Page 99 of The Frozen River

THE ROBIN’S NEST SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28

“I told Dr. Page that his services would not be required today.” Mrs. Ney, the prim, gray-haired housekeeper shuts the bedroom door behind me, adding, “He was none too pleased.”

“I don’t care what pleases him,” Eliza Robbins says, breathing through her teeth, air hissing in and out as the contraction seizes her. She stands at the window, hands upon her belly. Even in travail I can hear the sophisticated lilt of a well-bred Englishwoman. “I won’t let him anywhere near me.”

“Your husband wasn’t pleased either. He called for Dr. Page, after all,” Mrs. Ney chides.

She rolls her eyes. “He has no say in the matter. Not unless he wants to push this child out.”

Clever girl, I think. Despite the slow encroachment of modern obstetrics into the realm of childbirth, it is still—thankfully—a woman’s prerogative to decide who will deliver her child. Although I worry this, too, will change.

Mrs. Ney appears unperturbed. “Dr. Page did not leave. He’s keeping Mr. Robbins company downstairs.”

Eliza snorts. “With lit pipes no doubt.”

“They are attempting smoke rings. The sitting room will have to be aired out tomorrow.”

“Harvard men.” Eliza shakes her head. “Always trying to act like Oxford men.”

She groans then, deep and guttural, and I spring from my chair to go stand behind the young woman to make sure she doesn’t fall.

“I’m fine,” she says, voice thick with pain. “It’s just that this one… ggggrrrr.”

I’m not sure why the girl is still standing. Most women—those in labor for the first time at least—refuse to walk the room after a certain point in labor. Eliza isn’t in transition yet, but she is close—her water finally having broken an hour ago—and she paces before the window, hands on her lower back, wet footprints trailing behind her.

She wears only a shift, and her fine, brown hair is loose, curling against her damp forehead. With the warm glow from the hearth and the candles scattered about the room, she looks like something out of a Renaissance painting. Pink cheeks and round body. Every so often, I tend a patient who makes the act of birth a thing of beauty. They make it look like what it really is, at its most elemental—right and natural—and I cannot help but marvel.

Eliza Robbins has no family in attendance—or at least none that are blood related. Mrs. Ney—once her governess, now her housekeeper—has been friend and family since the girl was born in Manchester. When Eliza married Chandler and moved first to Boston, then to Hallowell, the wiry sprite of a woman came as well, and is at ease in the delivery room as before the cookstove. It is not duty that brought Mrs. Ney here, but devotion. The woman, widowed young, has no children of her own. So it is Eliza she lives for, and soon, the child she carries will inherit that devotion.

Upon my arrival, Mrs. Ney assessed me, head to foot, and pronounced that I would do nicely. Eliza Robbins has not questioned my instructions once as a result.

“May I ask why you sent Dr. Page away?” I ask.

Eliza answers with another grunt, rounding her spine and grabbing onto the window sash for support. After thirty seconds the contraction subsides, and she takes a long breath through her nose.

“Because Grace Sewell told me he is an idiot. She said he nearly killed her with all that laudanum. Said you were right about everything, but no one would listen—not even her.” Eliza finally makes her way to the bed, and we help her scoot back against the pillows. She sighs in relief. “This might be my first child, Mistress Ballard, but I am the oldest of five myself, and I’ve seen several come into the world. Haven’t I, Ney?”

“More’n enough.”

“Chandler and I tried for two years for this baby, and I don’t want some clod of a doctor killing me before I can see it.”

Chandler Robbins hails from Boston—as so many of the newer residents in Hallowell do—and, like his friend David Sewell, is a Harvard graduate. But whereas Sewell set his sights on starting a business across the river, Robbins has, for the last several years, been methodically building a boatyard on the peninsular outcropping of Bumberhook Point, a mile and half south of the Hook. Like any good entrepreneur, he knows that profitable industry relies on raw materials, easy transportation, and ready energy. The Kennebec provides him all three. Hallowell and its booming lumber trade provide the rest. He owns the point and everything on it, but his home is in the Hook, on Water Street, overlooking the river. It sits on a rise and has been dubbed the Robin’s Nest, no doubt a nod to both its elevated position and the crow’s nest atop every ship that Chandler builds.

For all his wealth and prominence, he chose a wife who—at first glance—seems below his station. Eliza is not pretty. She looks rather owlish with her big, brown eyes and feathery hair, but what she lacks in appearance she more than makes up for in heart and intellect. Having met her, it isn’t hard to understand that Chandler—resourceful, practical, affluent—has chosen a partner and not just a wife.

“Eliza,” I warn, “I will have to touch you now. To see how far along you are.”

“Do what you must. But don’t think less of me if I curse. My mother was French.”

And that is all it takes for me to like the young woman. Sometimes it is easy to bond with a patient. Sometimes it is impossible. Usually, I don’t bother myself either way because I have only one job in a birthing room. But the instant camaraderie does make that job easier, and I help Eliza scoot her shift up under her breasts. I can tell by the shape of her belly that the baby has dropped into the birth canal.

“Ready?” I ask.

“No.” Eliza laughs, then gasps as her stomach turns to a vice.

My inspection will hurt less during a contraction, so I slide my hand into Eliza’s body once the grinding pain reaches its peak. Inches. That’s all it takes before I find what I’m looking for. “The head is down. Your baby is in position. Are you ready to push?”

Those wide owl eyes fill with tears, but not of pain. Fear. It is the most natural emotion, and I grab her hand.