A Cold Day in Hell (4 page)

I
f he lived forever, Seamus Donegan was dead certain he would never forget this night.

At first the women fluttering around Samantha had tried to convince him in hushed tones that he should stay no more than a few moments with his wife. Reassure her, console her—then go back to the saloon—just as a man was supposed to do when a woman’s time came.

“S-stay with me,” Sam begged in a harsh whisper as he came to the side of that tiny bed where she lay, her back propped up, the thin grayed sheet draped over her knees like sister mountain peaks covered with dirty snow. She held one hand out for him to grasp as he went to his knee beside the bed.

Almost immediately he watched the rise of another contraction show on her face, and suddenly the others squeezed forward once again: two on the far side of the bed, one at Donegan’s shoulder. All of them muttering instructions to Sam, reminders about breathing, about not pushing.

“Where’s the goddamned surgeon?” he looked up to ask them as Sam fell back against those tiny pillows and folded-up comforter they had braced behind her.

Elizabeth Burt was the one to answer. “We’ll call him if we need him, Mr. Donegan.”

He rose shakily from his knee. It hurt like hell down on that hardwood floor. As quickly he felt a flush of shame for thinking of that when Sam’s hurt must be so much the worse. He
squeezed her slick hand between his two rough, callused paws and said as quietly, as politely, as he could, “Looks to me we n-need him.”

“No, no,” Martha Luhn said. “Everything’s going just fine.”

“F-fine?” Donegan stammered, gazing back down at Samantha, who stared up at him, transfixed and steady, licking her dry lips with the tip of her tongue.

“Truth is, that surgeon wouldn’t be a bit of help to us,” Nettie Capron replied. “That man might know how to set a broken bone, or patch up a bullet hole, or what to do if you had an Indian’s arrow sticking out of your back … but he sure as the Psalms doesn’t know near as much about what’s going on with your wife as we do.”

“Get me some water there, Seamus,” Sam pleaded in all but a desert-dry whisper, diverting his attention from the scolding he was getting from the lieutenant’s wife.

Elizabeth Burt leaned over Sam as Seamus turned to find some water, explaining, “You can only have a little, Samantha. Like we’ve been giving you all along. Remember—only a little.”

“I want Seamus to give it to me,” Sam said with a weary nod.

At the side of the bed stood the unsteady washstand where a china cup with its handle broken off sat next to a tinned pitcher. He filled the cup halfway before slipping a hand beneath his wife’s neck and head, gently propping her up as he raised the cup to her lips. Sam took tiny sips with her parched lips and that pink tongue, a half dozen of them before her eyes rolled away from him and she started to pant.

Beside him Nettie Capron pushed Seamus back as Samantha gripped the bedsheet in both hands and started to groan. Her legs trembled beneath that grayed sheet.

He felt so damned helpless as the three women hovered close, attending his wife, while he could do nothing to take the pain, this excruciating travail, from her. In helplessness at her misery, he gasped, “I … I must get the post surgeon—”

“No, you won’t trouble him with this,” Elizabeth Burt corrected more sternly this time. “You best trust
me
in this: that man doesn’t know half of what any one of us knows about delivering your wife of this child, Mr. Donegan. Now—I’m warning you—don’t you dare get in the way, or we’ll have to ask you
to leave. And that means the end to bothering us with any more of that fool talk about the post surgeon.”

“Get in the way?” he squeaked. “She … Sam asked for me—”

Elizabeth Burt moved down the opposite side of the bed, where she squatted on the edge of the tick, raising the sheet slightly so that she could peer beneath it without exposing Sam’s legs. Donegan thought that most strange—wondering how these women figured he had put Sam with child if he hadn’t seen her legs, indeed every last delicious inch of her! The woman’s eyes came up to look at the others, then rested on his.

“It won’t be long now,” she explained, grim-lipped, as her eyes gazed down at the woman in labor. “Samantha—this child of yours is about ready to make its entrance into the world.”

“S-seamus.”

He turned and went down on his knee again at her side, stroking the back of one of her sweaty hands. From the nearby washstand he retrieved a damp, folded towel and dabbed at the pearling beads of sweat that glimmered on her brow and cheeks.

“Give me a kiss, p-please,” she gasped as if her throat was raw.

Leaning down, he brushed her cheek with his mouth self-consciously. Good manners and upbringing allowed that a man might lightly kiss his wife there while in public.

“No,” Sam declared, tapping her dry lips with one finger. “Kiss me here.”

The Irishman swallowed hard, his eyes darting to the other women before he leaned over Sam once more and laid his mouth on hers. He felt the press of her hand at the back of his head, preventing him from pulling away.

She held his face close, whispering, “I wanted the … the feel of your l-l-l-lips—”

Then she wrenched her hands down and was gripping the sheets once more, gritting her teeth and growling as the next contraction welled over her.

“That’s good! That’s good, Samantha!” Elizabeth exclaimed, observing the progress there between Sam’s legs.

“Bear down. Go on and bear down, Samantha,” instructed Martha Luhn as she pressed up at Seamus’s elbow, taking the towel from his hand and dabbing it against the hollow at the base of Sam’s throat where the sweat had pooled.

He stepped back a step in that crush of women and their dutiful purpose. Then another step, for the first time noticing how drenched she was with this labor. Sam’s face flushed with her exertion … oh, how it stood out against the white of that loose camisole, damp, plastered to the skin across her chest and her arms as if she had just been caught out in a summer thundershower. It appeared these women had taken off her most everything else she had been wearing earlier that evening for dinner with Mackenzie … most all of it: dress and petticoats and bloomers—then draped that sheet over her legs as they began this long, agonizing process.

He suddenly wondered what time it was—feeling guilty for not knowing how long he had been down at the saloon. Drinking, sharing stories with other men, while these women had been up here with Sam.

She was his wife. He should have been here all along.

He watched as Sam gasped, then went back to panting, almost like a dog, her head bobbing in rhythm each time she exhaled in those short, rough gusts of wind. Drawing her knees up as far as she could just as the others reminded her to do in their calming voices, assisting Sam as she struggled in lowering her head as far as she could, as if she were cramping up. Sam began a low shriek—

To him the room felt suddenly very, very warm. Then he remembered he still had on his worn canvas and blanket mackinaw, sooted and smudged with the smoke of many fires, slick with wear and tattered at the elbows and wrists from long years’ wilderness service.

He pulled his arms from it, one at a time, and dropped it carelessly in a far corner.

“Oh, no—Mr. Donegan,” Nettie Capron said. “You put your coat back on. I’m afraid you can’t stay.”

“S-stay!” Samantha contradicted.

Martha Luhn turned to Sam, quietly declaring, “No. It’s much, much better that he’s not here.”

“Why?” Sam asked in exhaustion as her head fell back against the pillows and comforter.

“Yeah,” Donegan agreed, taking a shaky step back toward the bed as Sam held her hand out to him again. “Why not?”

The women looked at one another for a moment while Sam laid her wet hand in his two big paws, imploring him with those red-rimmed eyes of hers. She said quietly, “C’mere—let me hold you—”

He settled to one knee again there at the side of the bed just in time to have her clench one of her hands around one of his instead of the sheet with the sudden terrible avalanche of the contraction. Seamus sensed the blood squeezed out of the hand, felt the bones grind together as if another, more powerful man had his own callused paw caught in the grip of a vise. In a moment his hand began to tingle with its own pain, just before Sam collapsed back against the comforter and pillows, panting, her tongue lolling.

“It’s not long now,” Elizabeth cheered, her eyes flicking up to Seamus suddenly, then back down to her work between Sam’s legs.

“What … what can I do to help?” he asked them, his eyes touching each one.

Nettie answered after glancing at the others. “You can stay right there at her side. Help your wife through each contraction, Mr. Donegan. Talk to her, talk her through each one.”

“T-talk … talk her through—”

“Do you still love me?” Sam interrupted, bringing her free hand alongside his cheek, turning his face so that he looked down at her.

He gazed back down at her face, studying her at last—finding her hair plastered to her brow, at her temples, soaking at the back of her neck where she had tied it back with a ribbon upon returning to this room after their walk down to the cottonwood grove by the river.

“L-love you? Of course I do,” Seamus answered. He slipped one of his hands free, brushing her cheek with his rough fingertips as she smiled up at him through glistening eyes. “I’ll always love you, Samantha.”

He watched her eyes widen with the coming contraction, her tongue darting out to flick over her lips with a little moisture, sweeping over the droplets of salty sweat that poured from her flesh. Again he daubed her brow and cheeks as she squeezed his hand through the coming and leaving of that circle of pain.

“Do … do you really love me?” she panted as she collapsed against the pillows. “Love me even tonight?”

He shifted beside the bed, leaning his face more closely over hers as he whispered, “I love you more tonight than I have ever loved you.”

Sensing his eyes filling, Seamus drew back a little, blinked,
and swiped at them with that damp towel. When he looked back down at her, he could see that Sam was weeping.

“Are you all right?” he begged, worried and anxious.

She forced a smile with the coming of the next contraction, tears suddenly gushing from the corners of her eyes. “I’ve n-never been b-better—”

The last word rushed out in a shriek as she clamped down on his hand and doubled up with the pain—panting, grunting, low and feral. The three midwives squeezed in around Samantha.

“That’s it!” Elizabeth cried. “It’s, here! Your baby’s here!”

With a jerk he looked down at Mrs. Burt, hoping for some sign of the child. Dear Mither of God—he prayed—protect them both at this moment!

“I see its head,” Elizabeth went on. “Such hair. So much hair!”

Sam fell back, her legs—indeed, her whole body—quaking with great, volcanic shudders. Back and forth he looked, his eyes moving between Samantha and Elizabeth Burt.

“The head is here,” the woman cried out, shifting her position between Sam’s legs now, climbing up on the bed herself to kneel between the knees and shoving the sheet out of the way so that it tumbled down upon Samantha’s great, round tummy. She glanced at Seamus quickly—as if to explain that duty must now dispense with propriety.

He nodded and looked away obediently, though he wanted so much to watch this child come forth. So much to watch its entrance into this world. Instead he turned back to kiss Sam on the forehead quickly at the moment she began to quiver with a new contraction, then began to growl as she hadn’t before.

“Yes, Sam!” Martha Luhn prodded. “Give it all you’ve got now!

Nettie Capron urged, “Push, Sam! Push!”

She had her fingernails digging into the palm of his hand so deeply, he didn’t know if the dampness he felt was sweat or blood. It didn’t matter. And then he glanced at Elizabeth Burt, saw her hovering close above Sam’s belly.

“Again!” Elizabeth ordered. “Push harder now, Sam. It’s here! Dear God—your beautiful baby’s here!”

At Samantha’s other shoulder Nettie Capron coaxed, “One
more good push and the baby will be out. Come, now. Give us one more good push.”

“P-p-push!” Sam gasped, straining, her face flush.

“That’s it!” Martha Luhn cheered.

Then Seamus turned quickly, saw the head already cradled in Mrs. Burt’s hands. At that very moment the child burst into a hair-raising squall. With the child’s cry Sam suddenly released the pressure she had on his hand and let out a great sigh. Seamus looked down as she collapsed back against the pillows, panting openmouthed like never before, her eyes clenched shut, tears streaming from their corners. It seemed everything had suddenly gone out of her. He felt queasy in that moment, afraid like never before that she might not have the strength to see this through. All these hours of labor. And now it must surely be early morning … after all that work.

“It’s a boy!”

He jerked around, wide-eyed as a mule on a narrow trail, staring at what Elizabeth Burt cradled in her arms. Seeing that dark glob of hair plastered against the strange little creature’s head, its face all pinched and red, streaked with white lather and gobbed with blood. Mrs. Burt shifted the child in her forearms there between Sam’s knees as Nettie Capron came to the side of the bed with a small blanket draped over her arms to receive the child.

“A b-boy?” Sam asked, trying to lift herself up to see, then tearing her eyes from the child for but a moment as they flicked into Seamus’s—as if asking for his approval.

“Boy?” he repeated, his lips barely moving, practically no sound escaping from his lips.

“You’re a father, Mr. Donegan!” Elizabeth Burt congratulated as she laid the newborn across Mrs. Capron’s arms, then went back to work between Sam’s legs, milking the umbilical cord toward the child. That done, the women tied a wrap of sewing thread around and around the cord two inches from the infant’s body, then knotted it off.

In amazement at it all, Seamus watched Martha Luhn snip the purple cord with a pair of scissors.

Only then did Nettie Capron straighten, shuffle back the tiny blanket from the face, and scoot down the side of the bed to lay the bundle within Sam’s arms.