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Sophie was still yanking on her seatbelt when he gunned the engine and swung onto the street. They raced down Percival Road and screeched right through the green light onto Parramatta Road.
    Sophie knew that like many paramedics Mick was apprehensive of maternity cases. He didn’t have much practice at them. They involved two patients instead of one, and the potential for disaster always seemed so great. The whole aim was to get in and out and to hospital as quickly as you could before anything happened.
    Mick weaved through the traffic, blasting the horn, then took the angled left into Pyrmont Bridge Road. The engine revved hard. ‘Go, baby, go,’ Mick said.
    Sophie, on the other hand, was looking forward to the case. It would be her first maternity call since Lachlan’s birth, and already it was bringing back memories of the pain and euphoria. More than likely the baby wouldn’t be born until hours after they got the woman to the hospital, such was people’s understandable tendency to ring early rather than late, but she thought through the possibilities anyway, knowing that being prepared equalled staying in control. Cord around neck – if loose, lift over head; if tight, clamp and cut. Prevent tears by slowing and controlling the delivery. Be sure to suction the baby quickly, clearing the airways. Wrap warmly to prevent heat loss.
    Mick roared left into Glebe Point Road. ‘Numbers?’
    Sophie looked for letterboxes as she pulled on a pair of gloves. ‘Two-ten this side.’
    Mick’s head bobbed as he drove and searched for a street number on his side of the road. Down at the end of the street Sophie saw a man run waving into the road. ‘Starjumper dead ahead.’
    ‘Got him.’
    Mick turned the siren off and pulled up outside a two-storey house painted in heritage colours. The man ran past a dark blue BMW parked at the kerb and went up the sandstone steps to the front door of the house. ‘Please hurry,’ he shouted. ‘It’s coming!’
    Sophie grabbed equipment and hurried to the open front door. The foyer was large and spacious, white walls decorated on one side with an oil painting of the beach and on the other side with framed degrees declaring that Boyd Sawyer was a plastic surgeon and a member of some college. Sophie went by too fast to read any more details.
    In the living room the man crouched by a weeping woman. He wore a rumpled white shirt and grey suit pants. ‘She’s six weeks early. She’s booked into RPA and our obstetrician wants her there immediately.’
    The woman wore a pink nightdress and lay on her side on the carpet. She clutched her swollen abdomen. The man tried to pull her up by the arm. ‘Julie, they’re going to take you to hospital now.’
    Sophie knelt with them. She introduced herself. ‘Is this your first?’ She put her hands on Julie’s abdomen and felt the tension there.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How long have you had pain?’
    ‘About an hour, but they’re less than a minute apart now,’ Julie wept.
    ‘When did your waters break?’
    ‘Just when we rang you,’ the man said. ‘Our obstetrician said–’
    Julie cried out and clutched between her legs. ‘Boyd, it’s coming!’
    He grabbed Mick’s arm. ‘Where’s your trolley?’
    ‘It’s going to be okay, sir,’ Mick said.
    Sophie raised Julie’s sodden nightdress and saw the baby was crowning. Immediately she turned to Mick. ‘Open the kit.’
    As he tore the top off the maternity kit Julie groaned and the baby’s head was born. Sophie supported it while checking that the cord was not around the neck. The shoulders delivered; then, with a rush of blood and fluid, the slippery purple body was in Sophie’s hands. She felt the newborn’s wet heat through her thin gloves and smelled the blood and vernix that coated the tiny form, and in a split second was taken back to her own delivery of Lachlan, her first touch of his skin, the feather weight of his body on her chest, the look on Chris’s face as he embraced