After eighth grade Rachel didn't go to the farm. She went to Martha Beiler.
Martha was sixty-three. Midwife. The only person in the community who dealt with medicine every day. Four hundred births in forty years. Not one loss. (Once — close. Twins, both breech. Martha managed. Those boys are twenty-two now.)
Apprenticeship
'Martha, take me as apprentice.' Martha looked at the fifteen-year-old girl. Thin, red-haired, freckled, with eyes that didn't look away. 'Why?' 'I want to help people.' 'Everyone does. Why specifically this?' 'Because I know where the uterine artery is and what to do for postpartum hemorrhage.' Martha blinked. 'How?' 'A book. In the attic.' Martha laughed — first time in a month.
Three years. Rachel lived with Martha. Learned everything: herbs, deliveries, sutures, bandaging. Martha taught by hand — showed how to feel a baby's position through the belly, how to turn a breech, how to stop bleeding with pressure.
Rachel wrote everything in notebooks. By eighteen there were eleven.
First Delivery
First solo delivery — Hannah King, twenty, first child. Rachel was seventeen. Hands shaking. Martha stood beside her, silent. Eight hours. Boy, 3,800 grams, healthy cry. Rachel cut the cord. Hands no longer shaking.
Hannah's mother said: 'Girl has surgeon's hands.' Rachel said nothing. She knew she wouldn't become a surgeon. But a midwife — the best in the county — she could.