He put his hat back on.
“We got that blizzard. This road, right here where we’re standing, was drifted shut from the elevator to the church. My wife went into labor three weeks early at two in the morning. The ambulance went in the ditch out by the Hagen place trying to get to us. I called it in. And I couldn’t hold the phone. I mean that. I dropped it on the kitchen linoleum twice.”
Nobody moved. Not one person.
“She said, Tom, I need you to wash your hands and get every towel in the house. Then I need you to put the phone down on the floor by Connie’s head and tell me what you see.”
His voice caught. He waited for it.
“Forty minutes. The cord was around the baby’s neck. Shirley told me to slip one finger under it and lift it over, slow, like taking a necklace off somebody. I did it. And Amy cried.”
