Chapter 18 - The Midwife from Hell
Clara slammed the heavy oak door of the lighthouse shack shut and dropped the rusted iron crossbar into place.
The shack was small, smelling of kerosene, saltpeter, and decaying canvas. Wind screamed through the cracked stone masonry, but it was dry.
Clara sank to her knees onto a pile of dry canvas boat covers, gripping her belly as another contraction ripped through her. Her vision flashed white. She let out an animalistic groan, her fingernails tearing into the heavy canvas.
"Push, dear. You’re fully dilated."
Clara’s head snapped up.
In the corner of the shack, sitting on an overturned wooden crate next to a lit hurricane lantern, was a woman dressed in a faded black tweed coat. Her wrists were raw and bruised, her silver hair matted with dried blood.
"Eleanor?" Clara gasped, her voice barely a croak.
Eleanor Vance looked at Clara with hollow, bloodshot eyes. She was gaunt, her cheekbones sharp as knives, her hands shaking with tremors from weeks of psychiatric sedation.
"Martha brought me here three hours ago," Eleanor whispered, her voice like crushed glass. "She broke me out of St. Vincent’s. She knew Julian was going to butcher you tonight. Just like he butchered my Ethan."
Outside, the heavy oak door shuddered under a massive blow.
*BAM!*
"Clara! Open the door!" Julian’s voice raged against the storm. "Morrison has the surgical kit! We can still save the baby! Open the fucking door!"
"He’s not coming in," Eleanor said, rising slowly to her feet. She picked up a rusted iron marlinspike from the workbench. Her eyes were no longer the eyes of the cruel, imperious mother-in-law who had terrorized Clara at high-society galas. They were the eyes of a mother whose child had been murdered.
"You hated me," Clara wept, leaning against the stone wall as another contraction crushed her hips. "You tried to drive me away from the wedding. You tried to ruin me!"
"I tried to save you from him!" Eleanor hissed, kneeling beside Clara and pulling up her soaked skirts with clinical, cold efficiency. "I knew what Julian was! I knew he was Arthur’s true son—a sociopath born without a soul! I wanted you to run before he put his seed in you! But you were so in love with his charming smile... just like Ethan was."
Eleanor pressed her calloused, trembling hand against Clara’s perineum.
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"The head is crowning, Clara," Eleanor said, her voice dropping into a harsh, steady cadence. "You have three minutes before he breaks that door down. If you want this child to live, you push right now. You push until your lungs bleed!"
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