Page 139 of The Frozen River

“Make it stop. Please,” Rebecca begs when another contraction begins its relentless march through her body.

I look to Doctor, not because I don’t know what to do, but because she is Rebecca’s choice and I don’t want to press my help where it isn’t wanted.

“The baby will not turn down. I have already tried,” Doctor says.

“You have tried from the inside as well?”

She shakes her head. “Pas encore. That requires deux. Une for turning. And une for holding the mother down.”

Rebecca is wilting, exhausted from the long effort of trying to expel this child from the confines of her body.

I plunge my hands into the wash bucket, scrub them with lye soap, then join Doctor at the foot of the bed. It has been stripped, all the blankets piled in a corner, and an old quilt is folded beneath Rebecca to catch the blood and water. There is—mercifully—not an alarming amount of either. But the scent of birth permeates the room.

The human body has a smell. Not just perspiration. Or defecation. Flatulence. Blood. But the deep parts of a person. Damp and earthy, tinged with the metallic bite of iron. All the moving, beating things that comprise our inmost being. They smell like the natural world, humid and verdant, like soil after the rain. But those are scents that a person rarely notices until a moment like this. Births. Accidents. Injuries. The various ways in which we are turned inside out.

“When did your pains start?” I ask.

“After…” She grinds her teeth together. “Noon. In the afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you send for help earlier?”

There, the desperation in her eyes speaks the truth. “Because I do not want this baby to come.”

Rebecca has been laboring for nine hours with a breech presentation and is fast approaching the limits of what her body and soul can bear. Her movements are weak and rubbery, exhausted.

“It has to come, or you will die,” I tell her.

Slowly, the realization of what I am saying hits her. “My boys…”

“They still need you. Isaac still needs you. So we must get this baby out. In order to do that, we have to turn it.”

“All right.”

“But we cannot do that from the outside.” A pause and then I say, “It is going to hurt. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rebecca bobs her head, but I can’t tell whether it is a nod or a shake. And whether it hurts or not, the work must be done if Rebecca is to survive this night.

Doctor presses her palms together as though praying, then brings them to her face, thumbs brushing her nose. She whispers something in French, and the only word I recognize is Dieu.

God.

When Doctor opens her eyes again, her only focus is the entrance to Rebecca’s womb and the child trapped beyond.

“We must wait until the pains ease,” she says. “It cannot be done before.”

This contraction is long and crushing, deep in Rebecca’s back, and she arches against it, wailing so loudly that the air catches in her throat, making her cough, then gag.

“Breathe,” I say. “In through your nose. Out through your mouth.”

The sound of her agony is the most difficult part, but it must be set aside, even knowing that with her boys, Rebecca birthed them in steely, resolved silence. Nary a moan the entire time. So this difference—the shrieking terror—unnerves me, and I cannot help but wonder how much goes beyond the physical pain of the child’s arrival and lies with that of its conception.

“Go up. Beside her. When I tell you, press on the top of her belly.” Doctor taps the heel of her hand. “With this.”

I do as I’m told, and as we wait for the last waves of the contraction to fade, I brush the wet hair away from Rebecca’s brow and the tears from her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca whispers, “for not calling for you. I didn’t…”

“Hush. You have nothing to be sorry for.”