Chapter 16 #3
I can do this. I spent eight years in Her Majesty’s Navy. I’ve seen sickrooms and amputated limbs. I can fetch and carry. Mark squared his shoulders and went in.
Inside the room the mother writhed on the bed, on her back with feet flat on the thin, stained mattress. Her husband sat behind her, cradling her head and shoulders in his lap, looking utterly terrified and not sure why he was there.
That makes two of us. Mark looked everywhere but the woman on the bed, whose shift was rucked up to her waist. Amelia stooped at the end of the bed, leaning between the woman’s spread legs.
Around her rested basins and pitchers of boiled water, folded and fresh rags, and dirty, bloody rags in a pile elsewhere.
Amelia pointed with an elbow to a brown glass bottle on the floor behind her. “Rinse your hands up to your elbows in antiseptic.” She picked up what looked like an ear trumpet from her brown leather bag and placed the broad end to the woman’s stomach, then her own ear to the earpiece.
Mark rolled up his sleeves, pretending not to hear the moans of the woman in the room. He didn’t look at the bed.
“Laura, this baby needs to come out now, do you hear me?” Amelia kept a smile on her face, though, so Mark felt fairly confident everything was fine. Amelia was probably just tired of spending her night here and wanted to go home.
The woman groaned. “He’s not coming!”
Amelia rubbed the outside of the woman’s calves in a soothing manner. “You’ve done well. But this baby needs to come out right now. You’re going to push like you’ve never pushed before. Now.” She snapped her fingers at Mark, who was staring at the ceiling.
Mark stumbled forward, drenching a cloth in hot water and handed it to her.
“What do I need to do?” the husband asked, panic in his eyes.
Amelia ignored everyone but the woman. “On three you’ll push and you’ll push and you won’t stop, no matter what, until I tell you to stop.”
The mother whimpered, sweat dripping down her face. “Yes.”
Then there was a blur of movement and lots of low groans and hushed, urgent words.
Mark just kept handing cloths to Amelia.
She sometimes broke off her counting and encouragement to whisper commands to Mark.
He shuffled around as best he could, wondering why on earth he was in the room and not Ellen.
“He’s here, he’s here.” Amelia sounded grim and determined, not happy like Mark had expected. Mark looked away, but not before seeing Amelia reach up with both hands, one to grab the baby’s head and the other to untangle something. “Get me the scissors. Quick!”
In the next few moments, Mark wasn’t sure what happened. But he knew babies were supposed to cry when born, and babies weren’t supposed to be that awful gray color. The room was tense with silence. Both mother and father looked frozen in shock and fear.
Amelia released a long, heavy sigh in the silence.
And Mark’s heart dropped. He knew. He looked at the parents, their faces still etched in a mixture of denial and incomprehension. And he slipped out of the room because no one should have their worst moments witnessed by a stranger.
Ellen stood, staring at Mark as he stumbled into the parlor. “Well?”
He shook his head, shock making him silent.
Her face hardened, as though she’d known it would be like this and Mark was only giving confirmation. “We, uh, we need to put the children to bed.” She looked at the sleeping siblings around her feet.
Mark nodded. He couldn’t get the look on the father’s face out of his mind.
His shock, the dawning horror that something wasn’t right and would never be right again.
His eyes, wide and searching for any hope, anything to make the night better.
The wife’s trembling mouth as her worst fears came to pass.
The resignation in the slump of her shoulders, as if she’d known something was the matter, that she’d fought it but lost.
He wasn’t sure what happened over the next few hours.
He supposed he made a pallet up by the warm stove for the children, then covered them up with their coats.
Someone boiled more water and passed it into the bedroom, and Mark guessed it had been him.
Amelia eventually called him back in the room to help her sterilize utensils, clean the soiled rags, and straighten the bed.
Mark awkwardly obeyed, not sure if he should acknowledge the couple sobbing quietly on the bed, holding the still bundle of swaddling cloths.
They didn’t look at him, and so he gave them their privacy and didn’t look at them either.
Finally, Amelia packed her bag and stepped out.
She sagged against the doorframe for a moment.
Mark put a hand to her shoulder, frightened for a second she was going to faint.
Instead, Amelia rallied. She looked at Mark sadly.
“I hate delivering babies,” she whispered.
“I never liked it before, and that’s one reason I chose medical school instead of midwifery.
” Amelia shook her head. “God, sometimes I think I can’t bear this.
” She pushed on, heading to the front door.
Ellen stood there waiting, pale and solemn. “You did your best.”
Amelia shook her head again. “I don’t want to hear that tonight. I…” She gave Ellen a wan smile. “Thank you, friend. But now I need sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
The three of them stepped out into the gray beginning of dawn. Mark hesitated, glancing at the chipped and dented door. “Should they be left alone?”
“I found a few neighbors and woke them up. Let them know what happened.” Ellen sounded remote and cold. “They know to come in after we’ve left. I think we’re the last people they want to see.”
Mark thought of the tiny, lifeless form and shuddered. “I don’t understand. What was wrong?”
“Cord wrapped around the neck. Three times, ” Amelia said by rote, not looking at them as she hurried down the stairs first.
He thought of the children piled like puppies around the stove, and his heart ached as he realized they’d wake expecting news of a new baby, but instead would be faced with a funeral.
Again, the father’s eyes flashed in his mind.
I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.
How can a baby be so healthy one moment and dead the next?
The injustice of it hit him like a freight train.
Mark gasped for air, fighting the wave of anger and grief that washed over him.
It didn’t feel right to have such a visceral reaction to someone else’s loss.
He wasn’t the baby’s father. What right did he have to break down into sobs in the middle of the street?
Oh, God. That’s what he was doing. Tears streamed down his face. His breath came in ragged gasps as he raced ahead to catch up with Ellen and Amelia.
“You shouldn’t be alone after this,” Ellen was saying to her friend.
Amelia snorted. “You shouldn’t be alone.” She sounded angry and hard.
Ellen surged to catch up and linked arms with her friend. “We’re going back to the dispensary with you. We’ve all had a shock.”
How is Ellen the calmest of us all? Mark could barely remember to swallow, he was struck so numb. He trailed the women, finally catching up with them as a hansom cab rolled to a stop.
A life. A baby gone, for no good reason. He wasn’t ill, he wasn’t weak. Just a thrice-damned cord around his neck. Mark thought of the drawer he’d spied in the corner of the room, lined with newspaper print and swaddling clothes, waiting for the newborn. It wouldn’t be used.
Mark moved mechanically, helping both women climb into the cab. Ellen reached into her cloak absently and clutched the locket. His heart seized. If he climbed in that cab he might pass out. He needed space, he needed to walk.
“Are you coming?” Ellen sounded unsure.
He shook his head, more tears scalding his cheeks.
“I don’t think any of us should be alone,” she began, but Mark scrubbed his face with his hand and walked away.
He didn’t know where he was going. His feet carried him up and out of the slums, back toward Mayfair.
He stumbled past the mansions of Berkeley Square.
How senseless this was. Babies shouldn’t die.
Parents should never have to see their children die.
It was the deepest perversion of life—not that death existed, but that death stole those newest to life.
His hands opened a wrought iron gate, and he tripped over a tree root.
He’s dead, he’s dead. He’ll never wake up.
He was born asleep and will never wake up, echoed over and over in his mind.
She’s dead. She’s gone and I never had a chance to meet her.
With a sob, Mark flung himself on the ground beneath an elm tree.
He was barely able to make out a small, gray tombstone in front of him.
Constance.
Mark gasped for breath but felt like he’d inhaled knives instead. They shredded his lungs, his heart, his soul. You’re gone and I never had a chance to meet you. He curled on the ground and wept.