Page 36 of Prognosis Do Over

She put her hand to her head and felt the soft thick fall of hair around her ears. It felt good. Unfamiliar, but good. The hairdresser held up a pair of clippers next, and brandished them to the crowd. Someone in the audience started to slow-clap, gradually picking up momentum until everyone joined in until the noise was almost deafening.

He held Lou’s head very still and then, with a number four blade, ploughed a line of near baldness down the middle of her head. Lou almost laughed into the sudden silence. The joviality had gone, just looks of horror were left. It was quite comical.

But suddenly a huge, intense pain ripped through her abdomen, voiding the audience’s reaction. She clutched at it convulsively, and then she felt something like a tearing inside her and, to her absolute horror, her membranes ruptured right there, up onstage in front of everyone —including the six p.m. news.

What felt like buckets of the warm sticky fluid oozed down her legs and soaked into the material of her slip-ons. It pooled at her feet in an ever-widening puddle.

Despite the fact that they were in the middle of a hospital, and the medical to non-medical staff ratio was at least five to one, no one seemed capable of any movement for a few split seconds. Until Will rushed to her side and that seemed to be the signal for everyone else to put their brains into gear.

‘Will. Will,’ she wailed, clutching at his shirt, his ridiculous red hair not even registering through her panic. ‘This can’t be happening. It just can’t. It’s too early Will. Please, I can’t lose this baby.’ Lou hadn’t come this far for anything to happen to Jan’s baby now.

‘You won’t. I promise,’ he said authoritatively, sweeping her up into his arms and striding off the stage.

‘For God’s sake,’ he snapped to the immobile audience, ‘Don’t just stand there — someone get her a wheelchair.’

Will could feel her trembling as she clung to his neck. Lou needed him.

And it felt good.

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