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CHAPTER ONE
If Things Hadn't Gone Right
It was just us and the small Haines clinic staff eighteen years ago when I had our second daughter, Sarah. Dr. Jones had the day off; so Dr. Feldman was in charge. Some people called him the "hippie doctor." He lived on his boat and had a beard. He'd also graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School. I liked him. The worst blizzard in a decade raged outside. Inside, I was pushing. I had started at one in the afternoon. Two hours later, I was still at it. I pushed and breathed and pushed and breathed and pushed some more. Then I gave up. "I can't do this," I said. Chip got pale. Mary, the nurse, who had been a friend just moments earlier, snapped, "Of course you can." Dr. Feldman was even firmer. He said that the only way this baby was coming out today or, for that matter, any day, was if I made it happen. He was deadly serious.
It was snowing so hard that looking out the window I could barely see beyond the curtains to the log visitor center across the alley. There were no regular planes flying and no ferry. A Coast Guard helicopter flight to the nearest hospital, in Juneau, would risk the lives of the crew. And there might not be time anyway. There was no operating room in the clinic. Dr. Feldman said all these things to me as I tried not to cry. Dr. Jones, who owned the clinic, was coming in the door to help when Mary leaned over and whispered, "Come on, Heather, you can do this." On the next contraction, I pushed as hard as I could, and out she came with a shout–a healthy baby girl with a head as round as a baseball.
The mood instantly changed. There were smiles all around. We took turns holding the baby and taking pictures. When they heard the news across the street at the Fogcutter Bar, they brought us all sandwiches and cold drinks. Cranberry juice with ice cubes never tasted so good. By six o'clock, we were back home with Sarah's older sister and my mother. Mom had arrived from New York a few days earlier on a ferry coated with ice. The usual four-and-a-half-hour trip had taken nearly eight as northern gales kept the boat from moving at full speed. Mom was one of the few passengers who didn't get sick. She also didn't know it was dangerous at all. She'd never been on the ferry before and assumed it was always like that. She was much more concerned about me having a baby with no hospital nearby.
When we walked in with Sarah, Mom thought I should go right to bed. She was even less happy when I got to the kitchen before she did the next morning. Our friends Steve and Joanne were co-hosting a radio show on KHNS, and they talked on air about the new Lende baby, telling listeners that her name was Sarah (after my mother) and her weight was eight pounds, two ounces. As for the state of the mother's health: "I saw Heather shoveling the driveway today on my way to work," Steve said.
I thought my mother would kill me. "He's kidding, Mom," I told her. "It's a joke." She was not amused. She decided to go out for her morning walk but found she couldn't get out the door. The snow had drifted up to the second-floor windows. The dog had to burrow down to scratch the top of the door. It would take Chip most of the morning to dig us out. Dr. Jones snowshoed down the hill from his house to make sure we were well. By then, I felt great–like Wonder Woman, like a pioneer. This was better than "Little House on the Prairie."
The high cost of malpractice insurance was one of the reasons the clinic quit deliveries in Haines in 1987. Dr. Jones retired shortly afterward. With 620 births in twenty-five years, he'd never lost a mother but hadn't been able to save a "few" infants, he recollects now. Even so, he says, his clinic had "a very, very good record. I'd put it up against anyone's in any place." They did it all without an operating room, fetal monitors, or anesthesia. Dr. Jones had a gift for anticipating who would need help. If he thought there was any reason you might not be able to have a baby in Haines, he made sure you went to Juneau, Whitehorse, or even home to Mother. He informed you of the risks of not being able to fly or drive out in bad weather and of being in labor on a plane or a slow ferry to Juneau. He had great confidence in the Coast Guard helicopter pilots but little cause to call them, even when things didn't go exactly as planned.
Once, a young woman was in labor–a girl, really; she was still in her teens–when Dr. Jones discovered that something was not right. The baby was coming out feetfirst instead of headfirst. When children are delivered this way, their lungs inflate as soon as they arc out of the womb. But with the head still inside, they can't breathe. If they aren't pushed out right away, if there is any delay, they suffocate. The only way to make sure that a baby in this position survives is to perform a cesarean section. Dr. Jones had to get his patient to the hospital in Juneau, quickly. Luckily, it was clear and cold, a good day to fly. Dr. Jones called a flying service and chartered a plane.
Pilot, doctor, and laboring mother-to-be flew as far as the Eldred Rock lighthouse–it's on an island in Lynn Canal about thirty miles south of Haines–before the baby started to come. Somehow, in the back of a rattling, drafty plane as big as a taxicab and half as comfortable, Dr. Jones pulled that baby out in time. Then he tucked it safely inside his coat to keep it warm, double-checked to make sure both mother and child were well, and told the pilot to turn around and head back home to Haines.
Outside actuaries didn't see childbirth in Haines the same way Dr. Jones did. They saw the potential for disaster and advised insurance companies to make sure that they asked Dr. Jones to pay for it. Alaska Native insurers concluded that it would be best not to take the risk, and all their clients were advised to give birth in the Native hospital in Sitka. Other Haines families couldn't afford what Dr. Jones would have had to charge to break even. That was the end of that.
These days, while Dr. Jones no longer practices, the once young Dr. Feldman is my neighbor. He has two children of his own now and a private office in his house. On Sarah's eighteenth birthday, I stopped to talk with him on the way back from my morning run. The weather was better than it had been when she was born, but we'd gotten a few inches of snow overnight. Dr. Feldman was out shoveling his front steps. I reminded him that it had been eighteen years to the day since he'd delivered Sarah. "Remember the blizzard?" I asked.
(continued on the next page)
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