Dot (Araminta Hall)

was watch the sweat gathering on her brow, dropping in tiny rivers down her face. In the end he couldn’t bear it any longer and took her back to the bed, which was comforting in the fact that it was, at least, a destination.
    ‘Shall I get you something to eat? Maybe some chocolate?’
    Alice nodded. ‘And a drink please.’
    It was a relief to walk away for a moment, like diving into cool water on a hot day and for a minute the realisation that he could keep on walking swept through Tony. The food kiosk was only just inside the main hospital doors and he watched people swinging easily through them. At the last minute he bought a packet of fags and a tube of mints and went to stand in the sharp night air, which rushed around him after the heat of the hospital. He hadn’t smoked in ages, since he’d moved in with Alice really, and the nicotine marauded through his blood, flicking that switch in his brain so that his shoulders relaxed and his breathing deepened. If he never met the baby, he found himself thinking … but of course he would never do anything like that. He ground the butt of the cigarette into the tarmac and popped a mint into his mouth before going back inside.
    Alice was leaning over the side of the bed, her face red and contorted, her hands grabbing for something that wasn’t there. Tony immediately went to her and stroked the hair off her face, whispering nothings into her ear. He put a hand on her stomach and it felt hard and mean.
    ‘You’ve got to stop fighting them,’ he said after the pain had subsided and she was lying breathless, her head flung against the pillow. He handed her pieces of chocolate, which she ate slowly. ‘That’s what those breathing exercises were all about. Your body’s going to do this whatever and if you tense your muscles it’ll hurt more.’ Tony wasn’t sure that Alice had heard but he didn’t repeat himself.
    The next round of pain came quickly. Alice grabbed on to Tony’s hand and wept. ‘Oh God, it hurts so much.’ He soothed her and they settled into a pattern. He asked her a few times if she wanted to walk again, but she didn’t, so all he could do was hand her sips of drink and tiny squares of chocolate. The clock ticked on but the night remained stubbornly immobile. Tony began looking at the clock and wondering which number would deliver them a baby, which seemed an absurd and unlikely thought. As so many other people rested and slept they were here doing this, something that would change their lives for ever. They had only been in the hospital for three hours, a period of time which could float past him and disappear down a hole most days, but which he had now lived through experiencing every second, aware of every pulse from his heart.
    ‘I’m going to be sick,’ Alice said and he stood up, panicked, rushing from the bed to find a nurse who chuckled at his worry and handed him some cardboard bowls.
    ‘Don’t you want to check her?’ he asked.
    ‘Someone will be in shortly,’ she answered. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all perfectly normal.’
    It didn’t seem normal to hold your wife’s head as she retched brown bile into something which, if painted, could pass as a clown’s hat. Tony felt annoyed by Miriam and wondered why she hadn’t written that he would feel scared and helpless in the ‘fathers’ story’ chapter. There had even been photos of men physically supporting their wives as babies slipped from their bodies. As Alice retched next to him he was sure he remembered reading, just a few nights before, that it was a mystical event. She was writhing again, clutching his hand so hard he thought she might break it, her voice whimpering and far away. ‘Tony please,’ she was saying, ‘I can’t do this, please help me.’
    He knelt down so that their faces were level and tried to make her look at him, but her eyes flickered away, her face a jangle of pain. He didn’t recognise her and it scared him to think of her lost to him, even her strangeness was something and he knew he would miss it. Tony ran into the corridor again and stopped another midwife. ‘Please, my wife really is in agony. Can someone come and see her?’
    The woman clicked her teeth. ‘We’re very busy tonight. Childbirth does hurt.’
    Her presumption annoyed him. ‘I know. I’m not stupid. I have read the books. But her contractions are really close together now.’
    The woman sighed, no doubt cursing her luck that she had been walking past at that