‘Not in this weather,’ the man replied. ‘Try taking your coat off.’
I looked down at the puffy black jacket that had refused to zip closed since September, which I had completely forgotten I was wearing, and started wrestling it off. I now felt less worried about revealing my potential situation and more concerned that I was going to throw up in his car.
‘I’m fine,’ I gasped, in a futile attempt to convince at least myself, if not him. ‘It’s fine. I’m just really, really hot.’
And what was going on with my hair? Coat half off, I flicked the long strands of light brown that wouldn’t stop falling into my eyes back over my shoulder. Since when was hair this heavy? It was unbearable. I felt a disturbing urge to rip it out.
‘Oh. No.’ Here we go again. ‘Not fine. Nope. Really not fine!’
I wasn’t normally a sharer. Definitely not the type of person to chat to a taxi driver. Yet, I now continued jabbering incoherently about how I was ‘not fine’, ensuring this stranger had no option to politely ignore the emergency on his back seat.
As the pain peaked, I finally stopped talking, instead gripping the headrest in front, screwing my eyes shut, jacket still hanging off one arm, and let out the kind of groan that would have been mortifying in any other situation. Once the torture had passed, I flopped back, shoulders dropping as I tried to control my breathing.
‘You’re in labour.’ It wasn’t a question.
Still, I glanced at his frown, debating whether to finally admit it – to him, and myself – before deciding that he wasn’t going to throw me out of his cab into a snowstorm. If anything, he’d find a way to get me to the hospital a bit faster, reducing the risk of things getting messy in his car.
‘I’m starting to think so, yes.’
‘When did it start?’
‘Um, a few hours ago.’ I leant my head against the window. The cool glass felt like heaven. ‘I’m only thirty-seven weeks, so it could be false labour or something like that.’
He looked at me, impassive. ‘Waters broken? It might be a trickle, not a gush like you see on TV.’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘First time?’
‘Yes.’ I remembered to finally shrug out of the jacket sleeve. ‘Is it yours?’
‘I’ve never given birth myself.’
That caught my attention. Had this sombre bear-man made a joke? His mouth gave a tiny twitch.
‘Hah. Funny.’ I screwed up my face again, doubling over with a moan as everything disappeared into the force of another seemingly endless contraction. I didn’t want to tell him, but they were getting a lot more intense. Once it was over, I leant sideways to look at the maps app on the phone stuck to his dashboard. The further we went, the journey time only got longer.
My fear ramped up another few notches.
‘I have a medical degree.’
‘You’re a doctor?’
He shifted uncomfortably on the seat. ‘I qualified as a doctor. I don’t practise as one.’
‘Why not?’ I asked, genuinely curious.
‘Life had other plans.’
‘Ugh.’ I slumped lower. ‘Tell me about it.’
‘Do you want me to call anyone?’
‘Believe me, if I had anyone else I wouldn’t have called you.’
For the next half an hour we crept along the main – and only – road leading towards Nottingham. In clear traffic, the hospital was about another ten minutes away. At this rate it would be… well, my body was screaming that it would be too late. The driver had turned up the radio, tuned into some easy-listening station, and while focusing on it helped a tiny bit, I concluded that I’d never be able to hear Ed Sheeran without reliving this nauseating, sweaty and scared journey again.
‘What’s up, Shona?’ It took a second to realise he was speaking into his headset. ‘Yeah. We’re still stuck on the A60. By that new pub, The Jolly Farmer.’
