June 28, 1945
“Fran! Fran!” Rocky Catlett raced into the gathering room where Francine had just slipped off her shoes and collapsed on the couch after her shift at the hospital. “Willie sent me to get you.”
Francine sat up. “What’s happening?” She stuck her tired feet back into her shoes even before Rocky answered.
“She says if you scrub up extra fast, you can assist with Tassie Jackson. She’s almost ready to deliver.” Rocky was even newer to the midwifery school than Francine, but they were both already getting hands-on experience assisting the other midwives.
Francine forgot how tired she was as she followed Rocky back through the walkway to the hospital.
Rocky looked over her shoulder. “Hurry, Fran! We don’t want the little fellow to get here before we get there.”
Fran. Nobody called her Francine here. Not from the first minute she had shown up at the hospital. That night Willie, the nurse-midwife calling for her now, had met her at the hospital door and ushered her over to the nurses’ quarters at the Mardi house where several women were eating in a kitchen area. They got her a plate and welcomed her in, but even before she knew their names, they were changing hers.
“Francine.” A woman, who looked older than the others around the table, narrowed her eyes as she studied Francine. “No, that won’t do.”
“What’s wrong with Francine?” she asked.
One of the other women spoke up. “Too fancy. Around here, you need a better name, Francine Howard. Everybody has one. Mine’s Thumper. That’s because I’m always banging on a typewriter up in the office. Lennie was the one who lowered that moniker on me, wasn’t it, Bucket?”
Bucket and Thumper? Francine began to feel as if she had followed Alice down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Eventually, she found out Bucket was Dorothy Buck, who was supervisor over the nurses, and Thumper was Lucille Hodges. But all that was later. That night her head was spinning as she tried to take it all in. Even Willie, who was trying to make Francine feel welcome, had a strong English accent that added to the strangeness of it all.
Willie was the one to come up with the name suggestion. “We don’t have a Fran.”
“Well, now we do.” The older woman slapped her hand down on the table like a judge deciding a case. “Welcome to the Frontier Nursing Service, Fran.”
And just like that she’d become a new person. Fran Howard. She didn’t mind the name. Fran was much better than the Howie somebody suggested later on. But Fran was already on people’s tongues by then.
Her mother would hate it, but then her mother was back in Cincinnati with her new husband. She wasn’t likely to ever climb Thousandstick Mountain to see Fran or Francine. She had written only once. A very stilted letter, since she was vehemently against Fran going off to what she called the wilds of Kentucky. A place where every man had a gun in one hand and a bottle of moonshine in the other. That was what she had harped on when she found out Fran had applied to the Frontier Nursing Midwifery School.
“I have it on good authority that people down there don’t like strangers. They’re hillbillies, Francine.” She had stopped pacing in front of Fran to glare at her. Since her mother barely topped five feet tall, she always made Francine sit down whenever she was lecturing about something so she wouldn’t have to look up at her. “Are you hearing what I’m saying? Hillbillies.”
She spit out the word. Francine didn’t argue with her. She simply waited until her mother ran out of words, then finished filling out the application and sent it off. When the acceptance letter came, she ignored her mother’s tears and dire warnings and packed her bags. Because of the same tears and histrionics, Francine had kissed Seth goodbye and let him go off to war to find a different bride.
Perhaps he would have anyway. Anybody could look at that picture Seth’s sister had and know he’d traded for a cuter model.
Women weren’t models of cars to be traded, she reminded herself. They were to be loved and cherished. The way Mr. Jackson did his wife. The man stopped pacing outside the delivery room when he saw Fran and stepped in front of her.
“The wife, she is going to be all right, isn’t she, Nurse Howard? She was punishing really bad before they took her back and the other nurse told me to stay out here.”
He looked so upset that Fran couldn’t push past him, even if the delay might make her miss the birth. Mrs. Jackson had come to the hospital a week ago to be near the doctor when her time came since she’d had problems with delivering her first baby.
“Better safe than sorry,” Willie had told Fran when she explained the case. “Most birthings do fine in the mother’s house. Actually better than fine, but a few cases call for more observation. Tassie Jackson is one of those.”
Now Fran patted Mr. Jackson’s arm. “Nurse Williams and the doctor are taking care of Tassie. We’ll let you know how things are as soon as we can.”
“I reckon there ain’t nothing for me to do but stand here and talk to the good Lord.” He looked worried again. “I ain’t always done what I oughta. Do you think the Lord will want to hear anything I have to say?”
“I think he will.” Fran smiled at him. She didn’t add that the Lord’s answers weren’t always what a person might want, but no time for that kind of thinking right now. Her denied prayers about Seth had nothing to do with Mr. Jackson’s.
Rocky stuck her head out the door. “Come on, Fran.” She disappeared on the other side of the door again.
“You go on now.” Mr. Jackson looked at the door with a mixture of longing and apprehension. He twisted his felt hat in his hands.
She started to push through the door when he said, “You won’t let her die on me, will you?”
Fran wanted to assure him they wouldn’t, but it was better not to make promises. Sometimes things did go wrong. She kept her smile bright. “Dr. Randall is a fine doctor and Nurse Williams is the best midwife here. It won’t be long now.”
She scrubbed up and stepped into the delivery room. Willie looked around at her. “Thought you weren’t going to make it. The head’s crowning.”
Willie was a short, stubby woman. She claimed that made her perfect for nursing. She didn’t have to bend over to get to her patients, and if they were tall, she could always stand on a chair. Her given name was Beulah, but the Willie nickname came from her last name, Williams. Now she moved around beside Mrs. Jackson, who was draped in sheets, and motioned to Fran. “Take over at the business end there, Nurse Howard. You’ve got to catch your first baby sometime, and Mrs. Jackson’s been asking for you, haven’t you, dearie?”
Mrs. Jackson bobbed her head before another contraction came on and she groaned.
“You’re doing a bang-up job, Mrs. Jackson.” Willie mopped the woman’s brow with a damp cloth. “Just a few more pushes now and the little tyke will be ready to meet his mama face-to-face.”
Fran’s heart bounded up in her throat. She clenched her hands to hide their trembles as she moved into the midwife’s position. What if she did something wrong? But no, Willie was right beside her, and Dr. Randall standing by if needed. Everything was happening the way it should. The way a dozen other births had gone while she had assisted Willie.
“Give us another push, dearie,” Willie said. “You’re being a real trooper here.”
The baby’s head slipped out and Fran supported the weight of it as she maneuvered the little fellow’s shoulders. One more push and the shoulders were free. After that the baby came in a rush. And while Fran’s hands weren’t trembling now, inside she was all atremble as she held this new life. She wanted to break out in song.
“He’s a beautiful little boy,” she said.
Mrs. Jackson laughed and panted at the same time. “My Jim is going to be happy about that. Our other one is a sweet girl.”
“Get on about what needs doing,” Willie reminded Fran softly.
Fran snipped the cord and handed the baby to Rocky, who had her hands out ready. The baby let out a lusty cry that brought a smile to Fran’s face as she massaged Mrs. Jackson’s abdomen to help her pass the placenta. The baby kept crying as Rocky wrapped him in a blanket to show his mother before she began cleaning him up.
“Let her see his fingers and toes,” Willie said. “Yes, every one perfect, dearie. You did a right fine job with this one.”
Fran knew she was talking to Mrs. Jackson, but she couldn’t stop smiling herself.
Willie noticed and said, “You’ll never tire of hearing that first sweet warble of life after you usher a baby into the world. Each and every time will bring that heart smile.”
Later, after baby and mama were settled and father was by their bedside, Fran fell into her own bed. As she lay there, she remembered Woody’s question that day she met him on the mountain. You catch babies?
Fran whispered a prayer of thanks that, yes, she did catch babies. Then she turned over and went to sleep without once thinking of Seth and his pretty English bride for the first time since she’d come to the mountains.