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Autu do you think my baby’s been dead?" Katherine turns toward

"Five days, maybe less," I answer my patient "I heard the heartbeat when I checked you last Friday, and you said the babychurch Shut your eyes now Try You need to rest"

I place my new leather-bound journal on the aze across the dark room Fire crackles in the blue-tiled fireplace, flickers on the armoire, the canopy of the birth bed, and the wallpapered walls A watery i tableauburn hair, a straight nose, and a round chin, pretty enough but not beautiful

I’ at the bedside of Mrs Katherine MacIntosh, the wife of William, owner of the MacIntosh Consolidated Mines Yesterday was Black Tuesday, that’s what they’re calling it Wall Street fell, and then I had to tell the MacIntoshes that their unborn baby was dead The crash, a faraway earthquake, rumbled even here in Appalachia, and I’m thankful I don’t keep my money in the bank; not that I have any

As I desperately searched for signs of life in Katherine’s wo my wooden fetoscope over her round belly, up and down and then across, a line of custoet their money out of the First Mountain Federal in Liberty The queue of men snaked down Chestnut and around the corner to Fayette, though any fool who strolled along Main and saw the closed shops should have knoas coin to shut down in Union County, everything else does

"Hold me, Patience I’m so cold" Katherine reaches for my hand and pulls me toward the bed

Mary Proudfoot, the MacIntoshes’ cook, and her grown daughter, Bitsy, are asleep in their room by the kitchen, curled around each other like kittens William MacIntosh snores in his bedroom down the hall This room is not chilly It’s Katherine’s heart that is cold, knotted up like a chunk of ice thrown up on the banks of the Hope River It doesn’t seem proper for a midwife to sleep with her patient, but if I rest a few hours, what harh this

I breathe out a long sigh, carefully place lasses with the journal, kick off my slippers,her coh when, in the winter, I used to sleep with Mrs Kelly and Nora

I’d like to tell this mother about my own stillborn baby, the one I carried when I was sixteen, the very same baby whose father died before he was born, but I can’t add to her burdens

I pull the covers over Katherine’s shoulder and put my arms around her as she sobs in her sleep The loss of this child is all the sadder because her first son, not yet two, a little blond boy just learning to talk, died of pneumonia last winter

Her contractions are mild and coht crawls under the heavy drapes illus on the tall maple armoire and the pattern on the red-flowered carpet, Katherine sits straight up in bed, her hand on her belly

"I felt it," she says I rub sleep fro she dreams

I’d listened for the sound of the infant’s heartbeat with my wooden horned fetoscope for a full hour yesterday as the roo to hear but the ru of the woman’s bowels No tick-tick-tick of a baby’s heartbeat No baby kicks, either I’d even called for Dr Blu on top--and he listened for another thirtyKatherine screamed when I first told her the baby was dead, and when the physician nodded agreement, patted her hand, and took her husband out of the rooht to your heart I’d only heard it once before, at Manny McConnell’s delivery in Pittsburgh, when Mrs Kelly, the et Even if you were outside on a warh an open , you would knohat I mean

Downstairs, on William MacIntosh’s new RCA console, we could hear the faint voice of a newscaster describing as happening to the stock market Then, before I had time to discuss the case with Dr Blum, he was called away to attend a sick child and left the stillbirth to ned up to deliver at home instead of in his sht I’d knohat to do

Katherine is still kneading her white belly like bread dough, pushing it back and forth "I felt it," she says "I felt soas bubble or o to the bathroohts, the MacIntoshes have an indoor latrine and running water In town this is not unusual, but inare still rare

"I felt it I did I know I did"

"Katherine" I straighten my rumpled flowered shift, e with a patient, and put on o to the toilet I’ll listen for a heartbeat again after you’ve relieved yourself, but don’t get your hopes up Your baby’s spirit has gone back to Heaven" I talk like this, as if I’m a believer, but in truth I haven’t been to church, except for funerals and weddings, sincewith 150 other union men This was back in the fall of ’21, a bad ti woke er sure

In the MacIntoshes’ water closet, I study the apparatus The high porcelain potty has a round polished oak seat, more like a piece of furniture than a commode When Katherine finishes, she pulls the brass chain and water rushes in to rinse out the contents

Stepping out of the so some more!" She’s a tall woman, taller than I, with the face of a film star and a runant wohtdress and plunks down on the seat again

I let out hten the bed While I’!"