Natural Causes Read Free Page B

Lisa said. She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I don’t think I’ve even started to dilate yet.”
    Her mind’s eye saw her cervix clearly. It was just beginning to open.
    “Want me to check?” Heidi asked.
    Heidi was a nurse who had spent several years on an OB floor. Now she was poised to assist Dr. Baldwin with the home birth.
    “I don’t think there’s any need,” Lisa said, rubbing her fingers now.
    “Something the matter?”
    “No. My hands feel a little stiff, that’s all—”
    “Might be retained water. Let me check your blood pressure.”
    Heidi slipped a blood pressure cuff around Lisa’s arm and set her stethoscope over Lisa’s brachial artery. The pressure, ninety over sixty-five, was a bit lower than it had been, although still in the normal range for early labor. Heidi mulled over the change, then decided it was of no significance. She wrote the pressure down in her notebook and made a mental note to check it again in ten or fifteen minutes.
    “Who’s going to win the pool?” Lisa asked.
    “Assuming it’s today?”
    “Oh, it’s going to be today. You can count on it.”
    “In that case, Kevin will be thirty dollars richer.”
    Kevin Dow, a painter, was another of the residents of 313 Knowlton Street. There were ten of them in all. Most were artists or writers, and none of them made much money. They called their living arrangement a commune, and in that light shared almost everything. Lisa, who sold her pottery and occasionally refinished old furniture, had lived in the massive, gabled house for almost three years. And although she had twice slept with one of the men in the commune, she felt certain the child within her was not his and had made that clear to him from the outset, much to his relief.
    In fact, who the father was, or was not, did not matter to Lisa one bit. The baby would be raised by her and her alone. He would be raised in simplicity, with love and patience and understanding, and without the pressure of expectations.
    With Heidi’s assistance, she stood and walked over to the window. Her right arm felt tired and heavy.
    “Can I get you anything?” Heidi asked.
    Lisa absently rubbed at her shoulder as she stared out at a squirrel that was leaping deftly along a series of branches that seemed far too pliant to hold it.
    “Maybe some cocoa,” she said.
    “Coming up.… Lisa, are you okay?”
    “I—I’m fine. I think another one’s about to hit. How long has it been?”
    “Five minutes, three seconds.”
    “I think I’ll do this one standing.”
    Lisa leaned forward and braced herself against the sill. Then she breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and tried to send her mind inside her body. But nothing happened—no images, no sense of peace, nothing—nothing except pain. She was trying too hard, she thought. She had to be centered—that’s what Dr. Baldwin had taught her—centered and prepared for each contraction. For the first time she felt a nugget of fear. Maybe she didn’t knowhow bad it was going to get. Maybe she didn’t have what it takes.
    She gritted her teeth and stretched her arms and legs tightly.
    “How long?” she asked.
    “Forty seconds … fifty … a minute … a minute ten.…”
    The intensity of the contraction began to lessen.
    “A minute twenty. You okay?”
    “I am now,” Lisa said, backing away from the window and settling down on the futon. Her forehead was dotted with sweat. “That one was a bear. I wasn’t ready.”
    Lisa swallowed and tasted blood. She probed with her tongue and found the small rent she had made by accidentally biting down on the inside of her cheek. The pain of the contraction was now completely gone, but the weird ache in her arm and shoulder persisted.
    Heidi left the room and returned just in time for the next contraction. With Heidi’s help and better preparation, Lisa found this contraction was much more manageable. Heidi slipped on the blood pressure cuff and once again took a reading.