The Blue Cotton Gown by Patricia Harman

did everything by Rodale’s Encyclopedia of
    Organic Gardening. “Rotate your crops from year to year to renew the nitrogen.” “Never place zucchini next to yellow squash; they’ll cross-pollinate.” “Don’t weed beans when they’re wet, you’ll spread leaf wilt.” Lately, I just garden when I have the time and plunk the plants where there’s space. What I put in the ground doesn’t always flourish. I tend my plants like I tended my kids. The boys got abun-

    dant love, but maybe not the pruning and direction they needed. I fear my children are ill prepared for this world. They grew up like wildflowers, sometimes like weeds.
    I stand up from my labors in the garden and stretch my back, looking out across the clearing to the gazebo. Let’s face it: Tom and I, too, are ill prepared for this world.

    chapter 6

    heather

    “Dr. Harman,” Tom says, flipping open the cell phone he keeps on the small bedside table. I elbow myself up in the dark to squint at the red numerals on the alarm clock. Shit. I might have slept through the night if he hadn’t been paged. It’s 3:00 a.m.
    “How much is she bleeding?” my husband asks. I turn on the green and white stained-glass dresser lamp.
    “I’ll be right in. Will you call the nursing supervisor, alert the OR, and have her typed and crossed for two units?” He’s already on his way to the closet, where a pile of blue scrubs are stacked on a shelf.
    “What’s up?”
    “Patient hemorrhaging. Miscarriage.” He’s a man of few words. “Heather?” I know the answer.
    “Yeah, the girl with twins.” He’s tying his running shoes. “See you in a few hours.” Tom flicks off the light, then closes the door. I lie awake, flooded with adrenaline, as I always am when the phone rings at night.
    Throwing back the covers, I pad through the house. On the porch, I pull up a deck chair, take a sip of my bitter sleep medicine, and rest my chin on the rail. In three hours my alarm will go off. There’s no sound but the rain and the trucks on the highway a mile away.
    Tom will be driving fast. In the middle of the night, it’s thirteen minutes to Community Hospital, longer during the day. We know exactly how fast we can get there after all the years of doing obstetrics.

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    He streaks through the traffic light near the Mountain Plaza and avoids the Torrington business district, where the winding streets that lead to the Jefferson River slow you down. Now he pulls into the ER parking lot and clicks his remote lock at the Toyota. He steps calmly out of the elevator into the harsh light of the fifth-floor pre-op bay. I see Heather’s white face, wet with tears, when she sees him.

    Calling

    Some people are born to be midwives. I think about that. Going back to school took work, sacrifice, and student loans, but I decided to go after my first delivery, which I did by accident.
    Laura, dressed in denim coveralls and about seven months pregnant, seeks me out at the Growing Tree Whole Foods Co-op. “I want to have my baby naturally, can you help me with the breathing?” she says, swinging her long blond braid back over her shoulder. “I heard you had Mica that way. Will you help me?”
    We meet four times in the back room of the natural-food store that our commune started; it’s located across the street from the courthouse in Spencer. Sitting behind a row of five-gallon buckets of peanut butter, barrels of whole wheat flour, and sacks of oats and pinto beans, we go over deep breathing, shallow breathing, staying centered, and trusting your body. I had taught Lamaze classes and read a few books. I’d attended two hospital deliveries as a labor coach, and I’d had one baby myself. That was the extent of my knowledge. It made me a local expert.
    “The breathing doesn’t really take away the pain. It just gives you something to do when you want to run away, which you can’t do anyway, so why even try!” I tell her. Laura laughs.
    “You can hum or count backward. It