She wanted to scream out, to beg him not to let anything happen to her baby, but then another awful spasm of pain struck her, and though a sound rose from her throat, there were no words. Instead, it was a piercing scream of agony.
“It’s all right,” the nurse told her. “You just let it out, honey. Just let it out.”
She screamed again, and once more her body felt as if it was being torn apart. And then, oddly, she felt something moving, moving quickly, slipping away from her.
The pain eased.
“The needle,” she heard Dr. Phillips say again, and could tell by the sound of his voice that something was wrong. Then he spoke once more. “Tie off the cord. Quick.” His voice rose. “Come on, nurse! Now!”
A moment later she heard the nurse speak.
“Is he all right, Dr. Phillips?”
Silence.
An unending silence, a silence that seemed to go on forever.
Then the sound of the doctor’s voice.
“He’s not making it …”
His voice went on, but Amelie wasn’t listening. She knew what the words meant.
Her baby had died.
After all these months, her baby had died.
But it couldn’t have happened.
It wasn’t right.
It wasn’t dead! It wasn’t! She wouldn’t let it be!
A new kind of pain washed over her. Not a physical pain this time, but a pain that seemed to engulf her whole being.
“Nooo!” she screamed. “No! I want my baby. Give me my baby!”
The nurse — whose name she couldn’t even remember — tried to comfort her.
“It’s too late, honey,” she whispered. “He’s gone. Your baby’s gone, but you’re going to be all right.”
“No!” Amelie screamed again. “I want my baby! Give me my baby!” By sheer force of will she sat up on the birthing table, her eyes darting around, searching for her baby.
But except for herself, Dr. Phillips, and the nurse, the delivery room was empty.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Phillips said gently, coming around to take her hand and ease her back down onto the table. “There was nothing we could do. Even last week, if we’d taken it, we couldn’t have saved it. It’s not your fault, Amelie. Just remember that. There’s nothing you could have done, and nothing I could have done. It’s just one of those things that happen sometimes.”
Amelie listened to him numbly, heard him offer her a shot, something to make her sleep. She shook her head.
Then she started to cry.
• • •
The argument between Craig and Barbara was still raging when the telephone rang, and only when Jenny appeared in the dining room doorway, gazing uncertainly at her parents, did they finally interrupt themselves.
“Someone wants to talk to you, Mommy,” Jenny said shyly. When her mother was gone, she went and scrambled into her father’s lap. “Are you and Mommy going to get a divorce?” she asked, her voice quavering.
Craig, immediately sorry for the fight the little girl had been forced to overhear, hugged her close. “No, of course not. Mommies and daddies just do that sometimes. Don’t you ever argue with your friends?”
Jenny nodded, but said nothing.
“Well, it doesn’t mean you’re not friends anymore, does it?” Jenny’s arms tightened around his neck, but he felt her head shake. “And that’s the way it is with mommies and daddies. Just because they don’t agree on something doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.”
Barbara reappeared in the doorway, her expression tense. “I have to go to the hospital,” she said. “It’s Amelie Coulton. She’s just had a stillbirth, and they need me.”
Instantly, the last of Craig’s annoyance with his wife evaporated, and when he looked at her, his eyes reflected his concern. “Can you handle it all right? Do you want me to go with you?”
Barbara shook her head. She’d been prepared for this — Warren Phillips had told her a week ago that it looked like there might be complications with Amelie’s pregnancy. Indeed, he’d recommended a cesarean section, but Amelie had refused. “It’ll be fine,” she’d whispered in her odd, little-girl voice. “The Lord’ll look after me an’ my baby. An’ I wanta have him the regular way.”
Barbara, who had been counseling Amelie from the moment the young woman had first appeared in her office six months before, shyly asking if there was any way she could see a doctor even though she didn’t have any money, silently reflected that the Lord hadn’t been looking out for Amelie when he let her get pregnant. But by last week she had known her well enough to keep the thought to herself. Despite the fact that Amelie was barely eighteen and lived with a husband who frightened her in one of the shacks in the bayous, she was much stronger-willed than the other swamp-rat women, most of whom never ventured into Villejeune at all.
“I know what’ll happen if I have my baby at home,” she’d said. “He’ll die, just like everyone else’s. An’ I want my baby, Miz Sheffield.”
“It’s going to be hard for Amelie,” Barbara said now, picking up her purse from the sideboard and kissing both her husband and her daughter. “Her husband didn’t even bother to come into town with her.”
Craig’s eyes clouded over. “Her husband? George Coulton?”
Barbara’s lips tightened. “That’s the one. From what I gather, he’s not much of a husband.”
“He may well not be a husband at all,” Craig observed, his brows arching. “Tim Kitteridge’s boys brought a body out of the swamp last night, and Tim thinks it might be George Coulton.”
Barbara stared at her husband, her mind racing. Did Amelie know? Was that what had brought on her labor? But then for some reason she found herself focusing in on a single word that Craig had uttered. “Thinks?” she repeated. “You mean he doesn’t know who the body is?”
Craig shrugged helplessly. “Apparently it didn’t look like Coulton, and there wasn’t any ID. But Coulton’s gone, and Tim says that even Amelie admitted the corpse might have been him.”
“Dear God,” Barbara breathed. “If it’s true, then that baby was all she had.” She forced a smile. “And no matter what I can tell her, she’s going to be devastated.”
She left the house and drove to the clinic, where the evening nurse told her to go directly to Amelie’s room. “How’s she doing?” Barbara asked.
The nurse spread her hands helplessly. “No better or worse than you could expect.”
Barbara took a deep breath, gripped her purse and proceeded to the patient’s wing. From a room at the end of the hall, she heard the sound of a woman sobbing. She hurried toward the room, knowing how Amelie must be feeling.
Exactly as she had once felt herself.
“Amelie?” She spoke the name softly, but there was no response from the distraught woman who lay on her side, her face to the wall, her body shaking with her grief. Barbara crossed the room, dropped into the chair next to the bed, and laid a gentle hand on Amelie Coulton’s shoulder. “Amelie, it’s me. Barbara Sheffield.”
“G-Go away,” Amelie moaned.
“Amelie, I’m here to help you.”
Amelie shrank away from Barbara’s touch. “Cain’t nobody help me,” she sobbed. “My baby … I want my baby.”
“I know,” Barbara crooned. “I know. But sometimes these things happen.”
Suddenly Amelie rolled over, her eyes feverish and angry, fixing on Barbara. “Why won’t they let me have him?” she asked, her voice pleading.
Barbara’s heart wrenched as she drew the young woman into her arms. “Oh, Amelie, I’m so sorry.”
“They won’t bring him,” Amelie sobbed. “How kin I take care of him when they won’t even bring him? He wants his ma!”
Barbara stroked Amelie’s damp and tangled hair. “It’s all right, sweetheart. The Lord’s taking care of your little baby.”