Unexpected Daughter

“Is the baby coming now?” Regina started to cry. Alicia wiped the girl’s face with a moist cloth. The temperature in the room had soared and sweat rolled from the four of them.

“I’m sorry, Regina, but this baby is coming now and I need you to work with me.”

WHEN BRIJETTE COULD finally step away from the table, she sighed at the sight of her blood-stained scrubs. After throwing her gloves in the garbage, she dumped plenty of antiseptic gel in her palm, rubbing it lightly on her hands and arms before wiping with a paper towel. Not exactly prescribed usage for the stuff but the sink was in another part of the store and this would have to do for now.

There was a banging sound outside and loud voices broke the silence that had finally settled in the small room. With only a brief knock beforehand, two paramedics rushed in with a gurney.

They stopped short at the sight of the healthy baby.

“Guess you don’t need us after all, Brij.”

She snorted at Michael, the lanky medic. “Well, it wasn’t by choice, I promise. At least you can give Regina and her daughter a quick ride to the hospital. I didn’t even hear the chopper come in.”

“I’m not surprised.” He paused as he and his partner eased mother and child onto the gurney. Alicia helped roll the bed to the door, while Michael stayed behind. “The chopper’s across the river. We’ll have to go back to it by boat. That’s where the nearest clearing is.”

“I guess if the two of them have made it this far, they can survive a boat ride.”

He didn’t respond but glanced around the room instead. “So, this is your clinic.”

“Yep.” Brijette grinned, realizing that most of the medical people in town knew she came here, but few had actually seen her exam room.

Michael took a deep breath. “Stinks like a pigpen, and it’s hot as hell.”

If she hadn’t been friends with the guy for years she might have been offended. “Thanks a lot. We did just deliver a baby in here. Besides, we don’t all have the luxury of an air-conditioned ambulance or helicopter.”

“Relax, I didn’t say you stink, which of course you do.”

She laughed and threw the near-empty bottle of antiseptic gel at him. He caught it with a grin. “I better go before your nurse and my partner drop our patient on the stairs.”

Brijette followed him out front. From there she watched as Michael trotted down the dirt road after Alicia and the other paramedic, who were rolling the gurney toward a waiting boat. The breath she’d been partially holding since she’d seen the girl struggling to the clinic slipped from her lungs and she leaned against the wall of the store.

“Whoowee, chère. Never ’spected that when you set up shop here.”

Brijette turned to see Anton Guidreaux sitting in a rocking chair several feet away. She hadn’t noticed him before.

“Neither did I, A.G.” Brijette pushed sweat-soaked hair off her neck. Anton Guidreux was too formal a name for him, so it had been shortened to A.G. long before she remembered making the trek to this place to buy flour, sugar and whatever else her grandmother needed.

A.G. got up to go back inside and paused to pat the top of her head as if she were still five. “Glad you were here, girl. Don’t never think folks ain’t proud to have you. Might not say it, but you know how that is.”

Her head bumped the wall as she nodded. “I didn’t come here expecting thank-yous.”

“Know that, chère. Don’t mean I can’t tell you thanks here and there.”

She bobbed her head again, staring at the floor as A.G. left her standing alone. After one more deep breath she went back to the exam room. Fanning the door, she tried to encourage a bit of cool air to come inside. She wrinkled her nose. Michael hadn’t been joking. The scent of sweat and blood hung in the room, making it positively reek. And me, too, she admitted with a wry smile. Disinfectant spray bottles sat on top of a box and she took one, squeezing the trigger, shooting generous amounts on the exam table.

“Are we done for the day?”

Brijette continued cleaning the table as Alicia rejoined her. “Unless it’s an emergency, we’re going to pack and go home. I’m exhausted. Besides, it’s going to take an hour to clean up and get the supplies loaded on the boat.”

With a shove, Alicia moved a box against the wall and began to mop the floor. In minutes, they were both dripping sweat again.

BRIJETTE SET the last plastic storage container onto the deck of the twenty-eight-foot fishing boat. She could get to her field clinic by car, but it would take hours, beginning with a ferry ride across the river. Traveling by boat made more sense. Alicia untied the vessel from the old dock and Brijette started the engine.

As she steered the boat away, she caught a final glimpse of the wooden store on the slight rise above the water. Past the store sat the small community church with white paint peeling off the walls. A couple of wooden houses on stilts were visible in the distance. They were a ten-minute ride from the river and another ten minutes to Cypress Landing. A trip she knew well. She’d made it more times than she could count, and the summer after her senior year in high school she’d made it every day to work at the tire factory in Cypress Landing and, frequently, the coffee shop on Main Street. But that was another life.

The Mississippi loomed in front of them and Alicia grabbed a handhold as the boat lurched into the faster-moving water. Brijette slowed the engine.

“Can you believe what we did?” Alicia shouted above the hum of the motor.

Brijette stared at the river in front of her. The thought of all the things that could have gone wrong with the delivery hadn’t actually hit her until now. Her legs turned to jelly and she leaned against the seat behind her. She and Alicia had brought a life into the world. What would’ve happened if they hadn’t been there? What if the girl had delivered at home or in the back seat of a car? Or even worse, on the bottom of a rusty aluminum fishing boat as she tried to get to a hospital?

“I’m glad you were there with me,” she shouted back at Alicia. To her dismay, her throat clogged and her eyes filled with tears. Getting all weepy wasn’t her style, but she’d never delivered a baby by herself before.

A hand touched her arm. “Don’t worry, me, too.” Alicia pointed to her own cheeks, wet with tears, and started to smile. They were both laughing with tears trickling down their faces as the boat bumped toward Cypress Landing.

“I HEAR YOU HAD an adventure today.”

Brijette chuckled, stacking the last container in the storage room at the clinic. “It was more of a nightmare than an adventure, Emma.”

“Well, the baby and mama were both fine, so you must’ve done a great job.”

“Nature did the work, I just…caught the package.” She glanced at her soiled clothes and shook her head at the clinic’s longtime receptionist. “I need to go home and clean up.”

“Doc Arthur wants to see you before you go.”

“I’m on my way.”

Located a block off Main Street, the clinic was actually an antebellum home that Doc Arthur had refurbished to use as his business nearly thirty years ago when he’d first arrived in Cypress Landing. Brijette crossed the lobby and went down the hall to his office. Tapping on his half-open door twice, she pushed into the room.

“Emma said you wanted to see me.”

“Brijette, come in. Good work you did today.”

“Like I told Emma, I didn’t do much. The baby came without much help from me.” She didn’t bother to say how petrified she’d been that something would go wrong or that the baby would be premature.

“Still, you were there. You do good work in that community.”

She shrugged. “I hope so.”

The older man tapped his fingers on the armrest of his chair. “You do, and don’t ever forget it.”

“What did you need me for?” She didn’t want to sound as though she was rushing him, but she was beginning to smell herself, which wasn’t a good thing.

He sat back in his chair, shoving papers across his desktop. “You know I’ve been having problems with that valve in my heart. They say I can’t put off the surgery much longer.”

Brijette rubbed her hands together in her lap. Doc Arthur had been like a father to her since she’d lost both parents when she was young. He needed the surgery, but she wasn’t sure how they’d make it at the clinic without him. She sat a little straighter in her chair. Wait, as a nurse practitioner, if there was no doctor here then she couldn’t work.

“Don’t panic, I’m not going to close and make you find a new job.”