The Third Turn Nadya Took Before I Could Reach for It

The mother was Yeva Krug, second child, breech confirmed at the door and not before — the first midwife on Ulev Street had felt a head where there was a heel and sent for me an hour later than she should have. By the time I reached the room the cord had already found its own room to occupy, which is the kind of fact a body announces before anyone asks it to.

Nadya was already gloved. I had sent for her on the way, the way I have sent for her the last four times, and she was at the basin scrubbing when I came through the door, which meant she had guessed the shape of the summons from the runner’s face rather than his words. I do not know what she saw in his face. I have never been able to see it in mine.

I put my hand where the turn would need to begin and felt for the shoulder that was going to try to lock against the pelvic rim the way they do when nobody hurries them. I said, out loud, what I always say at this point, which is nothing about the turn and everything about breathing — Yeva’s, not mine, not Nadya’s. Then I moved to make room for the hand that would do the work.

Nadya’s hand was already there.

Not early. Not late. In the exact half-second the shoulder gave its permission, before my own fingers had finished closing around the space I meant to occupy. She found the rotation, took it through in one motion, and the child came the rest of the way on her own strength a breath later, crying before she was fully clear of it, which is the sound every room in this trade is built to wait for.

I did not correct anything, because there was nothing to correct. I have counted her turns since the first one slipped forward on her — two, then three, now this, and I had told myself, and told Corvus when he asked, that she would need at least three more before the fear left her hand for good. I was wrong by at least one. I do not know yet whether I was wrong about the count or wrong about what the count was measuring. My own teacher’s grip used to arrive on my wrist the same half-beat before I knew I needed it, adjusting an angle I hadn’t yet felt was wrong, and I have spent thirty years believing that arrival was hers and not yet mine. Tonight I watched an arrival happen in a hand that was not mine at all, and I could not tell, standing a foot away with nothing left to do, whether I was watching the same thing move again or watching it move for the first time in a place I have no claim to.

Yeva Krug will keep the child and, in a week, forget which hands did which part of this. That forgetting is correct. It is the only part of tonight I am certain I understand.