Chapter 49 – Changes
Martin immediately got in the way. He started shouted instructions to the paramedics and I could tell they didn't like it one bit. He pointed to Tommy, all glassy-eyed, propped at the base of the bar. "He is relatively stable." Then he turned to me. "Now, ah, she however is having a baby. Err, she's having her baby!"
"Your baby!" I shouted back. There was no way that I'd let him off the hook, not while I was in waves of pain. Your baby, Martin. It's yours – ours – it was your sperm – I meant to say, but another contraction clamped down and the world got fuzzy around the edges.
Martin ignored me and shouted at the ambulance staff. "I assume you have scissors and gloves in your bag? What we don't seem to have is any kind of sterile underlay!"
"We might have something." The ambulance man answered slowly.
"What do you mean, might! Might's no good! You either do or you don't!" Martin screamed at the man.
Ignored during Martin's shouting, I felt like my sides were going to burst but the woman paramedic came over and started an exam.
"Is this your first baby?" she asked sweetly and calmly.
Martin answered for me. "Yes, it is."
"Fit and well?" was her next question.
"Yes! She is!" yelled Martin impatiently and I gave him another dirty look. The nerve of the man!
"Don't worry," the woman went on coolly. "We'll get your baby out safely."
"Ok," I told her. Her face was calm and she smiled a lot which made me feel safe. My contractions were close together now but I got a pause once in a while so I could breathe.
She snapped on gloves. "I just need to feel where baby's head is."
"How far apart are the contractions?" butted in Martin.
"I don't know, they've just started," I told him. There were those odd things in the car on the way to the pub, did those count? Come to think of it, they were quite strong, but before I could say anything Martin started prying about once more.
"Any sensations of rectal pressure; the urge to push? Or anything?"
The paramedic rolled her eyes as I told him off. "Stop bombarding me with questions!"
"Louisa, it's important that we know what stage the labor is at!"
The paramed looked over her shoulder at rude Martin but she kept her voice calm. "We're just getting to that."
"Well, get to it QUICKER THEN!" shouted Martin in reply and I went ballistic.
"Alright!" I yelled at him. "Enough! Martin, I want YOU to WAIT OUTSIDE!"
He stood there with a shocked and hurt look. "What?"
I got nailed with another contraction as I tried to speak. "Owwww… I mean it." I managed to get out. "I really, really do! Ohhhh, ohhhh…" I faded into a whimper.
Martin Ellingham, MD stood there with the wind taken from his sails. "I'll… I'll be right… outside." He turned to the door casting backward glances, and I was only too glad to see him go. He was mucking everything up the way he always did. Typical Martin, all… owwww the pain made me stop thinking about him and concentrate only on breathing.
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Louisa was throwing me out and if she could stand up and get at me I knew she'd be kicking my arse. Granted I was shouting but the ambulance people seemed to be doing nothing so far, and if anything happened to Louisa… or her baby… that idea made me choke and I couldn't get any air for a few seconds.
I told her I'd be outside, but I didn't want to be. I turned towards the pub owner for support but he gave me a cross look and I deserved that. No call for me to shout at Louisa especially when she was in labor. And her labor did not look or sound easy. I've read up on it, and Tasha's words came to me then. She'd said 'like explaining algebra to a goldfish' speaking about teaching dance to children. But labor and childbirth was as alien to me as, well, the Daleks I've heard Louisa speak of from that telly show.
The idea was unknowable and unexplainable, but I did understand pain relief. That was something the ambulance crew was completely ignoring. Surely Demerol would help her! But given the quick onset of her labor, likely from the car crash, they might want the baby to be born quickly so they could assess if the child had any problems. Pain relief might slow down the contractions - no, that would require an epidural to be most effective - no tools for that in this place.
For once there was nothing I could do. I had delivered Isobel's baby last fall on the hillside above the harbor, but her labor was well advanced when I got there. All I had to do was to literally catch the baby as it came out and make sure it started breathing. The woman must have been well dilated when she arrived in the village. Even the placenta came quickly and that came just as the ambulance arrived, heeding Louisa's phone call. I hadn't even had to cut the cord.
I turned to go back to Louisa. There must be something I could – should – do. She lay on the awful orange couch panting and grimacing. Perhaps I could hold her hand…
The other paramedic was kneeling by Tommy and he caught my eye. "Give us a hand with the patient?"
We manhandled the drunken fool outside and to the stone stairs. Tommy's legs were rubbery and it felt like moving a large octopus. The ambulance was parked just by my car fortunately. "I'll want you to monitor his progress carefully," I said. "Mortality rates of this condition…"
The medic gave me a stony look. He was taller and more fit than I was. "I know how to do my job," he told me coldly. "Bit of advice mate – the less you say, the better it is for everyone."
The look on his face told me that he just as soon punch in my nose than speak to me. I did as he told and silently helped him support Tommy and get him to the cot in the ambulance. There he put a blood pressure cuff on him and started taking vital signs.
I dusted off my hands and stood outside the pub hearing occasional sounds of distress some through the frosted glass of the closed door. They were varied but regular; grunting, groaning, moaning – a while gamut of painful sounds. Louisa was well into labor now. It wouldn't be long.
I crowded close to the door. "Put your knees up to your chest and spread them apart when you feel like pushing!" I bellowed so she could hear me.
Louisa answered right off in like manner. "Thank kew, Martin! I know that!"
"And make sure your head and neck are well supported!" I threw back at her.
"Yes, Martin!" she shouted.
I then heard very loud groaning and opened the door to see if I could help. I caught just a glimpse of Louisa.
"MARTIN! I told you to stay OUT!" she screeched all white faced.
I rapidly pulled the door to and stood there feeling low and quite at a loss. In a medical emergency I always knew what to do. I was certain I could help Louisa. But she didn't want me - didn't want me around. If she'd not taken a ride in Tommy's taxi I'd be well on my way to London. So no car accident for her and she could deliver her baby, my baby; no our baby, in hospital in two or three weeks with sterile conditions, bright lights, soothing music, and support staff in abundance. Not in a grimy pub on the moor with two boobs for ambulance attendants.
In those few seconds it came to me that this was an important instant. My child was being born on the other side of this bloody door while I stood out here in the afternoon light like a stranger. My fiancée was in there, well former fiancée, laboring away to deliver a baby, pushing and grunting to get it out of her body while I stood helpless and alone.
Auntie Joan had yelled at me "Martin! Your idea of a family isn't even in the dictionary!"
My girl, the woman I once – no still – loved was on the other side of this door delivering our baby. The poor child deserved a better excuse for a family than mine or Louisa's. Maybe there was a chance to sort things. A chance to change things…
Louisa had shouted at me, "People make mistakes! People make a mess of things! It's called being human, Martin! Most of them learn from that – unlike some people!"
Was I some people? Unable to learn? So damn arrogant that I was less than human or somehow thought I was above all the biology and emotions of humanity?
Three years back when Stewart the bodmin Forest Ranger had smashed the bird feeders in the village, Peter Cronk was blamed for it. Peter ran away but Mark Mylow and I found him by chance as he was hitching a lift to Exeter out on the moor. He was slightly hurt in the chase and I took him to school while his mother was fetched from her shop. Louisa stood over the two of us in the school corridor and dished out questions. "Why don't you stand up for yourself? Why do you just stand there and say nothing?" She could have been speaking to me – both then and now.
I'd stood up to Edith Montgomery when I left the hotel ending that relationship before it even started. I even told her I didn't want to be with her. She had not listened and I was truthful but not forceful enough.
I could change and I have. Portwenn had worked… its odd magic on me in strange ways.
More moaning came through the door and I winced to hear it. Louisa was without me in there and I didn't like it so. I would learn from all the mistakes of the past year and more; I had to. Ebenezer Scrooge got a reprieve from his nasty nature. Why should I be any different?
Vicar Porter had me groveling in the muck examining his pig as the price to marry Louisa and me. He got me to admit that I didn't make her happy; I only cared for the way she made me feel. I'd only seen what she could give me not what I should give her - things to do for her - things to make her happy.
Another moan and hushed whispers came through the door. An important thing was happening behind the walls of this ancient pub and I stood out here like a flower or a weed.
The memory of the smashed taxi made me choke again. If anything had happened… back there to Louisa I'd never had forgiven myself. And that is when I knew what I had to do.
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"Just push when I say," the woman told me. She was so kind and I didn't even know her name. "Everything's fine."
"Do you think I did the wrong thing?" I asked between pushes. "It is his baby after all!"
"You can't worry about that now! There's more pressing matters! This baby's coming fast!" she said excitedly.
I didn't need her to tell me the baby was almost here; almost born. Early by a couple weeks, but close enough to term. All these months we've been together, just the two of us. But in a few minutes, we'd be two individual people; two people, but both needing the other. People needing the other…
I'd not heard any more shouted advice from Martin since I screeched at the man when he tried to come back in. He got the message and now he was staying away. Damn it Louisa, he is staying away, just as you told him to.
"I'll take care of it Martin!" I told him two months back at his cottage. I'd wanted his arms around me, his lips on mine, and I wanted to be in his bed then. But Edith was there and that messed everything up. But if I'd asked who Edith really was right then and not assumed the worst, well… our two months of mutual hell might not have happened.
But Louisa, you later told Martin that you didn't need him for anything! You even assumed that he wasn't interested. Yet he came dashing out to the moor to find you and Tommy. And if Martin hadn't found you in that mobile black spot what would you have done then? Hmm? With Tommy passed out and labor starting?
Then he tried to help you in the only way he knew. Yes, he was shouting – but he was panicking – and you fed into that as well. But he did keep asking if you were well. Asking about you – voicing his concern.
Why did you come back to Portwenn? asked one of the villagers.
A job was the obvious answer, but I lied to her. Yes I needed a job, but I needed something far more difficult to obtain. Something you can't buy.
For all the help that Joan Norton gave you really wanted only Martin to be helping you. For all of Joan's help, did she help you push Martin away? If he'd seen you needed help wouldn't he have given it, especially if you said the words? Asked him straight away?
When we parted yesterday I knew that was the end of the road for us. He'd be off in London, a townie and I'd be the country girl he left behind, along with a child who knew who his father only from once or twice-a-year visits. A hell of a life, Louisa. Is that what you want for this baby or for yourself?
In the school yard you wanted to tell him all this – all your worries and fears – and you couldn't. He had his new job and a new life in the making. But what was wrong with his three years in Portwenn? Weren't there good times then? A few - some; not as many as there should have been. And when things were good between you and Martin, wasn't those the best times of your life? Didn't he make you happy those days? That is what brought me back to Portwenn – him.
Why did you back out of the wedding, Louisa? Why didn't you tell him your worries? That he'd not be happy with you or you with him? That there would be things he'd need to change about himself? And… that you thought you weren't good enough for him. But on your list of things to change in him, why didn't you add the things you'd be willing to change for him?
Louisa, don't be an Elizabeth Bennett. Don't keep Martin as Mr. Darcy. You can't keep living behind assumptions and confusion! Not now - not ever. Don't assume that doors are closed forever either. So why did you come back to Portwenn?
"I've changed my mind!" I shouted at the paramedic.
"It's too late for that now. This baby is coming whether you want it to or not!" she answered.
"NO! I mean about himmm! Let him in!" I shouted at her and the door was pushed open.