My Name Is Mary Sutter Read Online Free PDF Page B

your pardon. I didn’t mean to—”
    “No. Your question was welcome.”
    Jenny reached out her hand and enfolded his hand in hers.
    “I do beg your pardon,” James said. “That is very recent.”
    “We had just moved into town. Father was not used to the traffic.”
    “I am sorry.” Blevens wished now that Bonnie Miles had never walked through the doors of his surgery this afternoon. Nothing had gone well from that moment. Upstairs, he could hear the baby crying, and footsteps climbing the stairs. A maid, going to Bonnie’s aid. He cast around for something to say. “If you don’t mind my asking a practical question, but with no one to give your business to, how will you enlist?”
    Amelia said to Thomas, “If Mr. Sutter were still with us, he would have gladly taken control of the orchards until your return. And have built you a rail line.”
    Of course, Blevens thought. Why hadn’t he registered this before? This was the family of Nathaniel Sutter, of the New York Railroad. This explained the beautiful home and furnishings far better than did the income of two midwives. He tried to remember exactly when Sutter had died. Less than a year ago also? Their mourning had been brief, but perhaps they had found solace in one another.
    “Nathaniel would have built you two rail lines,” Amelia said, extending an arm across the pale linen to the beautiful daughter. The quiet one, too, it seemed, for she hadn’t yet spoken a word, though Jenny appeared unruffled by her own silence. She had the prize, the boy next door, and therefore did not covet the spotlight for herself.
    “I have an excellent overseer,” Thomas said, “who knows the business far better than I do. I rely on him.”
    Cake was being served, coffee poured. A few more minutes, fifteen at the most, and then James could beg fatigue. He wondered now whether Amelia regretted her hospitality as much as her daughter Mary did. So far, he had insulted Mary twice, revived grief in all of them, and invaded a family dinner on the brink of a war. It seemed there was no way he could redeem himself. He was picturing the Sutters’ conversation after he left— Mary, how did you ever bring such an odd man home?— when a maid flung open the door.
    “She’s bleeding, ma’am.”
    A flash of skirts and Mary was out of the room, Blevens racing after her up the stairs two at a time.
    In the lying-in room, Bonnie’s bedclothes were saturated with blood, the baby stowed safely on a pillow by the maid. Bonnie’s eyes were saucers of astonishment.
    “I felt something warm,” she said.
    “A tear,” Mary said, thinking of her hands deep inside Bonnie earlier that day.
    But Dr. Blevens was already raising Bonnie’s reddened nightgown while shielding her nakedness with a blanket. “Lie back; don’t be afraid.” Swiftly, he palpated the pillow of her abdomen, and after a few minutes began a circular massage. Behind him, Mary Sutter stood reluctantly impressed. He had been hunting for the uterus, to see if it had relaxed, which obviously it had, because as soon as the massage began, the flood had stopped. The massage contracted the uterus, shutting off the open blood vessels where the placenta had been attached. This was the first step in any maternal hemorrhage.
    The tide abated, Blevens took Bonnie’s hand and pressed her fingers deep into her stomach.
    “Do you feel that?” he asked, helping Bonnie find the hard ball of her uterus underneath her navel.
    “What is that?” she cried.
    “Your womb,” Blevens said, smiling now. “Yours is a bit recalcitrant for some reason. You’ll need to rub it every few minutes so that it will keep contracting and you won’t bleed. Can you do that?” Over his shoulder, he called to Mary, “Have you any ergot?”
    Reduced to the role of nurse in her own lying-in room, Mary dispensed the medicine and then called the maids to help her change the bedding. While everything was made right, Dr. Blevens scooped up the baby and