Elizabeth Altman

Elizabeth Altman is John Altman’s wife and the mother of their children. Her request that Angel attend her childbirth places Angel in a role she believes she cannot fill, but Elizabeth’s confidence helps make the birth a defining instance of trust between the women. The scene also brings Angel’s own painful sense of infertility into quiet contrast with Elizabeth’s experience of motherhood.

Family and Request for Help

Elizabeth is expecting a baby in December when she asks Angel to act as her midwife. She knows that Miriam wants to help, but judges her too young and impressionable to attend a birth. Angel, startled by the request, protests that she has no experience helping someone give birth; Elizabeth’s response rests instead on her own knowledge of what must be done and her decision to entrust the task to Angel.

The request is especially charged because Angel has recently wondered whether to tell Elizabeth that she cannot have children. She decides not to disclose it. Elizabeth’s appeal therefore brings the women together around childbirth while Angel privately carries the knowledge of her own infertility.

The Birth and Angel’s Care

When Elizabeth is in labor, Angel asks what she should do, but Elizabeth is unable to guide her. Angel acts without stopping over questions of modesty, supports the baby as he is born, and announces that Elizabeth has a boy. She checks that he is healthy, washes him, wraps him in a blanket, and gives him to Elizabeth; he begins nursing immediately.

Angel then washes Elizabeth carefully, trying not to hurt her, and kisses her cheek before leaving the room. The sequence makes her work more than the delivery itself: she attends to the newborn and to Elizabeth’s recovery, while Elizabeth’s trust allows Angel to meet an unfamiliar responsibility through practical care.

Recognition and Family Ties

After the birth, Angel tells John that he has a beautiful new son, and he responds with relief and gratitude. Elizabeth later calls Angel wonderful and asks Michael to tell her that she would be honored to have Angel tend her when her time comes. That offer extends Elizabeth’s confidence in Angel beyond one emergency and imagines her as a trusted caregiver within the family’s future.

Elizabeth’s part in the story is brief but consequential. By choosing Angel for a vulnerable family moment, and then expressing a wish to rely on her again, she gives Angel an experience of being trusted for care rather than defined by her past. The exchange does not erase Angel’s private grief over infertility, but it places her competence and tenderness in direct view.