I looked at the title of one of the books in my hands. The Midwife’s Challenge, it was called. I opened it and glanced at the copyright date: 1992. Old. I sighed. I kept looking for a clue that she’d left midwifery only a couple of years ago. I was still in denial even after calling the certification board and learning that Noelle had let her certification lapse eleven years earlier. Eleven years! “I still don’t get it,” I said to Ted now. “Why would she lie to us?”
Ted let out a sigh. He was tired of the whole subject. “Did she actually lie or did she just leave out information?” he asked.
“She lied. Up until a couple of years ago, she was always telling me she had a delivery scheduled or she’d mention something going on with a patient.” I couldn’t think of any specific examples, but I was sure she’d talked to me about her patients. “Then there were those trips she was always making to the country or the backwoods or … wherever. You know, her so-called ‘rural work.’ She’d stay there for months, delivering babies. That’s what she always told us.”
“Could she have been practicing under the radar?” Ted asked.
“I can’t imagine it.” As unorthodox as Noelle could be, she wasn’t the sort to skirt the law. She’d been professional and cautious. She’d always dissuade her high-risk patients from considering a home birth. I knew, because I’d been one of them. Tara and I had been due three weeks apart, and we’d both wanted home births. But I’d had two miscarriages before getting pregnant with Jenny as well as some complications during my pregnancy with her, so Noelle vetoed a home birth for me and referred me to her favorite obstetrician. She’d wanted to assist at the hospital delivery, but nothing went according to plan. Ted was out of town when I went into labor three weeks early—the same night as Tara—and I ended up with a C-section. So Noelle was with Tara when Jenny made her happy, healthy way into the world, and I don’t think I’d ever felt quite so alone. “I can’t picture her practicing without her certification,” I said now to Ted. Yet, I couldn’t picture her killing herself, either. “We should have known what was going on with her.” I reached for another book on the shelf.
“Hon, please stop blaming yourself.” Ted sat down on the sagging sofa, rubbing his lower back. “Look,” he said, “Noelle was great, but she wasn’t the most stable person in the world. You know that.”
“She was perfectly stable. Different? For sure. Unstable? No.”
“What stable person keeps a secret life from the people who love her? What stable person happens to have … what was it? Twelve? Twelve bottles of drugs lying around, stockpiled for the day she killed herself? What stable person kills herself, for that matter?”
“I think she had those pills from after the car accident, when she hurt her back.” Noelle had been driving back from a middle-of-the-night delivery when she was rear-ended at a stoplight, and I remembered that dark period long ago when she’d been so often in pain. Then she organized the babies program and came back to life.
“What are these?” Ted was back on his feet, leaning over to lift one of several fat, leather-bound books from the bottom shelf of the bookcase. He blew the dust off the cover and leafed through the pages. “Handwriting,” he said. “Is this a journal or something?” He handed the book to me.
“No.” I recognized it as I took it from his hand. “They’re her logs.” I opened the book and looked at the first entry: January 22, 1991. The patient’s name was Patty Robinson and Noelle had detailed her labor and delivery over four and a half pages. I smiled as I read her words. “She was such a strange mix, Ted,” I said. “She has all these really technical notes and then she says, ‘I left Patty and her new little angel at 10:00 a.m., when birdsong poured through the open window and the scent of coffee filled the air.'” I looked at the other leather-bound logs lined up on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. “Oh, give me the one with Gracie in it!” I said. “This one ends in 1992, so Grace is probably in the third one, maybe.”
Ted handed the third book to me and I sat down on the floor and flipped through the musty-smelling pages until I reached Grace’s delivery in September. I scanned Noelle’s notes. I knew that Tara’s labor had been long and harrowing compared to mine, which had been cut short by the C-section.
I skimmed Noelle’s notes until I came to this one: “'Baby girl came into the world at 1:34 a.m., nineteen inches long, six pounds two ounces,'” I read aloud to Ted. “'She’s a beauty! They’re naming her Grace.’”
Ted bent over to plant a kiss on the top of my head, though I didn’t think he’d heard a word I’d read. “You want to finish up the shelves while I tackle the closet in Noelle’s office?” he asked. “Can’t put it off any longer.”
“Okay,” I said, but I held on to the book as if I were holding on to Grace. “I’ll come help you in a sec. Don’t throw anything away.”
I was sitting at the small desk in Noelle’s office a couple of hours later, looking through months of email on her monitor. There were some exchanges with Tara, myself, Jenny and Grace, but most of them were with Suzanne and other volunteers. There was nothing out of the ordinary. There was just plain nothing.
Ted dragged a huge cardboard box from the closet into the middle of the room. “Can we just toss this stuff?” he asked.
He’d opened the top of the box and I could see envelopes, cards, handwritten letters, photographs. “What is it?” I asked, reaching in for a handful. I set them on the desk and opened one of the cards.
Dear Noelle,
It’s hard to put into words what you’ve meant to us over the past nine months. I only wish that I’d had a home birth with all my kids now. It was extraordinary. Your warmth and gentleness and the way you were always there for me was incredible. (Even that night I called you at 3:00 a.m. and you came right over even though you guessed correctly it was just Braxton Hicks. Thank you!) Gina is nursing well and growing like crazy. We are so grateful to you, Noelle, and hope you will always be a part of our lives. Fondly, Zoe
“They’re thank-you cards and letters from patients,” I said. I plucked a picture of a baby from the box. “And pictures of babies she delivered.” And clues, I thought, although by now I was doubtful. I’d gone through stacks and stacks of memos and receipts and all sorts of junk and had to admit that most of it could be trashed.
“Toss them?” Ted asked hopefully.
I opened another card and read the words inside.
I couldn’t belive it when the lady brung the cute baby clothes to the shelter for me and my baby. Thank you, Miss Noelle!
I looked at Ted. “I can’t,” I said. “Not yet. I’ll take the box home with me. I’d like to look through it when I have time.”
Ted laughed. “When do you ever have time? You’ve got Hot! to manage and you’re trying to visit your grandfather a couple of times a week. And are you still planning to have Suzanne’s party at our house?”
I nearly choked on my breath. Suzanne’s party. I put my hands on my head. “I forgot all about it,” I said to Ted. I’d agreed to have the party at our house, since Noelle wanted to invite half the world and we had the space.
“Cancel it,” Ted said.
I shook my head. “We can’t. The invitations have all gone out and—”
“I’m sure Suzanne would understand, given the circumstances.”