The Baby Doctor by Fiona McArthur

Author:Fiona McArthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781760140380
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Chapter Twenty-three

Maddy

That night, as she was walking home at five minutes past ten, Madison’s waters broke. The sudden unexpected pop between her legs, and the sensation that someone had poured a cup of warm tea down her inside thigh, tricked her at first. Her nose crinkled as she looked down in disbelief, disgusted she’d wet herself, and then realisation sank in. The puddle widened on the path below her legs and she remembered reading that the bag of waters around the baby would pop and it could be a little or a lot. Felt like a lot.

The sudden spike of fear ran in tentacles around her body until she reeled it in shakily like a first-time angler. Stop it. This was okay. It could have happened two minutes ago at work, or ten minutes ahead, when she got home to Jacob, who she feared had uncomfortable plans for tonight.

This could be the best place for it to happen, the best time, here in the dark, alone. Not that she could change it now anyway. So she must be lucky. Her heart pounded, and she glanced up at the sky overhead and drew in a long, quiet, shaky breath. Give me strength. Why couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?

It had been a relatively slow night behind the bar, and she’d had far too much time to imagine the punishment Jacob would have been cooking up all evening, so she’d tried to stay busy. The clean-up had been completed in record time, which was lucky because the gripey pains had been coming at least every fifteen minutes or so for a couple of hours now, and towards the end she’d had a hard time hiding them from Alma.

So stupid, of course. These pains had been warning her that things might happen, and now she needed to be out of sight.

She eyed the door of the old service station she’d passed several paces away. Paces she couldn’t do right at this minute. Now, in the relative cool of the late evening, the whole idea of being in labour, all alone, made her falter. Suddenly, a vice-like grip squeezed stronger across her belly and back, lasting longer than any of the cramps had before. A tiny fear-filled voice whispered in the back of her head: Just how strong did these contractions get?

In the dark, she leaned on the telegraph pole, feeling the dry splintery wood beneath her fingers as she dug her nails in and kept breathing – when all she wanted to do was hold her breath and moan.

The cramp continued, like Jacob’s fingers had before work this afternoon.

Well, she guessed she’d got used to not crying out, because here and now, instead of making any noise she sucked in a breath while the fluid trickled messily down her legs and pooled on the concrete.

She should go back to the hotel and wake Alma – or the doctor. For a moment she let that enticing thought – the idea of handing over control to others and being looked after – ease the tension in her shoulders, but she just couldn’t.

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