Dot (Araminta Hall)

moment. ‘OK,’ she said, following Tony back into the room.
    Alice was off the bed now, leaning over it and gripping on to the sheets.
    ‘We’ll let this one pass then I’ll examine her,’ said the midwife, snapping on yet more plastic gloves. ‘My name’s Dora.’
    ‘Tony and Alice,’ answered Tony. Alice’s body was releasing her for a minute.
    ‘Do you think you could lie back, Alice, so we can see what’s going on?’ said Dora in a voice that left no room for compromise. Alice only whimpered.
    Dora pushed Tony out of the way, her hand strong on Alice’s back. ‘Now, now. Is it really bad?’ Alice moved her head imperceptibly. ‘I’m sorry but I do need to examine you.’ Dora checked the chart by the bed. ‘You were between two and three, three hours ago.’ Alice didn’t answer; instead her body stiffened and her hands turned white with the pressure of gripping. ‘OK, love, breathe through it,’ Dora said. ‘They’re pretty close together. As soon as this one’s over I’m going to examine you standing up.’
    Tony didn’t know how Dora knew the exact moment the contraction had finished, but she was quick and concerned. She stood up and looked at Tony. ‘Your wife is just about ready to give birth. We need to move her to a labour room. Get her on to the bed. I’ll be back in a second.’
    ‘But how, I mean, that’s too quick, isn’t it?’ said Tony, his mind feeling like a blender, scrapping all the useful information it had ever stored.
    Dora laughed. ‘Try telling that to the baby. There’s no rule book, you know.’
    ‘Are you coming in?’ someone was asking him and he looked down and somehow Alice was on the bed and it was being wheeled away from him.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, tripping over himself as he followed them down corridors and into another room.
    ‘Is there a pressure in your bottom?’ Dora was saying as she pushed Alice’s legs into the air. ‘Push into that. Well done, that’s right.’ Another midwife was holding a wet cloth against Alice’s forehead, whilst a young girl busied herself on the other side of the room. Tony stood against a wall, his coat draped over his arm, Alice’s bag in his hand. He felt as if he was underwater and that he couldn’t breathe. ‘Push,’ women shouted all around him whilst Alice screamed. Shouldn’t he get someone? Didn’t a doctor need to be present? Hold your wife’s hand, Miriam Stoppard advised, tell her she’s wonderful, she’ll need your support. But Tony was stuck to the wall, fear flattening him like a coward. ‘That’s it,’ Dora said, ‘one more now.’ Alice made a noise from somewhere deep inside her and then there was an instant of total silence, broken by the screams of a baby. ‘Congratulations, Alice,’ Dora said, handing her something which Tony understood to be a baby. It lay on her chest, as shocked as the rest of them.
    Dora came over to Tony. ‘Congratulations,’ she said, ‘your wife was amazing.’ She nudged him in the arm. ‘Why don’t you put down your stuff and go and meet your baby?’
    So Tony did as he was told, and all the while the water was filling his ears and his lungs so that he thought it likely he would faint before he reached the bed. Alice smiled up at him and she looked as if time had travelled across her face and punched her in the eyes. He could see tiny broken veins splattered across her nose and cheeks like freckles and her hair was as wet as if she had been swimming. He remembered their beach and his body tingled.
    ‘Let’s weigh her then,’ Dora said, taking the tiny being from Alice’s chest. The baby cried at the intrusion and Tony followed it with his eyes, only hearing the words seconds after they’d been spoken.
    ‘A girl?’
    ‘That’s normally the first question most dads ask.’ Dora chuckled. She put the baby on to the scales. ‘Seven pounds three. Now I think this baby needs a feed.’
    The other midwife helped Alice to sit up and then both women bent over her as the baby, now wrapped in a blanket, was placed into her arms. The air vibrated as the baby nestled into her breast, its tiny eyes shut, its rosebud mouth closing convincingly over the nipple. Alice stared down at her and the midwives started to tidy up, making Tony notice the oceans of blood on the bed and the floor. ‘You’ll need a few stitches,’ Dora was saying, ‘I’ll get them done now.’ Tony sat down heavily in the chair next to the bed which held his wife