The Mountain Midwife (21 page)

“I thought,” Hunter said drily, “people gave way to you on the mountain.”

“They always have. But that truck . . .” She closed her eyes and pictured the jacked-up pickup coming toward them.

And saw another vision of another jacked-up pickup speeding toward her. This was on the mountain. That was in her driveway.

“You recognized it?” Hunter asked.

“Maybe.” Ashley turned in her seat. “Are you all right, Mary Kate?”

She nodded. She didn’t sound okay. Her breath wheezed in and out like an asthmatic bellows. If worse came to worst, Ashley could administer oxygen to Mary Kate. She always carried oxygen in her vehicle for when babies needed it after birth. Right now the best thing was to get them out of the mud and into town and the hospital.

Ashley turned back to Hunter. “How do we get out of here?”

“Depends. Do you have a jack?”

“Of course.”

“And something solid like an old rug?”

“I carry kitty litter in the winter but, no, not anything like an old rug.”

“Perhaps we can use some of these rocks to create traction.” He glanced back at Mary Kate. “Sit tight.”

“I can get out if that’ll help.”

“Not on your life.” Ashley reached between the seats and pressed Mary Kate’s hand. “We’ll do fine.”

They all looked out the windows, streaked with water as though they sat beneath a waterfall.

“We could always call Triple A,” Hunter suggested.

Ashley glared at him. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No.”

“I thought you’d driven in worse places than this.”

“I have—with at least one other male along.”

“Who is, of course, stronger and more resilient.”

“Stronger, anyway.”

Ashley scowled at him, then pulled out her phone. Zero bars of service.

Hunter did the same. “I had some service in the hollow.”

“I have no idea why the phone service is so sporadic. Tower placement, I suspect. There’s one on the other side of the holler, but not on this part.” Ashley shoved her phone into her pocket, then removed it and stuck it in the glove box. “I’ll go get the jack out.”

She wasn’t convinced it would work in this mud.

“No, I will.” Hunter put his phone with hers. “I got us into this, I’ll get us out.”

They both got out and converged on the right rear panel. The wheel was nearly rim-deep in mud.

“I hope you have a shovel too.” Hunter gave her a dubious glance.

Ashley ducked her head. “I haven’t put in my winter supplies yet.”

“I’m not sure this is stable enough to use a jack even long enough to get some more solid material under that wheel.” He kicked at the mud. It oozed around his boot like thick porridge.

“Maybe we could roll some rocks in here and fill in the mud.”

They looked at the rock breaks on the side of the road. They weren’t loose, merely parts of the mountain shoving up through the soil. Without a shovel, transferring gravel from the road would simply take too long, if they could manage it at all.

Hunter shoved his hands through his soaked and dripping hair. “I am so sorry. I didn’t see this ditch here.”

“You were backing around a curve to get us out of the way.”

She had barely escaped being run over for a second time in a month, possibly by the same truck. Possibly the truck belonging to whoever had assaulted her in her home.

Ashley shivered. She hadn’t grabbed a raincoat on her way out, and her hoodie was soaked through.

“Get back in the Tahoe with your patient.” Hunter removed his glasses, likely useless with the rain streaking the lenses, and his beautiful blue eyes held contrition. “No sense in you getting pneumonia too. I’ll walk down to the hollow until I get a signal.”

“No, I’ll go. I know who to call and directions for how to get here.”

“Oh, I can give them directions.” Hunter’s mouth compressed, and she noticed what a nice mouth it was, the lips full and firm.

She yanked her gaze up. The eyes were kind of devastating, but better to concentrate on that gorgeous blue than on thinking about how that mouth must feel.

“I can put the number into your phone.” She glared at the sunken wheel. “Or we can wait and hope someone comes along who can help.”

“Let me get my phone, and I’ll start walking. You need to stay with your patient.”

He was right. She shouldn’t leave Mary Kate in the event her contractions began again and they weren’t false labor.

They got back into the Tahoe and increased the heat. Steam rose from their clothes and the windows fogged over. Ashley removed Hunter’s phone from the glove box, handed it to him to unlock, then took it back and input the number of the garage she used for towing.

“I have an umbrella, if you like.”

“He ain’t gonna go out in this, is he?” Mary Kate spoke for the first time, sounding breathless.

Boyd, thankfully, seemed to have fallen asleep.

“Someone needs to, and he’s right about him being the better choice.”

“He’s gonna get sick in this mess.”

“I’ve been in worse.” He flashed Mary Kate his warm smile and climbed from the Tahoe. “I’ll come straight back as soon as I get ahold of someone.”

“All right.” Ashley didn’t like it. Part of her feared the black truck would return, would smash them into the rocks beside them or run Hunter down on the road. Why the driver would resort to such violence, she didn’t know. But then she didn’t know why he had come at them today, why the other man had taken off with the girl immediately after her baby’s birth.

She caught hold of Hunter’s hand just before he closed the door. “Be careful.”

“I will.” He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary, then squeezed her fingers and closed the door against the rain.

The sleet. The rain now held slivers of ice.

“He’s a nice man, ain’t he?” Mary Kate said.

“Yes, he is.”

“What’s he doing hanging around Brooks Ridge?”

“It’s not for me to say.”

Mary Kate didn’t press. People on the Ridge respected others’ privacy.

They might know most of what all went on, but they didn’t push to learn what couldn’t be found out from looking.

How long would Heather escape the gossip? She worked with an OB doctor and other midwives. They would know too soon how
far along Heather was and someone would remember that Ian had been out of town.

Ashley thumped her head against the icy glass of her door. She couldn’t help her friend’s marriage heal. She couldn’t help Mary Kate heal. She couldn’t get her SUV out of the mud. She was supposed to be in charge of situations in her work, and control slipped away with every turn.

Med school. She would concentrate on med school. If she were a doctor, she could help Mary Kate—if Mary Kate came to see her. She knew she needed a doctor for her respiratory condition, not a midwife.

Only because her midwife told her so and Mary Kate trusted her.

Ashley snatched up her phone. She needed to do something, even if it was play a game. But she couldn’t shut Mary Kate out like that.

She dug through the glove box instead, seeking her emergency stash of granola bars. She found her gun and two candy bars instead. “Do you want one?” She held a chocolate bar out to Mary Kate.

Far from the nutritious fare she recommended, but better than nothing.

Mary Kate shook her head. “You save it for Mr. Hunter.”

Mr. Hunter McDermott didn’t know what he had gotten himself into other than deep mud. If he or a tow truck took too long, they would all have a problem—ice on gravel was dangerous on flat surfaces, let alone hilly ones, darkness wasn’t far off this time of year, and they would run out of gas. Ashley checked the gauge. Less than half a tank. The Tahoe was necessary in the mountains for its power and four-wheel drive—useful under normal bad conditions—but fuel efficient it was not. She did keep many blankets in the back for emergencies like transporting patients to
the hospital. They could keep warm. Hunter couldn’t get warm, though, soaked through as he must already be.

Ashley shivered in sympathy and sent up a prayer for protection for him and help for them.

“Someone’ll be by,” Mary Kate said. “Folks gotta use this road.”

“I’m hoping.”

She needed to be believing.

She broke off a square of the candy bar and let the sweet chocolate melt on her tongue. Momentary pleasure. Momentary reduction of stress.

Once it was gone, though, she wanted to get out of the car and run laps around it.

She found some soothing music downloaded instead, plugged her phone into the car charger, and let the concerto fill the Tahoe loudly enough to drown the drumming rain, but not so loud she couldn’t talk if necessary. Then she closed her eyes and tried to think, make some plans, think how to help Heather, how to help Mary Kate, how to get Rachel to stop smoking. She wondered how Sofie was really faring back in Texas and if her mother would end up in prison. Ashley wasn’t sure Sofie’s mom had legal status in the U.S. If she had broken the law, she could wind up in a federal prison. Ashley missed her assistant and friend. She talked to Sofie about her patients since they worked together. Without her, Ashley was on her own. She needed to find someone to take over her caseload.

She kept seeing the black truck in her mind. It probably wasn’t the same one. This was the country. Lots of country folk had pickups, including jacked-up black ones. She was being paranoid. Still, she would tell Jason about this. He wouldn’t give her further information about the baby, even if he had it. Nor had he said anything
about whether they had found the girl. Ashley feared the worst for her. Possibly her bleeding had ceased, but Ashley feared it could not have without some kind of medical intervention. What sort of intervention that might have ended up being sent chills through her, with thoughts of Mary Kate’s suggestion she go to Granny Parrish for an herbal concoction.

Behind her, Mary Kate shifted on the seat, coughing with deep, barking gasps.

“Would you like to lie down?” Ashley reached for her door handle. “I can get you a blanket.”

“I’m all right, but Boyd’s getting kinda heavy.”

Before Mary Kate could protest, Ashley was out of the Tahoe and tramping around to the back to fetch the blankets. They were wrapped in paper after she had washed and sterilized them. She didn’t unwrap them until she was back in the SUV, where she wedged herself between the seats and spread a blanket on the backseat. “Lay the boy down, then spread the other blanket over him and yourself. You rest now.”

“I think I will.” Mary Kate looked exhausted, more so than usual.

Ashley kicked herself for not making her go to a doctor when her cough first appeared. She knew it had seemed better on Mary Kate’s last visit. Still, the woman worked too hard and slept too little.

Ashley rested her head against her window. The Tahoe rumbled through the glass, a soothing purr. Another rumble sounded, rougher, louder.

Ashley shot upright, peering through the windows. Her heart raced, fearing the return of the black truck.

The truck swooping up behind them was red, not black. Its
lights blazed a path through the Tahoe’s back window for a moment, then it shot past and disappeared around the curve.

“How could they?” Mary Kate cried out, then commenced coughing.

“I don’t know.” Ashley leaned forward, peering through the trees and the rain, straining her ears. Surely she spotted lights coming back, a flash through bare branches, the distant thunder rumble of a powerful engine.

Yes, she had. The truck returned, slowly now, and drew up with its tow hitch to the back of the Tahoe.

“They went past to turn around.” Ashley tumbled out of the Tahoe and slogged her way up toward the truck. To her surprise, Hunter climbed out, looking a bit like a drowned rat with his hair dripping in shaggy tendrils over his face and collar. He held out his hands to her. “These gentlemen say they can get us out.”

Ashley took his hands. They were freezing, and she experienced the impulse to keep holding them until they warmed. “They met you on the road, I take it?”

He nodded, then released her to turn toward the two men climbing from the pickup’s cab. They were tall and rangy, wearing heavy coats, boots, and billed caps over sunbaked faces enough alike they must be cousins at the least.

“We’ll git ’er out.” The one who’d been driving nodded at the Tahoe. “Got a tow bar?”

“Tow package, yes.”

“I told them I don’t see how they can get it out with all this mud,” Hunter began. “They need a tow truck with more power.”

Ashley looked at him and laughed. Later she would tell him he had said the exact right thing to ensure that these two men, with accents as thick as the mud beneath their feet, would get the Tahoe
unstuck if it meant they had to lift it themselves. Nothing got a man from Appalachia going on a project faster than telling him it couldn’t be accomplished.

“What do you want us to do?” she asked the men.

“Y’all git back. If this tow strap breaks, we don’ wanta hurt nobody.”

“Mary Kate can’t get out.” Ashley glanced to the Tahoe. “She’s sick and pregnant and has a little boy with her.”

The men exchanged a glance. “We knows Mary Kate. She can get in the cab.” He went to the back door and opened it. “Y’all need ta git out now, Mary Kate. We’re fixin’ to haul this out.”

“Hey, Sonny, what you doing over here?” Mary Kate sounded downright flirtatious.

Sonny didn’t answer, just reached up and lifted her down. “Git in the truck. I’ll bring the boy.”

With Mary Kate and Boyd, the latter still too listless and quiet for a toddler, tucked up in the cab of the truck, the men, Hunter included, connected a tow strap between the hitches on the Tahoe and the truck. Ashley watched from a dozen yards away atop a rock break. The rain had lessened, but darkness had fallen. From where she stood, the men were mere shadows moving in the red glow of taillights. But they managed to accomplish the task in a few minutes, and Hunter joined her on the rock break.

“I can hardly understand a word they say, but they seem to know what they’re doing.”

“I hope so.” Ashley stared at her beloved Tahoe, envisioning it flying to pieces. “Did you call a tow truck?”