Page 69 of Best Laid Plans

He hated to see Lucy’s pain as he struggled to help her with the unwieldy transfer. Her contractions were fast and furious now and there seemed to be no spaces between them. He found a cushion for her head and helped her to lie along the backseat.

In a tiny lull, she sent him a wan smile. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t dream it would be this fast.’

‘Our baby can’t wait to get here,’ he said, doing his best to sound calm. ‘He knows what a great mother he’s getting.’

After the next contraction, Lucy said quite calmly, ‘Do we have any towels? Can you get the baby blanket out of the suitcase, Will?’

The baby blanket? He must have looked shocked.

‘In case we beat the ambulance,’ she said.

No, no. That couldn’t happen, surely?

But by the time he’d found a beach towel – freshly washed, thank God – and retrieved the baby blanket from the hospital suitcase, Lucy was panting so hard she was in danger of hyperventilating.

‘It’s coming!!!!’ she cried. ‘Will, help me!’

With frantic hands, she was trying to push her clothing away in preparation for the baby’s imminent birth.

Oh, God it was actually happening. This was it. The birth of their child. On the side of the road beneath a river red gum.

Over the past nine months, Will had imagined this birth, but he’d always pictured himself watching from the sidelines while medical experts did the honours. Mostly he’d seen himself emerging from a delivery room wearing a green hospital gown and a beaming smile as he shared the good news with their waiting families.

But to his surprise, as soon as he accepted that he had no choice about where their baby might be born, an unexpected sense of calm settled over him. The terror was still there like a savage claw in the pit of his stomach, but Lucy needed him and he had to pull himself together.

Before they’d left home, he’d promised to protect her. He’d never dreamed what that might involve, but this was the moment of reckoning. She needed him to be calm and competent.

He could do this. For her. For their baby.

‘Okay, Goose, you’re doing really well,’ he said as he settled the folded towel beneath her.

Lucy merely grunted and went red in the face. Her right hand was braced against the back of the front seat. With the other she clung to an overhead strap.

She held her breath and grimaced, and Will watched the way her flesh stretched and couldn’t bear to think how much this was hurting her.

Then he saw the crown of their baby’s head.

Lucy finished pushing and let out an enormous gasp as she wilted back against the cushion.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Our baby has dark hair.’

She tried to smile. ‘I’m going to have to push, Will. I can’t hold back any longer. If you can see the baby’s head, that means I can push without doing any harm.’

‘Tell me what to do,’ he said, ashamed of the whisker of fear that trembled in his voice.

‘Just be ready to catch. Support the head.’ Lucy sent him an encouraging smile before her belly constricted and she was overtaken by the force of another contraction.

Inch by inch, their baby emerged.

‘You’re brilliant, darling,’ he told her. ‘I can see the eyebrows, eyes, nose.’ Excitement bubbled through him now. ‘I can see the mouth. It’s kinda scrunched but cute.’ He held his hands at the ready. ‘Okay, the head’s out.’

Somehow he managed to sound calm. ‘It’s turning.’

With the next of Lucy’s grunts, he gently but firmly held his child’s warm damp head. He saw a slippery shoulder emerge and then another. In the space of three heartbeats, he was steadying his baby as it slipped from its safe maternal cocoon.

He and Lucy had chosen not to know the baby’s sex, but now he his heart leapt with incredible joy.

‘Lucy, it’s a boy.’

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