The Mountain Midwife Read Online Free Page B

the bowls. Before heading back up the steps, she gave each one a pet or scratch behind the ears.
    Jason was nowhere in sight.
    “Did you leave?” Ashley called out. “Can I get a shower and go to bed?”
    No answer.
    Hoping someone higher up had changed their mind about her home being a crime scene and Jase had left, but knowing she wanted that too much to believe he was no longer nearby, Ashley pulled the plastic label off a package of homemade blueberry muffins from the freezer and set the foil-wrapped package in the oven. Jase and her patient that morning would appreciate the nourishment since she would, no doubt, leave the house without eating breakfast. Mary Kate was a server at a local diner who desperately needed to stop working twelve-hour days but couldn’t afford to. If necessary, Ashley could examine Mary Kate upstairs; she kept enough equipment in her car to manage, but climbing steps with her perpetually swollen feet would be another burden on the overburdened young woman.
    And what had happened to that other overburdened young woman?
    “Oh, why did I even answer the door last night?” She thumped her forehead against the dividing wall between the end of the counter and the back door. “Why? Why? Why?”
    She had answered the door because caring for those in need had been drilled into her since she was old enough to comprehend what that meant. Perhaps caring for others was in her DNA after generations of midwives on both sides of her family. Even when the practice fell out of fashion in the late 1800s, Docherty and Tolliver women practiced the art in the Virginia mountains. Her mother was the first one to receive a master’s degree in nurse-midwifery, and Ashley had followed in her footsteps when the door to becoming a doctor slammed on her dreams of being the first Tolliver female to go to medical school.
    To distract herself until Jason returned, she turned on the television she kept on a rolling cart in the kitchen. She could move it into the exam room for playing educational videos or to entertain children waiting for their mothers. A twenty-four-hour news program blared into the kitchen with some kind of news alert.
    Reflexively, her gaze shot to the screen, and her eyes widened in appreciation for the man caught in the camera’s glare. Tall and rangy, with rectangular glasses and tousled dark hair that should have been trimmed at least two weeks ago, he looked like the sort of college professor her friends and she would have gone googly-eyed over as freshmen. He wasn’t old enough to be a professor, though, or barely. Maybe a year or two older than her own twenty-nine.
    “The rest was pure coincidence with a happy outcome.” He spoke in the well-modulated, restrained tones of someone who had attended the best schools all his life.
    The shouted questions of reporters drowned what he said next, and the slamming of the back door on a blast of cold wind obliterated the reporter’s explanation.
    “Oh, him.” Jason’s tone held a sneer.
    “Who is he?” Ashley lowered the volume but kept her gaze on the screen. The picture of the man in the doorway remained shrunk in one corner while a video of the same man scooping up a child about to run into the street, several women running after him, and then an explosion filled the rest of the screen.
    “Some engineering type from northern Virginia was overseas and rescued a little girl from running into the street. Her whole family came running after him and got out of the way of an exploding car just in time because of it.” Jason nudged her arm. “Haven’t you seen the news in the past day?”
    Ashley shook her head. “I was driving all over Brooks Ridge yesterday seeing patients.”
    “Doing real heroic work.” Jason’s tone held more admiration than Ashley liked. “Not some rich guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
    “Not every stranger would go after a little girl. Those women look about to lynch him.” Ashley