Midwives

Stephen’s strategy in cross-examining Tierney is simply to lay the ground for testimony from his own forensic pathologists. He asks Tierney to confirm if 750 ml of blood is usually considered to indicate irrefutable hemorrhagic shock. Tierney admits that usually fatal cases of hemorrhage from C-sections involve at least 1,000 ml of blood. However, Tanner steps in to mention that huge amounts of blood were found outside the abdominal cavity, indicating that Charlotte bled a lot more than 750 ml.

On Monday morning, Asa takes the witness stand. Connie notes with shock how much the warm, affable man has aged since she last saw him, just months ago. Asa notes that he believed Sibyl when she told him that Charlotte had died but that when Sibyl asked him to get a knife, he didn’t understand her at first. Even after Sibyl replied that she was going to use the knife to save the baby, Asa’s mind could not comprehend the link between the rescue and cutting open his wife’s abdomen. In response to Tanner’s questions, Asa confirms that Sibyl did not seek his explicit permission before operating on Charlotte, nor did she check Charlotte’s pulse or the baby’s heartbeat before the operation. During the operation, he walked over to the window. However, he saw blood spurting from his wife as Sibyl made the incision.

Stephen’s careful cross-examination tries to show that Asa could not have possibly determined whether Charlotte was spurting blood. Nevertheless, Connie believes that Asa is too credible a witness to be undermined. She can see from the expressions on the faces of Charlotte’s family that they believe they are going to win.

When Stephen’s defense begins, the courtroom is packed with midwives and Sibyl’s clients, some of them nursing babies. Judge Dorset suggests that the mothers leave when the babies need to be nursed, prompting Stephen to note that this attitude may suggest to the jury an unfavorable view of midwives, women, and nursing. Judge Dorset thinks that the jury will hardly be swayed by the action.

Stephen’s defense consists of experts who present a different version of the testimony offered by the state’s witnesses. His expert on weather, for instance, notes that the roads were truly impassible the night Charlotte died. B. P., Sibyl’s back-up physician, provides a credible alternative to the state’s version of Charlotte’s death, noting that if Sibyl considered Charlotte to be beyond help, she was surely right. B. P. has worked with Sibyl for decades and knows her to be an expert in labor and delivery.

Stephen has scheduled Sibyl to testify toward the end of his defense. Connie notes that her mother makes a believable, earnest-looking witness in her green kilt. To Connie, her mother looks like a brave nurse or Joan of Arc. The first couple of hours of Sibyl’s testimony are packed with her righteous indignation and wit, Sibyl confirming that she did check Charlotte’s pulse and the baby’s heartbeat before the C-section. The reason Asa and Anne did not see her was that they had gone to the kitchen to get a knife. Sibyl did not explicitly ask for Asa’s permission because she was racing against time to save the baby. The alternative would have been to have two deaths on their hands.

However, as the testimony drags on, Sibyl makes an error from the defense’s point of view. She mentions to Tanner that she can confirm that she turned on the light by Charlotte’s bed because she noted this in her personal journal. A silence falls on the courtroom since it has never been revealed that Sibyl kept diaries. Stephen knows of the diaries and has forbidden Sibyl from writing in them any longer or mentioning them to the jury, as the diaries contain Sibyl’s doubts about Charlotte being alive when she operated on her. Connie, too, has read these entries.

Tanner asks for a recess with the judge, requesting that the journals be admitted as fresh evidence. State and defense lawyers argue with Judge Dorset, and it is finally decided that the judge himself will examine the journals from March 1981 onward and decide if they contain incriminating material. Patty Dunlevy, the PI assisting Stephen, is dispatched to get the journals from the Danforth home. Connie insists on coming along, as she knows where the diaries are kept.

Patty keeps the car running as Connie rushes indoors to get the binder. Since Connie has already read the incriminating entries, she carefully removes them from the binder, folding the papers and hiding them in her clothes. The judge studies the journal and deems that it contains nothing suspicious. As an adult, Connie postulates that the judge, an intelligent man, must have observed the look of surprise that passed across the faces of Sibyl and Stephen on receiving the news, yet, inexplicably, he chose to let it go.

Since Tanner is furious that the state was not allowed to read Sibyl’s journals, his resumed cross-examination of Sibyl is particularly vicious. However, having recovered her confidence after the journals were deemed innocuous, Sibyl parries Tanner’s questions sharply. Connie notes that Tanner fails to ask Sibyl the one question that would trip her up, which is whether there was absolutely no doubt in her mind that Charlotte died before the cesarean. Instead, Tanner frames the question as Sibyl having done everything to determine that Charlotte was dead before the operation.

After the day’s session, Connie carries the journals back to Sibyl’s study. She removes the folded papers from the waistband of her skirt and replaces them in the binder, hoping that Sibyl won’t notice the line where they were folded over. The next day, other doctors and forensic scientists on the defense’s panel give testimonies supporting Sibyl. One of the coroners argues that in all his decades of examining women who died of C-section hemorrhages, none had less than 1,100 ml of blood in the peritoneal cavity, a full pint more than the 750 ml found by Tierney. The closing arguments are presented on Friday. As the jury goes off to form a verdict, Stephen asks the Danforths not to believe the many myths around the process. Connie does believe the myths, though, which is why the aloof faces of the jurors upon their return make her start crying.

However, in the end, Stephen is proved right. The jury finds Sibyl not guilty on the charge of involuntary manslaughter and guilty only on charges of practicing medicine illegally. Sibyl is let off with a $200 fine. Rand says a loud thank-you in relief while the midwives sob in joy. Charlotte’s family, however, appears devastated by the verdict.

Sibyl is free to practice midwifery again. However, as it turns out, she has lost confidence and joy in catching babies. She gives up her profession a few months after the trial. Connie goes on to enroll in medical school seven years later for complex reasons, including “atonement.” Two years before Connie writes this book, Sibyl develops terminal lung cancer. Connie tends to her mother in her last days.

Connie still remembers the time Sibyl called her over after the trial to tell her that she had discovered Connie’s ruse with the binders. She suggested that Connie come clean about her actions and ask for a retrial. However, Connie did no such thing, and Sibyl ended up not telling Rand either. The event became a secret between mother and daughter, changing their relationship irrevocably. When Sibyl was dying, she told Connie that the notebooks were hers to do with as she pleased.

Tom and Connie parted ways after high school, though they still remain friends. Rand still lives in Reddington. Connie, who has joined a practice in central Vermont, meets her father for lunch at least once a week. Connie met Asa once, after she had grown up. Asa had remarried by then and relocated to Alabama. Veil was a strapping teenager, the spitting image of Charlotte, but for his height. Asa hugged Connie and wished her peace.

The quoted portion of Sibyl’s entry from March 15, 1981, notes how much her hands were shaking when she approached Charlotte with the knife. In shock, even her teeth made a loud chattering noise. She willed herself to be still and recalled the C-sections she had observed. Mimicking the actions of the doctors, she traced a line with her fingernail from Charlotte’s navel to her pubic bone and carefully pushed in the tip of the knife. No one except Sibyl saw the corresponding flinch of Charlotte’s body. At the time, Sibyl interpreted it as a post-mortem reflex. But today, a day later, she wonders if she was wrong. Whenever she thinks of the flinch, she wonders if Charlotte was indeed alive.