Will You Hold My Baby?

Part One

You do this every time, Clara.

I dug the heel of my hand into my eye as I stifled another yawn. The lights in the lobby were much too bright. My ears were ringing and someone's baby had been wailing for half an hour. If the mother would have just stopped bouncing it, I was certain the crying would have stopped by now.

Well excuse me for getting poisoned, Alan. I'll try not to next time.

By "every time", my boss was referring to the one occasion he sent me to New York for a conference on my twenty-first birthday and it turned out the other young business people who had been sent by their bosses knew it was my birthday and convinced me to go on a night out with them. Alan had waited for three hours in Manchester airport before realising I hadn't even woken up.

A shadow moved across my feet and I looked up through my hair. The mother was sitting on the footstool opposite me with the baby on her lap. The poor thing was wearing a knitted cardigan and winter boots in New York in the middle of July. No wonder it had been crying.

I've managed to push the presentation back a few hours. You had better be suited up when you get here.

I grit my teeth against the wave of nausea that rolled up from my stomach and into my throat. No way was I going to throw up on an infant.

"Excuse me, ma'am."

Sighing, I sat up, stretching out from my hunched over position and relaxing my shoulders. My eyes were level with the third gold button down on the concierge's waistcoat.

"Yeah?"

"I brought you a glass of ice water." He extended the glass towards me and made sure I had a good hold of it before he let go. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine." I forced a smile. "Thank you for the water."

"Is there anything else we can get you? We could get you a sandwich on the house?"

My stomach lurched. "Uh- erm, no. Thank you. This will be fine."

The water was great for my dry mouth, but less great for the concoction of bubbling chemicals trying to force their way out of my system. I took a deep, careful breath in through my nose and let it out with my eyes closed.

I am in no fit state to present anything.

Alan's reply came less than a second later, as though he'd predicted what I was going to say and typed out the answer before I'd even sent the message.

You should have thought about that before you decided to eat crap.

I wiped the sleeve of my top across my forehead. It would have been ideal to have got to a bathroom at that point, but I knew the motion of standing up would cause me to vomit on top of the mother's head. But I couldn't fight it: it was going to come up at some point and there was not a chance in hell I was going to allow it to be on the floor of this immaculate lobby.

Standing with clenched fists, I took a deep breath, ground my teeth together with as much force as I could manage and walked briskly to the toilet.

When I emerged from the stall, sweating and pale, I could hear that the baby was crying again. Luckily, the small satchel which was slung across my shoulders contained my toiletries, so I was able to brush my teeth without having to revisit my seat.

I ate in the restaurant of the hotel YOU booked.

I walked back to the chair I had been sitting on and gulped down the glass of water, shivering and bracing against the pain on in my teeth.