still no record. Her mother had told her, when she was a little girl, that she had been in labor for over thirty hours with Kaye. Here’s to you, Mother. God, I wish you could be here.

Sue was not in the room. There was Mitch, working on her arm, easing the tension, moving to the other arm. She felt a distant affection for Mitch, but doubted seriously she would ever have sex with him again. Why even think about it. Kaye felt she was a giant balloon trying to burst. She had to go pee and the thought equaled the deed and she did not care. Mary Hand came and removed the soaked paper pad and replaced it.

Dr. Chambers came in and told Mary to start the pitocin. Mary inserted the vial into the appropriate receptacle and adjusted the machine that controlled the drip. Kaye took an extreme interest in the procedure. Bardahl for babies. She could vaguely remember the list of peptides and glycoproteins Judith had found in the large protein complex. Bad news for women. Maybe so.

Maybe so.

The only thing in the universe was pain. Kaye sat on top of the pain like a small, stunned fly on a huge rubber ball. She vaguely heard the anesthesiologist moving around her. She heard Mitch and the doctor talking. Mary Hand was there.

Chambers said something completely irrelevant, something about storing cord blood for a transfusion later if the baby needed it, or to pass on to science: blood from the umbilical cord, rich with stem cells.

“Do it,” Kaye said.

 “What?” Mitch asked. Chambers asked her if she wanted to have an epidural.

“God, yes,” Kaye said, without the least guilt at having failed to stick it through.

They rolled her on her side. “Hold still,” said the anesthesiologist, what was his name. She couldn’t remember. Sue’s face appeared before her.

“Jack says they’re bringing her in.”

“Who?” Kaye asked.

“Dr. Galbreath.”

“Good.” Kaye thought she should care.

“They wouldn’t let her through the quarantine.”

“Bastards,” Mitch said.

“Bastards,” Kaye mouthed.

She felt a prick in her back. Another contraction. She started to tremble. The anesthesiologist swore and apologized. “Missed. You’ll have to hold still.” Her back hurt. Nothing new about that. Mitch applied a cold cloth to her forehead. Modern medicine. She had failed modern medicine.

“Oh, shit.”

Somewhere way outside her sphere of consciousness, she heard voices like distant angels.

“Felicity is here,” Mitch said, and his face, hovering right over her, shone with relief. But Dr. Galbreath and Dr. Chambers were arguing, and the anesthesiologist was involved, too.

“No epidural,” Galbreath said. “Get her off the pitocin, now. How long? How much?”

While Chambers looked at the machine and read off numbers, Mary Hand did something to the tubes. The machine wheeped. Kaye looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. What did that mean? Time. Oh, that.

“She’s going to have to go it on her own,” Galbreath said. Chambers responded with irritation, sharp quiet words behind his awful filter mask, but Kaye did not listen to him.

They were denying her drugs.

Felicity leaned over Kaye and entered her visual cone.

 She was not wearing a filter mask. The big surgical light was turned on and Felicity was not wearing a filter mask, bless her.

“Thank you,” Kaye said.

“You may not thank me for long, dear,” Felicity said. “If you want this baby, we can’t do anything more with drugs. No pitocin, no anesthetic. I’m glad I caught you. It kills them, Kaye. Understand?”

Kaye grimaced.

“One damned insult after another, right, dear? So delicate, these new ones.”

Chambers complained about interference, but she heard Jack and Mitch, voices fading, escorting him from the room. Mary Hand looked to Felicity for guidance.

“The CDC is good for something, dear,” Felicity told her. “They sent out a special bulletin about live births. No drugs, particularly no anesthetics. Not even aspirin. These babies can’t stand it.” She worked busily for a moment between Kaye’s legs. “Episiotomy,” she said to Mary. “No local. Hold on, honey. This will hurt, like losing your virginity all over again. Mitch, you know the drill.”

Push to ten. Let breath out. Bear down, puff, push to ten. Kaye’s body like some horse knowing how to run but appreciating a little guidance. Mitch rubbing vigorously, standing close to her. She clenched his hand and then his arm until he winced. She bore down, push to ten. Let breath out.

“All right. She’s crowning. There she is. God, it’s taken so long, such a long, strange road, huh? Mary, there’s the cord. That’s the problem. A little dark. One more, Kaye. Do it, honey. Do it now.”

She did it and something released, a massive rush, pumpkin seed between clenched fingers, a burst of pain, relief, more pain, aching. Her legs shivered. A charley horse hit her calf but she hardly noticed. She felt a sudden shove of happiness, of welcome emptiness, then a knifelike stab in her tailbone.

“She’s here, Kaye. She’s alive.”

 Kaye heard a thin wail, a sucking sound, and something like a musical whistle.

Felicity held up the baby, pink and bloody, cord dangling down between Kaye’s legs. Kaye looked at her daughter and felt nothing for a moment, and then something large and feathery, enormous, brushed her soul.

Mary Hand laid the baby on a blue blanket on her abdomen and cleaned her with quick swipes.

Mitch looked down on the blood, the baby.

Chambers returned, still wearing his mask, but Mitch ignored him. He focused on Kaye and on the baby, so small, wriggling. Tears of exhaustion and relief flowed down Mitch’s cheeks. His throat hurt it was so tight and full. His heart pounded. He hugged Kaye and she hugged him back with remarkable strength.

“Don’t put anything in her eyes,” Felicity instructed Mary. “It’s a whole new ball game.”

Mary nodded happily behind the filter mask.

“Afterbirth,” Felicity said. Mary held up a steel tray.

Kaye had never been sure she would make a good mother. Now, none of that mattered. She watched as they lifted the baby to the scales and thought, I didn’t get a good look at her face. It was all wrinkled.

Felicity wielded a stinging swab of alcohol and a large surgical sewing needle between Kaye’s legs. Kaye did not like this, but simply closed her eyes.

Mary Hand performed the various small tests, finished cleaning the baby, while Chambers drew cord blood. Felicity showed Mitch where to cut the cord, then carried the baby back to Kaye. Mary helped her pull her gown up over her swollen breasts and lifted the baby to her.

“It’s okay to breastfeed?” Kaye asked, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

“If it isn’t, the grand experiment might as well be over,” Felicity said with a smile. “Go ahead, honey. You have what she needs.”

 She showed Kaye how to stroke the baby’s cheek. The small pink lips opened and fastened onto the large brown nipple. Mitch s mouth hung loose. Kaye wanted to laugh at his expression, but she focused again on that tiny face, hungry to see what her daughter looked like. Sue stood beside her and made small, happy sounds to the mother and the baby.

Mitch looked down on the girl and watched her suckle at Kaye’s breast. He felt an almost blissful calm. It was done; it was just beginning. Either way, this was really something he could fasten onto, a center, a point of reference.

The baby’s face was red and wrinkled but the hair was abundant, fine and silky, pale reddish brown. Her eyes were shut, lids pressed together in concern and concentration.

“Nine pounds,” Mary said. “Eight on the Apgar. Good, strong Apgar.” She removed her mask.

“Oh, God, she’s here,” Sue said, hand going to her mouth, as if suddenly shocked into awareness. Mitch grinned like a fool at Sue, then sat beside Kaye and the baby and put his chin on Kaye’s arm, his face just inches from his daughter’s.

Felicity finished cleaning up. Chambers told Mary to put all the linens and disposables in a special hazards bag for burning. Mary quietly complied.

“She’s a miracle,” Mitch said.

The girl tried to turn her head at the sound of his voice, opened her eyes, tried to locate him.

“Your daddy,” Kaye said. Colostrum dribbled thick and yellow from her nipple. The girl dropped her head and fastened on again with a little push from Kaye’s finger. “She lifted her head,” Kaye said in wonder.

“She’s beautiful,” Sue said. “Congratulations.”

Felicity spoke to Sue for a moment while Kaye and Mitch and the baby filled the spot of solar brightness beneath the surgical lamp.

“She’s here,” Kaye said.

“She’s here,” Mitch affirmed.

 “We’ve done it.”

“You sure did,” Mitch said.

Again, their daughter lifted her head, opened her eyes, this time wide.

“Look at that,” Chambers said. Felicity bent over, nearly knocking heads with Sue.

Mitch met his daughter’s stare with fascination. She had tawny brown pupils flecked with gold. He leaned forward. “Here I am,” he said to the baby.

Kaye reached out to show her the nipple again, but the baby resisted, head bobbing with surprising strength.

“Hello, Mitch,” his daughter said, her voice like the mewing of a kitten, not much more than a squeak, but very clear.

The hair rose on the back of his neck. Felicity Galbreath gasped and backed away as if stung.

Mitch pushed against the edge of the bed and stood. He shivered. The infant resting on Kaye’s breast seemed for a moment more than he could stand; not just unexpected, but wrong. He wanted to run. Still, he could not take his eyes off the little girl. Heat rose into his chest. The shape of her tiny face came into a kind of focus. She seemed to be trying to speak again, her lips pushing out and drawing to one side, small and pink. A milky yellow bubble appeared in the corner of her mouth. Small dapples of fawn-color, lion-color, flushed across her cheeks and brows.

Her head rolled and she stared up at Kaye’s face. A puzzled frown wrinkled the space between her eyes.

Mitch Rafelson reached with his big, raw-boned hand and callused fingers to touch the little girl. He bent over to kiss Kaye, then the baby, and stroked her temple with great gentleness. With a touch of his thumb, he turned her rose-colored lips back to the rich nipple. She gave a breathy sigh, a small whistling sound, and with a squirm, fastened onto her mother’s teat and suckled vigorously. Her tiny hands flexed perfect golden-brown fingers.

*      *        *

Mitch called Sam and Abby in Oregon and told them the news. He was barely able to focus on their words; his father’s trembling voice, his mother’s piercing squeal of joy and relief. They spoke for a while and then he told them he could barely stand. “We need to sleep,” he said.

Kaye and the baby were already asleep. Chambers told him they would stay there for two more days. Mitch asked for a bunk to be brought into the room, but Felicity and Sue persuaded him that everything would be all right.

“Go on home and rest,” Sue said. “She’ll be fine.”

Mitch shifted uncertainly on his feet. “They’ll call if there’s any trouble?”

“We’ll call,” Mary Hand said as she walked past with a bag oflinens.

“I’ll have two friends stay outside the clinic for the day,” Jack said.

“I need a place to stay tonight,” Felicity said. “I want to check them over tomorrow.”

“Stay in our house,” Jack suggested.

Mitch’s legs wobbled as he walked with them from the clinic to the Toyota.

In the trailer, he slept through the afternoon and evening. When he awoke, it was twilight. He knelt on the couch and stared out the wide picture window at the scrub and gravel and distant hills.

Then he showered, shaved, dressed. Looked for more things Kaye and the baby might need that had been forgotten.

Looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.

Wept.

Walked back to the clinic alone, in the lovely gloaming. The air was clean and clear and carried smells of sage and grass and dust and water from a low creek. He passed a house where four men were removing an engine from an old Ford, using an oak tree and a chain hoist. The men nodded at him, looked away quickly. They knew who he was; they knew what had happened. They were not comfortable with either him or the event. He picked up his pace. His eyebrows itched, and now his cheeks. The mask was very loose. Soon it would come off. He could feel his tongue against the sides of his mouth; it felt different. His head felt different.

More than anything, he wanted to see Kaye again, and the baby, the girl, his daughter, to make sure it was all real.