They rode silently for a while, twisting around the mountain roads, up and over, down and around. “How’d you get yourself into this mess?” she asked him. He shrugged. “Just one of those things. Let’s not talk about this anymore.”

“She better be okay,” Mel said.

“That’s what I’m thinking. Jesus, she better be okay.”

Mel thought again about all the help available in a big city—lots of people. Not the least of whom was law enforcement—real handy. Cops parked right inside the hospital all the time. Right now, it was just her. Before her, it had been just Doc. If a woman was having a baby out in the middle of nowhere and there was only one midwife in the area, what were the options?

Mel began to tremble. What if they were too late and something wasn’t right—what if things turned nasty?

She wasn’t sure how long they’d been on the road. Definitely over a half hour. Maybe forty-five minutes. The man took a left turn down a one-lane dirt road that seemed to stop at a dead end. He got out and pushed open what appeared to be a gate made entirely of bushes and they drove through, down a potholed, washboard road thickly enshrouded by big trees. At the end, the powerful lights on the roof of his SUV

illuminated a small building and an even smaller trailer. There were lights on inside the trailer.

“This it is. She’s in there,” he said, pointing at the small trailer. That’s when she knew, and was amazed that she hadn’t understood sooner. She—who was so cynical about the crusty side of big city medicine—was totally naive about the pretty mountains and what she had thought was benign small-town life. The house and trailer were buried beneath the trees, camouflaged by the tall pines, and right between the two was a generator. This was why everything was so secret, why there was a gun for protection—he was a grower. Further, this was the reason he’d hire someone to work for him who had felony warrants, the only kind that could get you sent straight to jail—because that’s who you could get to sit out in the woods and watch over a crop like this.

“Is she alone in there?” Mel asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Then I need your help. I’ll need you to get me some things.”

“I don’t want any part of—”

“You better just do as I say, if we’re going to salvage this situation,” she said, her voice sounding more authoritative than she felt inside. She rushed to the trailer, opened the door, stepped up and in. Five steps took her through a little galley and into what passed for a bedroom, a berth, upon which a young woman writhed beneath a sheet soiled with blood and fluids.

Mel put a knee on the bed, placed her bag beside her knee and opened it, dropped her jacket off her shoulders onto the floor behind her, and there was a transformation within her, taking her from scared and uncertain to driven and focused. Confident.

“Easy does it,” she said gently. “Let’s have a look.” Over her shoulder she said, “I need a large, empty pan or bowl, some towels or blankets—soft as possible—for the baby. A pan of warm water for cleanup. Ah…” she said, lifting the sheet. “All right, sweetheart, you have to help me. Pant like this,” she instructed, demonstrating while she put on her gloves. “No pushing. More light!” she yelled over her shoulder. The baby was crowning; another five minutes and Mel would have missed the whole thing. She heard the man moving around behind her and suddenly a saucepan appeared beside her bag. Then there were a couple of towels and an overhead light flicked on. Mel made a mental note to add a flashlight to the articles in her bag. The woman grunted weakly and the baby’s head emerged. “Pant,” Mel instructed.

“Do not push—we have a cord situation. Easy, easy…” She gently tugged on the ropey, purplish cord, pulling it from around the neck, freeing the baby. She hadn’t been in the trailer for five minutes, but it was the most critical few minutes of this infant’s life. She slipped a gloved finger into the birth canal and gently eased the baby toward her. Cries filled the room before the baby was completely born; the strong, healthy cries of a newborn. Her heart lifted in relief; this was a strong baby. Suction was not even necessary.

“You have a son,” she said softly. “He looks beautiful.” She looked over the raised knees of her patient and saw a young woman of perhaps twenty-five years at most, her long, dark hair damp from perspiration, her black eyes tired but glowing, and a very small smile on her lips. Mel clamped and cut the cord, wrapped the baby and made her way around the narrow space to the woman’s head. “Let’s put this baby on the breast,” she said softly. “Then I can deal with the placenta.” The woman reached for her baby. Mel noticed that sitting beside her on the bed was a large basket, ready to receive the baby. “This is not your first,” Mel said.

She shook her head and a large tear spilled down her cheek as she took her son.

“Third,” she said in a whisper. “I don’t have the other ones.”

Mel brushed the damp hair back from her brow. “Have you been out here alone?”

“Just the last month or so. I was here with someone, and he left.”

“Left you, out in the woods in a trailer, in advanced pregnancy?” Mel asked softly, running a finger over the baby’s perfect head. “You must have been so scared. Come on,” she said, giving the woman’s T-shirt a tug. “Let the baby nurse. It’ll make a lot of things feel better.” The infant rooted a little bit, then found the nipple and suckled. Mel went back to her position, donned fresh gloves from her bag and began to massage the uterus. She heard the trailer door close behind her and glanced over her shoulder. On the short counter in the galley she saw a dishpan of water. Mel’s patient was able to direct her to supplies from newborn diapers to sterile wipes. She found clean sheets and peri-pads, washed up the baby and mother, then sat on the edge of the bed for a long while, holding the baby. Her patient reached over and held Mel’s hand a couple of times, giving a grateful squeeze, but they didn’t talk. An hour after the birth, Mel looked in the refrigerator. She rummaged around for a glass and poured the woman some juice. Then she brought a plastic container of water near the bed. She checked her patient’s bleeding, which was normal. She got her stethoscope out of the bag and listened to the baby’s heart, then the mother’s. Coloring was good, respirations normal, mother exhausted and the baby, sleeping contentedly. All was complete.

“Tell me something,” Mel said. “Is the baby going to have drug issues?” The woman just shook her head, letting her eyes close. “All right—there’s a small clinic in Virgin River. I work with the doctor there. He won’t ask you about yourself or the baby, so you have nothing to worry about. He likes to say he’s in medicine, not law enforcement. But you both should be looked at to be sure everything is okay.”

Mel picked up her jacket off the floor. “Is there anything else I can get for you?” she asked her patient. The woman shook her head. “Plenty of fluids tonight, for the breast milk.” Then she went around the narrow space to the head of the bed and leaned down, placing a small kiss on her head. “Congratulations,” she whispered. Then wiped a couple of tears gently from her patient’s cheeks. “I hope everything works out for you and the baby. Be very safe and careful.”

“Thank you,” the woman said softly. “If you hadn’t come…”

“Shhhh,” Mel shushed. “I came. And you’re fine.”

Mel realized, not for the first time, that it didn’t matter if her patient was a happily married Sunday-school teacher who’d been waiting years for her first baby, or a felon handcuffed to the bed—a birth was the great equalizer. In this vulnerable state, mothers were mothers, and it was her passion to serve them. Helping a baby safely into the world, its mother accomplishing the experience with health and dignity, was the only thing that mattered. Even if it meant putting herself at some risk, she was bound to do what she could. She couldn’t control what became of a mother and child after she left them, but when called upon for this, she was unable to refuse. Her chauffeur was waiting at the SUV as she came out. He opened the passenger door for her. “They’re okay?” he asked anxiously.

“They seem to have come through very well, considering. I guess you don’t live there with them?”

He shook his head. “That’s why I didn’t see she was pregnant. I only come around sometimes and I dealt mostly with her man. I guess he left her when—”

“When he realized you’d dealt with her a little, too?” Mel finished for him. She shook her head and got into the car. When he was in beside her she said, “I want two things from you, and the way I see it, you owe me. I want you to go back there tonight, stay with them, so you can get them to the hospital if anything goes south in the night. If there’s any real heavy bleeding, or if the baby has problems. Don’t panic—they seem good—but if you don’t want to take any unnecessary chances, that’s what you do. Then, in a couple of days, two to four days, bring them to the clinic to be checked over. Doctor Mullins in Virgin River won’t ask any questions, and all I care about right now is that they stay healthy.” She looked over at him. “You’ll do that?”

“I’ll get it done,” he said.

She leaned her head back against the seat and let her eyes close. The hard and fast beating of her heart now was not from fear, but from the rapid decompression of adrenaline that always followed an emergency. It left her feeling weak, a little shaky, slightly nauseous. If the conditions had been different, she might have felt even more alive than before the birth. This one, however, had been rife with complications. When he pulled up in front of her cabin, he held out a wad of bills toward her. “I don’t want your money,” she said. “It’s drug money.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, putting it in the front pocket of his jacket. She stared at him for a second. “If you’d left her to deliver herself, if I hadn’t gone with you, that baby wouldn’t have—You understand about the cord, right? Wrapped around his neck?”

“Yeah, I get that. Thanks.”

“I almost didn’t go with you. Really, there’s no reason I should have trusted you.”

“Yeah. You’re a brave little girl. Try to forget my face. For your own sake.”

“Listen, I’m in medicine, I’m not a cop,” she said. Then she gave a weak huff of laughter. She’d been used to having the backup of L.A.P.D., but tonight it had been down to her. There was no backup. And if she hadn’t been there, it could have been down to Doc, who was seventy. What was going to happen five years from now? To her chauffeur she said, “Now keep it in your pants or use protection—I don’t really feel like doing business with you again.”

He grinned at her. “Tough little broad, aren’tcha? Don’t worry. I’m not looking to have that kind of trouble again.”

She got out of the SUV without comment and walked toward her porch. By the time she neared her front door, he had turned around and driven out of the clearing. She sank into the porch chair and sat in the dark. The night sounds echoed around her; crickets, an occasional owl, wind whirring through the tall pines. She wished she could just go inside, undress and go to bed alone, but she was wired and out of courage for the night. After a moment, when she could no longer hear the engine of his big SUV, she went down the stairs to the Hummer. She drove into town and parked behind the bar, next to Jack’s truck. The sound of the engine and car door must have awakened him, because a light went on and the back door to his quarters opened. He stood in the frame, a dim light behind him, wearing a pair of hastily pulled on jeans. She walked right into his arms.