Page 55 of Fast Forward

“You’ll be fine, I know you will,” I said, placing her hand in mine – which was a mistake.

“Argh!” Diora gripped my hand tighter than the SlimFX Magic Suit gripped my torso. “Ooohh, oww, eoww!” A series of primal moans flooded the car and after a couple of minutes, subsided. “Oh, man, they’re getting worse!”

“It’s okay, sweetheart, it’s natural, your body knows what to do.” Fat chance my words were of any comfort. From all I knew – which was little – about childbirth, it hurt like hell. Worse than twenty broken bones all at once, I read somewhere. Forget about whether she could handle it, I didn’t know if I could watch her try to handle it.

“Should I ask for an epidural?”

“Definitely,” Will said.

“She should?” I asked.

“Honey, don’t you remember how much easier it was for you the second time around when you had an epidural with Ryan?”

“Um, that’s right,” I replied and looked at Diora. “But you should do what feels right for you. Ask the nurses what they think.”

Diora nodded and leaned back on the seat, closing her eyes, as if to conserve all her energy.

“Oh, what the hell?” Jason said, the car slowing down.

“What? What?” Diora’s head shot up.

“It’s just a slight build-up of traffic, that’s all. Don’t you worry, focus on yourself and I’ll focus on getting us to the hospital.” Diora didn’t see Jason silently mouth a profanity.

The car came to a stand-still, car horns beeped and voices yelled “Oh, c’mon!” and “Hurry up losers!” Jason’s fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel and the car spoke:

“This traffic incident was unexpected. Recalculating route…” And after a few minutes, “There is no alternate route suitable at this stage, go straight on. Estimated travel duration at current speed… three hours and thirty-seven minutes.”

“No!” Diora exclaimed, just before her stomach hardened into a tight lump and sweat beaded on her forehead.

Jason thumped his fist on the steering wheel. “This isn’t happening. No way!”

“Give it a few minutes, maybe it’ll ease up. Might have just been a truck spilling its load,” Will suggested.

“If we don’t get to hospital my wife will be spilling her load!” he replied.

“Take a deep breath, mate. We’ll get there, don’t you worry. We can always call an ambulance if necessary, but I doubt it will be.”

“Okay, okay, it’s all going to be fine. Yep, all’s good,” Jason said, mostly to himself. “There’ll probably be hours and hours to go yet anyway.”

“Don’t say that!” Diora cried.

“Oh, I don’t mean hours and hours, honey, just that there’ll be plenty of time to get to hospital.”

“I need to puke.” Diora leaned forwards, her cheeks bulging and a hand flew to her mouth.

“No, no, no! Damn, should’ve brought a bucket!” Jason turned to face us in the back seat, his eyes darting everywhere. “Try and hold it in. What can we use as a bucket?”

Diora had her own idea though and simply opened the car door and released her stomach contents onto the road. Thank God the car was idle or the cars behind would have needed high speed heavy duty windshield wipers. A kid about six in the car next to us saw the performance and his face scrunched up. An older kid about nine sitting next to him opened the window and said, “Awesome! There’s a puking fairy next to us!”

Diora closed the door, wiped her mouth on the towel and opened the window. “I need fresh air.” Her hand went to her belly and she circled it firmly as another contraction hit. “Yeow! Argh, orgh, igh, ugh…” Diora went through all the vowels for a bit of auditory variety.

“Bloody hell.” Jason revved his engine as though that alone would make the cars in front move, but it only annoyed the driver in front who stuck his hand out the window with his middle finger pointing to the heavens.

“Hey! My wife’s having a baby, you moron!”

He mustn’t have heard or cared, because he gave his finger another sharp prod to the sky.

“I’m going to see what’s going on.” Will opened his door and got out of the car.

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