Jean Gordon - Small-Town Midwife

“I haven’t done a cost analysis. Kelly may have. It’s her practice.”

Autumn worked for Kelly? That surprised him. He’d assumed she was a partner since Autumn had always said she wanted to practice near her hometown.

“I’m sure she’d be happy to share with you if she has.” Autumn touched the iPad screen to open her notes.

Jon pulled a paper pad and pen from his pocket. He knew digital medical records and notes were the way, but he still preferred pen and paper for his personal notes.

She rattled off the details of the birth while he scribbled on the paper.

He looked up. “The Apgar scores assessing the baby’s physical condition?”

“Seven at birth, eight at five minutes and nine at ten minutes.” Autumn read the results of the test.

* * *

As he recorded the Apgar scores, Autumn couldn’t help feeling he was scoring her, too. On what, she wasn’t sure. She tried to read the rest of his notes, but the combination of reading upside down and his handwriting made them indecipherable.

“I like that you did the third test. Seven isn’t a bad score, but you can’t be too careful with a new life.”

Or a mother’s life, Autumn thought, a flashback to her friend Suzy’s delivery filling her mind.

“You don’t agree?” he asked.

“No.” She cleared her throat. “I mean yes, I agree.” For the first time since he’d arrived in Ticonderoga.

“You frowned.” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

Autumn closed her notes. “That’s it.” She waited for him to stand and leave.

“About that home visit Kelly mentioned—”

“I understand if you have other things to do.”

“Nothing I can’t do later. What time are you leaving?”

She checked her watch. “In about twenty minutes. They live a half hour away, and the visit will take a couple of hours.”

“That long?”

Autumn’s mood lightened. The visit would take up the whole morning. This was his first official day on the job. Surely he couldn’t give up that much time. “More or less.”

Jon pressed his lips together as if trying to come up with a response.

She suppressed a smile waiting to hear how he’d work his way out of going on the home visit with her.

“You’ll have to drive,” he said. “I rode my bike.”

Her thoughts jumped to her clutter-strewn car. As if it mattered. She didn’t need to impress him. But he would need to sit somewhere. “I know. I heard you take off.”

His eyes sparked and the corner of his mouth tugged up.

A tingle started in her stomach and bubbled through her, giving Autumn an inkling of why all of the female staff at Samaritan Hospital had fawned over him. No! She mentally doused the feeling. She was not about to become the newest member of the Jonathan Hanlon fan club.

“I was up getting ready for work. I couldn’t help but hear.” It wasn’t as if she was keeping track of his comings and goings, if that’s what he thought.

Jon stood. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

“Meet me in the parking lot.” That would give her a chance to move the towels and swim gear she’d stashed in the front seat to the trunk and toss out the remnants of her fast-food breakfast and miscellaneous trash. She had the twins’ car seats in the back, since she was picking them up at day care today for Anne on her way back from the home visit and taking them to the lake. “The blue Outback.”

“I know.”

She warmed before it struck her. Of course he knew. Her car had been parked in front of the duplex for most of the weekend. “Right.”

He let himself out of the office and Autumn went in search of a plastic trash bag—ditching the brief thought she’d had of ducking into the ladies’ room to touch up her makeup and check her hair.

* * *

Jon pushed the back door to the birthing center open to see Autumn standing by her car stuffing things into a canvas bag with a mountain logo on it. The morning sun brought out silvery highlights in her pale blond hair. She set the bag on the pavement next to a white plastic bag and leaned into the open door. When she stood, she had two swim noodles in one arm and an inner tube in the other. She tossed the noodles over the seat into the back of the car and pressed her key tag to open the trunk.

“Need a hand?”

Autumn dropped the tube and it rolled toward Jon. He caught it and walked it back to her.

“You want it in the trunk?”

“Yeah, but I’ll have to rearrange a few things first.” She brushed by him and lifted the back hatch door, standing to one side as if she wanted to block his view of the storage area.

His curiosity got the best of him and he stepped behind her and peered over her shoulder. “Interesting collection of equipment,” he said, taking in the jumble of toys, a beach bag, her oxygen tank, an orange EMT bag with a stethoscope looped over the top of one pocket and an inflatable birthing pool mostly folded into its “Birth-in-a-Bag” canvas container.

Pink tinged her cheeks as she made room for the inner tube, reminding him of the wholesome touch of innocence that had first attracted him to her when they’d met at Samaritan Hospital. It was that quality that had prompted him to ask her roommate, Kate, out, rather than Autumn. Kate was more of a party girl. He knew she wouldn’t expect anything long-term, and that observation proved true. Contrary to the scuttlebutt that had spread through the Labor and Delivery wing, his breakup with Kate bruised her ego far more than her heart.

Autumn had struck him as a longtime kind of woman, and he’d known they both were at Samaritan temporarily. That thought had made it easier on him when she’d turned him down when he asked her out. He’d known that his timing wasn’t right, but there was something about Autumn that had compelled him to ask anyway.

“There.” She stepped back, causing him to jump out of the way.

He hadn’t realized how close together they were standing.

She waved over the cleared-out spot next to the beach bag. “I have to pick the twins up from day care on my way home and take them to their swim lesson at the lake. Anne has a web conference after her class this morning.”

Jon bit back a smile, getting a bittersweet kick out of the easy way Autumn went on about her family without knowing she was doing it. He lifted the tube into the car, and she closed the hatch.

Autumn got in and started the vehicle. “The visit is up in Schroon Falls. If you’ve driven Route 9 from the medical center in Saranac Lake, you’ve gone through it.”

“No, I’ve always taken the interstate.”

“Yeah, the Northway is a lot faster.”

His mind went back to Friday, when the drive to Crown Point had seemed interminable on the interstate Autumn called the Northway. “I take it your visit this morning isn’t off the interstate.”

“Right, but unless time is a real factor, I tend to avoid the Northway. I get that from my dad. He never takes a highway if he can take a byway. It drives Anne crazy sometimes.”

He could see that. In the case of these home visits, unnecessary time on the road would mean less time with that patient or another patient or in the office. “But you take the interstate when you’re called for a delivery.” He figured that was a given.

She shrugged. “It depends. We usually have time.”

Jon shifted in his seat. She seemed so nonchalant about it. As he was all too aware, a birth could be a life-and-death situation. Of course, rural Upstate New York wasn’t rural Haiti. He looked out the window at the mountain rising to his right. But it wouldn’t be unusual for a home-delivery patient’s house to be an hour from lifesaving equipment at the birthing center or the medical center in Saranac Lake.