17
Addie bent low over Kitty, her eyes narrowed and determined, unwilling to accept defeat. She needed to raise her voice to be heard over the storm. "You shall both live … do you hear me … but you must deliver this child now, with the next contraction you must push with all the strength you have."
The room, the furniture, the people in it, seemed to undulate before her eyes like a heat mirage on the desert. The walls swayed and blurred. The one immovable was Matt Dillon. She focused on him seeking and finding courage for what might be her final battle.
Outside, the storm ruled the night. The house shook from the ferocity. In an instant, a tree limb crashed through the hurricane shutters, shattering the far window of her room. Rain blew in as did storm debris. Amid the chaos, the next contraction hit like an explosion, thunder and lighting at the same time, she screamed with the pain of it, yet pushed through it, despite it, from deep within. Her head lifted from the bed, muscles knotted her neck. Her chin touched to her chest. Veins bulged and throbbed at her temple.
The baby was born into Addie's hands. She did what she had to do with the child before handing him to Renee to tend to. The newborn was whisked from the room before Matt had a chance to look at it or wonder what it was.
The relief on Dillon's face turned to fear as he watched the doctor working frantically and saw the ever widening pool of blood on the bed. Addie spoke rapidly, "There is a problem with the afterbirth, placenta accreta. She is hemorrhaging. If I can not stop the bleeding..." The medical terminology did nothing to heighten Dillon's understanding of what was going on, but the doctor didn't need to finish the sentence for Matt to grasp the meaning of what was happening. Unless Addie had a miracle or two at her disposal, he was in danger of watching the woman he loved bleed to death before his eyes.
The afterbirth had broken up and was partially adhering to the wall of the uterus. Again, Addie pushed hard on Kitty's abdomen with the heel of her hand to expel the blood, which was collecting in the womb. Fearing it would fill up and rupture, Addie used her free hand to reach inside and manually remove the afterbirth. The pain was too great to bear. Unconsciousness came as a blessing.
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It was nearly three hours later that Addie felt confident to leave Kitty's side long enough to check on the baby. She knew the infant had survived its birth from the lusty cries coming from down the hall and the periodic updates from Renee who was tending the child.
The storm outside had abated. Kitty had been cleaned and moved to another bedroom. Early morning sunlight filtered through the shutter blinds. Outside birds could be heard chirping and singing as though it were any ordinary morning.
"Shall I bring da baby to you?" Addie asked as she washed her hands in the basin next to the bed.
Kitty looked ghostlike for her skin was so pale it seemed translucent in the diffuse light. Her eyes were sunken into their sockets and surrounded by dark smudged circles. "take it … Sisters…" she whispered from cracked and swollen lips.
Addie bent closer, "Are you sure?"
Kitty's answer was a down sweep of her eyelashes. Addie turned to Dillon for verification, "whatever she wants," he replied with a voice nearly as shaky as Kitty's.
Addie's mouth puckered and she frowned, "I vill see de arrangements are made as soon as safely possible. You rest now, both of you."
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In a small bedroom far down the hall from the room Kitty was in, Renee tended to the baby. She had placed him in a bureau drawer, padded with sun-dried sheets. He was diapered and wrapped in bleached muslin toweling.
Addie looked at him for a moment before she picked him up and held him in her arms. "Poor Säugling, poor baby boy," she whispered. She held him closer, thinking how sad it was that his mother did not want him. The baby nestled in her arms, and Addie felt a bond forming.
Renee stood off to the side holding a half empty glass with an eyedropper sticking out of it, "I have given him zee sugar water as you told me. He is hungry and not satisfied with just zee water."
Addie nodded thoughtfully, "He vill need a wet nurse. Do you know of anyone Renee?"
"Oui, Mademoiselle, my cousin Isabella had a baby a month ago."
"When de roads are passable would you send for her?"
"But, zee Sisters of Charity…?"
Addie rocked the baby in her arms, smiling into his sleeping face, "He won't be going to the convent." She said slowly. Her voice turned soft and sweet, like a cradlesong. "I'm taking him home with me."
Renee looked at the doctor. Surprise lifted her facial features. She wondered whose idea that was and at the wisdom of such a move, but it wasn't a servant's place to question any decision of a white woman, "Oui, Mademoiselle."
Adelheide had never given much thought to motherhood before this. A ruptured cyst in her late teens had pretty much determined her fate in that regard. Now it seemed fortune was offering her a second chance. She examined the baby as a mother does her newborn, taking in his fluff of red hair and rosebud mouth. As surely as if she'd given birth to him herself, Addie Pittlekow had fallen in love with Kitty Russell's baby boy.