'Call the Midwife' Recap: Season 14 Episode 5

Call the Midwife is available to stream for a limited time. Recap the previous and following episodes and other seasons.
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When Sister Veronica is sent to check on a family whose two daughters have missed a lot of school, she is doubly surprised. First, that their address is an unused warehouse in which they’re squatting. Second, that Eva Baldwin, the mother, is pregnant and almost due. But the Baldwins reject any offer of help. Vincent, the dad, has a chance at a job in Birmingham, so they’ll be moving soon.

The midwives worry about Eva, however, so Sister Julienne visits and is again turned away. She notices a bruise on Eva’s wrist and pointedly gives her information about the care available to her. Back at Nonnatus House, Sister Monica Joan finds Sister Julienne unusually quiet and seemingly disturbed, but she won’t explain why.

Sister Julienne again returns to the warehouse and Eva tells her that she doesn’t like being told what to do, because she was in prison for a time. Julienne encourages her to come to the regular clinic. She has begun to worry that the midwives aren’t doing any good; she has helped so many women like Eva, and still they keep coming.

Owen Desmond’s situation is less common than that of a battered woman. Struck by polio two years after marrying his wife, Betty, he is paralyzed from the waist down and lives his life prone in an iron lung that encases his body below his neck and allows him to breathe. Betty has faithfully cared for him for 17 years, not just feeding and cleaning him but also reading poetry to him – he’s taking a correspondence course in it.

But when Shelagh visits, she notices a yellow tinge to Betty’s skin. A neighbor comes to sit with Owen once a week so that Betty can run errands. She takes the time to see Dr. Turner and admit that she has had stomach and back pain, but assumed it was from the hours she spends typing for her business.

Dr. Turner sends her for more tests, which reveal the existence of a mass. Betty has pancreatic cancer, and can only be offered palliative care at this point. She worries about leaving Owen alone; she never thought she would die first. He tells her that she’s the reason he keeps going; she says he is the same for her.

The midwives help care for Owen and Betty as she declines, and Dr. Turner tracks down a cuirass, a portable hard shell that could replace the iron lung for a time and allow Owen to sit with Betty as she takes to bed. Owen tries it, and marvels at seeing the house from a new angle. He frets that he can’t help Betty, but the midwives point out that he knows exactly what she needs. They can act as his arms and legs.

Owen holds Betty’s hand as she dies. He will be sent to a care home with his iron lung, but before he goes, Shelagh uses Betty’s typewriter to type out and frame their favorite poem for him.

Around the time Owen leaves Poplar, Cyril returns from visiting his wife Lucille in Jamaica. He stayed longer than expected because Lucille’s mother unexpectedly passed while he was there. Back in Poplar, he is subdued, telling Rosalind that he’s too busy to go back to volunteering at the homeless shelter. He admits to Mrs. Wallace that Lucille asked him for a divorce, since she doesn’t want to return to England and he doesn’t want to move to Jamaica. Cyril says he can no longer be pastor of Mrs. Wallace’s church, but she says the congregation won’t judge.

The midwives also don’t judge; in fact, Sister Julienne is happy when Eva arrives at the clinic with her two girls. Julienne doesn’t ask about the fresh bruises on Eva but does offer help; Eva is worried that the beating from her husband affected the baby she is carrying. Julienne tells her she is in labor, and Eva insists on going home – Vin will kill her if he knows she came to the clinic. She physically pushes Sister Julienne away.

But Julienne is equally insistent and accompanies Eva to the warehouse, telling Vin that she bumped into Eva and wanted to help deliver her baby. She stands up to the abusive husband, who grumpily decamps to the pub.

Julienne delivers a daughter to Eva and wraps the infant in her own sweater for lack of clean blankets. But another baby is on the way – Eva is having twins, to her initial dismay, because Vin will balk at having another mouth to feed. Julienne reluctantly sends Eva’s two young daughters out into the night with a note calling for an ambulance, then proceeds through the difficult delivery, moving the baby into proper position with her arm. It’s another daughter.

Sister Julienne then worriedly goes outside to look for Eva’s older daughters, and finds a man driving them back to the warehouse. He has called for an ambulance.

All the Baldwin women are housed at the clinic, with the older girls sent to sleep at Nonnatus House. When Vin visits, Eva stands up to him, telling him to leave if he can’t take care of her daughters – and not to come back if he does. He leaves. Eva had no family growing up, but is happy that her daughters will have each other. The midwives help organize financial support, lodging, and temporary foster care for her and her children, to her gratitude.

The new postulant Catherine is inspired by Eva’s embrace of her family to call her own family, whom she misses dearly, even though it is forbidden by the rules of the Nonnatus order. Her father hangs up when he hears her voice. He has not forgiven her for leaving her family by choosing religious orders, as she tells Sister Julienne in admitting her transgression. Sister Julienne, reinvigorated by her aid of Eva, tells her that Catherine will be continually reminded through her work of why she does what she does, and why she chose this life.

Catherine has explained to Reggie, who is home for the summer, that she was initially just going to be a nurse but felt called by God while training in medicine, to her family’s surprise. She told Reggie this while bandaging a boy injured playing with Reggie outside Nonnatus House: the Commonwealth Games are approaching, and the neighborhood’s children are eagerly playing in their own versions.

Violet asks Cyril to organize official Poplar games. While he sets them up with the help of the midwives and others, Joyce notices Rosalind’s keen attention towards Cyril. Rosalind tells her nothing is going on between them – he’s a married man and a pastor, after all. But she admits that his absence only made her feelings for him stronger.