The SAS And The Glam That Goes With It

Chapter 8

Sam watched the screen of her phone change to tell her that she had missed a call with a feeling of terrible sadness. She sat down slowly on the kitchen chair, her heart heavy in her chest and put her face into her hands. She exhaled: a deep sigh from the very depths of her soul. Her heart wanted her to answer, but her rational head held her back as the memories of the anxious hours that she had passed that day looped over and over in her mind.

He called again in the next afternoon: twice. She'd been in the clinic, so she couldn't have answered, but she was still left with the agonising decision about whether or not to call him back. She looked at the phone for a long time before she decided to switch it off, and then was struck suddenly that this was the very room she had sat in when she had called him two weeks ago. Hi, it's Sam. The boob lady... She couldn't help but smile at the memory of her nervous excitement. She looked at the phone for a few minutes and then put in back in her bag.

All evening it plagued her and that night, as she lay in her bed, watching the headlights of the cars outside play across the ceiling. She knew, and she felt she'd known really, deep-down in her heart all along, that she just couldn't help herself. If she let him go, it was back to putting her fate in the matching algorithms of dating websites and her increasingly desperate friends. She couldn't bear the thought. For years she had put her faith in logic and chosen the safest path, but she could see now where it led: into the sucking quagmire of dullness.

John Price had made her feel alive again, had made her fur crackle and her heart flutter. She had felt, for the first time, a passionate fire in her soul. She knew that she had to call him back, she had to see him again, or she would never forgive herself.

She looked at the clock: it was midnight. Tomorrow morning. I'll call him tomorrow morning.

It transpired that tomorrow had other ideas.

It had started off perfectly. Just as she'd been finished breakfast, the midwife on call from the night before had phoned her: a woman thought she might be in labour, and wanted to deliver at home: could Sam head out and see what the situation was?

Sam had seen the woman's name in the diary: healthy, with a third baby on board and a previous successful home birth. A perfect candidate to deliver in her own home, which turned out to be a sprawling farm in the distant reaches of the district. Sam had a good feeling: unpacking her kit from the boot of the car in the weak morning sun, the sound of the cows lowing in the distant fields, hens curiously pecking around the car. She felt like this was what she had been waiting for since she had arrived in Hereford: the simple life.

Now, as she lost her footing and slammed into the side of the ambulance, the sirens blaring over her head, she realised just how wrong she had been.

The delivery itself had been everything Sam had hoped for. She'd phoned her buddy to head out, but she'd know that it was pointless given the distance involved. It turned out the woman was pretty well advanced into her labour. With some real heart and soul in the pushing one pink and health boy was born into the world shortly after she'd made the call. Ten minutes later, as the blood poured forth, the dream crumbled around her.

The ambulance swerved again, and Sam braced this time.

"Any joy?" said the paramedic. The name stitched into his overalls was "Steve". There had been no time for introductions.

Sam shook her head. She pressed down hard against the woman's belly, bracing against her continued efforts to deliver the afterbirth, but it wouldn't budge. A fist sized lump of clot erupted onto the ever increasing pool of blood on the sheets, and the woman groaned.