A Midwife Crisis
Lisa Cooke
LEISURE BOOKS 
NEW YORK CITY
“How’s it coming with the fiancé choosing?” John asked.
Katie set a stack of books on a table and frowned. “Not well, I’m afraid.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure what a good husband should be like. I’ve never had one.”
“Neither have I,” he said, hoping she’d leave him out of this.
“No, but you’ve been married. What’s most important?”
Love? Trust? Sex? Hell, he couldn’t point out the last one. “I think that changes depending on the person. You’ll have to decide for yourself what’s important.”
She lowered her gaze to her paper, her cheeks suddenly turning pink. “I think he’ll have to be a good kisser.”
His eyes riveted to her mouth as he thought of kissing her full, soft lips. Her tongue darted out to moisten the lower one, and he felt it in his gut…or maybe a little lower. Would she like his kiss? He suspected he would like hers very much. Squeezing his eyes shut, he attempted to jerk his mind back from its sidetrack. He had no business even thinking about kissing Katie Napier, but for some reason he was incapable of thinking about anything else.
To my wonderful children, Gus and Bethany; you’ve made your momma very proud.
Wayne County, West Virginia, 1898
Grandma Cole was as good at dying as anyone Katie Napier knew. Always careful to grimace only slightly or to moan with the tiniest inflection, she had the art of suffering down pat.
“Katie?”
her grandma called from the back room.
Unfortunately, she also had the uncanny ability to waylay Katie’s plans, sight unseen. Katie rolled her eyes and set down her reticule. Her trip into town was about to be postponed.
“Yes, Grandma?” she yelled from the kitchen.
“Do you have anything for my rheumatism? It’s hurting something fierce today.
“I’ll fix you some willow tea,” she answered, already stoking the fire in the old stove.
The large cast-iron contraption took up most of the corner in the little kitchen in the log cabin, and this time of year the fire stayed burning even if it was just a low sizzle. The stove heated the one-story cabin better than the fireplace, and it required less fuel. A definite benefit considering her pa never seemed to get around to chopping firewood.
Katie set the kettle on the stove and adjusted the
damper in the blackened flue. A quick gust of cold air swooshed under the kitchen door, lifting the edge of the rag rug near the sink. She took a moment to tuck the rug into the threshold before returning to the cupboard to find her willow tea. That threshold had needed to be replaced for months now, but as with everything else around here, if Katie didn’t do it, it wasn’t going to get done
The kettle steamed as though it read her mind. No sense in getting worked up about the chores that needed to be done. None of the others seemed to care whether the cabin fell in around their heads.
“Katie?” Grandma yelled. “Is that the kettle I hear?”
“Yes’m,” Katie answered, pouring the hot water into a cup and placing the tea ball in to steep. “It’ll be ready shortly.”
If she hurried, she should be able to grab her coat, take the tea to Grandma, and get out the door before anyone else could postpone her trip.
The front door opened, and a rustle of dried leaves swept in with Grandpa. “Mornin’, Katie girl.” He attempted to hang his jacket on a peg by the door, but he missed, and like the leaves, he left it to lie as he ambled off to rest by the fire. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did in the course of a day, but whatever it was, it required a lot of resting.
“Anything to eat?” he asked, stretching out in a chair by the hearth. Yawning, he scratched his belly in preparation for his morning nap. Not too unlike the coonhound already curled up by the fire, except Ol’
Blue had chased some critters that morning and actually had a reason to rest.
Katie sighed. “Can’t you fix it yourself?”
She grabbed a broom, hung his jacket on the peg, and opened the door to sweep the forest back out to the porch. She was careful not to step on the rotted board by the door. If she fell through and broke her leg, they’d all starve to death before they found the kitchen.
“Now, Katie, you know I would if I could,” Grandpa said, sounding even more forlorn than Ol’ Blue.
Returning inside the cabin, she set the broom by the door and grabbed her cloak from its peg. “There’s bread in the Hoosier, but be sure to rewrap it so it won’t get stale.”
She pulled on her cloak and stepped out the door, closing it as Grandpa whined, “But, Katie—”
Her family hadn’t intentionally set out to ruin her day; they just didn’t like it whenever she went to town. The three-mile walk into Kenova would take most of the morning, and while she was gone they had to fend for themselves. Not that they were lazy…overly…it was just that their health plagued them.
Overly.
Pa had a bad back, though how he got it was a mystery. One day he just declared he had one, and there it was. Grandma Cole had been afflicted by a similar unknown malady soon after Ma died. Grandma took to her bed to die too, declaring that life without her baby girl was too hard to bear and she’d just as soon go home to the Lord. Of course, that had been more than four
years ago, and the Lord still hadn’t seen fit to take her. Maybe He didn’t want to have to fix willow tea every whipstitch.
Grandpa Cole was a different story. Actually, he had a different story about every time anyone asked. His current one involved something bad with his knee, or was it his foot? Didn’t matter, whatever it was, it was bad and required a lot of resting.
But despite everything, Katie loved them dearly. They were all she had, and from the looks of things, all she was ever going to get.
The crunching of fallen leaves underfoot was the only sound as she walked down the path through the woods toward town. As usual, the crisp fall air lifted her spirits and relaxed the knotted muscles in her neck. So relaxed, in fact that she’d made it to the bottom of the hill before she realized she hadn’t taken Grandma her tea.
Oh well. Grandma would live, despite her earnest efforts.
Truth be known, Katie really didn’t need to make this trip into Kenova, but it was the only time she didn’t have to care for anyone but herself. Besides, one of her dresses needed a new button. The old one was…scratched…probably.
It felt good to get out of the log cabin and into the sunshine, if only for a few hours. Tomorrow she had to gather herbs and begin fixing teas and poultices for winter. A lot of people depended on her for medicines and such, and she couldn’t let them down. But today was for Katie, and she intended to enjoy every minute of it.
She patted the book of Shakespeare’s plays tucked
inside her winter coat. It was time to return it to Frank Davis. He had an extensive collection of books, and he’d allowed Katie to borrow them ever since she could read. Unfortunately, she had read all he had, most of them more than once. She hugged her beloved tome once more. Parting was such sweet sorrow.
Dr. John Keffer adjusted the diploma hanging on the wall in his office for the tenth time. It wasn’t that it kept tipping; he just didn’t have anything else to do. In the two weeks since he’d set up practice in this little town, he’d had fewer than five patients, and two of those were afflicted with nothing more serious than curiosity. Either these people were extremely healthy or they didn’t realize a genuine doctor now lived in their midst.
Not a backwoods hoyden with a bag of herbs or some smelly poultice, but a doctor with a medical degree from Harvard University. They should be pleased, honored in fact. But instead they were conspicuously absent.
“Daddy?” his daughter called from the doorway.
“Julia, you know you aren’t to be in here when Daddy’s working.” Sounding curt even to his ears, he tried to soften his response with a smile. He hoped her five-year-old mind wouldn’t realize it was forced.
Large blue eyes widened as she cocked her head to search for something in the room. Tiptoeing to the window, she opened the window seat, then shook her head so deliberately that her copper-colored ringlets bounced. Then she stooped down to look under a table and shook her head, obviously failing again.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, when his curiosity finally overcame his impatience.
She brought her finger to her lips and made a tiny shushing sound. “Sick people,” she whispered.
Sick people.
He’d been looking for those himself. “Evidently, the people in this part of the country are very healthy.” Or couldn’t read the sign outside his door that said
Doctor
. That possibility seemed more plausible.
“Oh,” she said, before her dimples flashed around her smile. “Can we go home, then? Maybe Mommy would come back if we go home.”
“I’ve told you a thousand times,” he snapped, “your mother can’t come home.” John clamped shut his mouth, forcing his gaze away from the hurt in his daughter’s eyes. She was only a child. How could he expect her to understand something that was beyond his grasp as well?
“Julia?” Mrs. Adkins stepped into the room. The old housekeeper reached her hand toward Julia before glancing nervously at John. “I’m sorry, Dr. Keffer. I was making biscuits, and the next thing I knew, she’d took off.”
He nodded curtly, then walked to his desk and picked up a piece of paper he pretended to read. “Yes, well, be sure to keep her out of here when I’m working.”
Mrs. Adkins took Julia and hurried from the room as though she expected him to bite. Probably wise. He’d never been known to have a biting problem, but lately anything was possible.
He pitched the paper back on the desk and walked
to the window. There were no patients lining up outside his home or any ambling toward the downstairs room he used as his office. Looked like another day of adjusting the frames on his wall. He frowned. Waiting around for something to happen hadn’t been productive to this point. Maybe it was time to take matters into his own hands.
Leaving the sanctuary of his office, he ventured to the kitchen. It was rare for him to enter that part of the house, and the coziness he encountered surprised him. A fire burned in the fireplace, and the smell of beef stew filled the air.
Mrs. Adkins had her biscuit dough rolled out on the counter, and Julia sat on a tall stool cutting circles in the dough with a tin cutter. Flour covered both the counter and Julia as Mrs. Adkins sang quietly under her breath. A pang of a memory caused his throat to constrict.
Lois used to sing like that.
“Mrs. Adkins?”
She gasped and spun toward him. “I’m sorry, Dr. Keffer, I didn’t hear you call for me. Do you need something?”
“I didn’t call for you.”
“Oh.” She nodded, then waited for him to explain his sudden and unusual appearance in the kitchen. And for a brief moment, intense loneliness wrapped around his heart.
“I wondered if I could ask you a question,” he said, forcing his mind back from its darkness.
She smiled in relief as though she’d expected him to lash into her. Had he been that difficult? “I was wondering
if you had an opinion as to why I’ve had so few patients.”
Her smile faltered, then returned with no small effort on her part. “Maybe nobody’s ailin’.”
“Mrs. Adkins, you and I both know that is not the case.”
Her round cheeks flushed as she glanced toward the floor and cleared her throat—an obvious delay tactic. “Maybe it’s just because nobody knows you. Folk are kind of shy around outsiders.”
“But I’m not truly an outsider. This was my grandfather’s home.”
“Yes, but you never lived here, and folk don’t remember you visiting as a child.”
What she said was true. Even he remembered very little about his visits to this town. “Thank you. I shall remedy that immediately.” He turned to leave, then realized he didn’t know where to remedy it. “Where should I go to meet the locals?”
She wiped her hands against her apron and wrinkled her gray eyebrows in thought. “Lots of folk visit down at the store, and of course, everybody goes to church on Sunday. If you was to go there, you’d get to meet ’bout everyone sooner or later.”
The store he could deal with. Church? He hadn’t been on speaking terms with God for some time now, but if it would help these simple people trust him, maybe he could tolerate it.
“I’m going out for a while. I’ll be back for dinner.”
Trust was an important thing. How stupid for him not to realize it had been the cause of his problem. Luckily, it would be easy to fix. After the people met
him, they would realize he was an intelligent, highly educated man, more than capable of tending to their medical needs. Once he got past this obstacle, he would probably need an assistant to help with the throngs who would seek his help.
Right.
Grabbing his coat from the hall closet, he stepped out into the clear fall day. The bright oranges and reds of the maple trees contrasted sharply against the brilliant blue of the sky. As if an overzealous artist had painted the hills around town, stopping just short of the river as it snaked its way past.
The bright colors irritated him more than pleased him. The world had no right to be anything other than gray. It didn’t fit.
Nothing did.
Picking up his pace, he headed for the store Mrs. Adkins felt would be the bastion of the local populace. He’d only visited the establishment once, when he’d first arrived in town. Mrs. Adkins had taken care of the purchases after she was employed, but perhaps he needed to take over that duty until he was no longer considered a stranger.
A bell jingled at the top of the door when he pulled it open to enter. The smell of tobacco and freshly ground coffee met him as he walked into the store.
A potbellied stove sat in the corner, its heat filling the interior as well as providing a central area for customers to sit and chat. Five men occupied an assortment of rocking chairs and benches around the stove, their conversation stopping abruptly when they noticed him.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a form of greeting.
“Mornin’,” a few of the men answered.
He nodded and walked around the store, pretending to look for things.
“Can I help you?” An older man ambled over behind the counter. His red bow tie and matching suspenders stood out starkly against the white of his shirt. Curious blue eyes looked at John over the top of a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose.
“I’m Dr. John Keffer.” He held out his hand. “I’ve just set up practice here in town.”
“Frank Davis.” The man shook John’s hand. “I seen your sign out at the old Myers house. Wondered who you was.”
“Robert Myers was my grandfather.”
“You Julia’s boy?”
John nodded. “I named my daughter after her.”
“I remember when your ma got married and moved away. What brings you to these parts?”
Good question. How could he explain to him it was because New York had become unbearable and there was nowhere else to run? He couldn’t, at least not now in Frank Davis’s store with several men listening while they pretended real hard not to.
“I decided this would be a great place to raise my daughter.” He forced another smile. He was getting pretty good at that. “It’s beautiful here, and there are no other doctors around. Right?”
“Well, we don’t have no real doctors, I don’t suppose. But we got Katie.”