Taxi Delivery (2 page)

            Sadie had never done this before, but she was certain that things shouldn’t be happening this quickly.  She hadn’t been able to take the birthing class at the hospital, given her move and the other circumstances surrounding her pregnancy, but she had read several books to prepare herself.

            According to the books, there were stages to labor.  She was first supposed to feel mild contractions, which could go on for days.  Many women even mistook these contractions to mean labor and went to the hospital too early.  Sometimes, the contractions were just practice in order to prepare the woman’s body for the upcoming labor.  Other times, they were the very early stages of labor, but they were part of what was known as non-active labor.  Sadie had never felt a mild contraction.  Somehow, her body seemed to have skipped all of the stages but the final one.

            When the next contraction hit, she gasped in the backseat of the cab.  She felt a warm liquid soaking the bottom of her baggy dress.  She looked down.  Certainly she had not just wet herself.

            “Lord be with me,” she said, just loud enough for the driver to take notice.

            “Excuse me?” he said, a worried look on his face as he glanced at her in the rearview mirror once again.

            “My water just broke,” she said, without thinking about the panic she might cause for her driver.

            “You’re kidding,” the man said, not looking back but instead speeding up on the side road he had taken.

            Sadie let out a pained sigh.  She wished that she were.  She wished a lot of things at that moment, but none of them were happening.  What was happening was the birth of her child.  Of that, she was certain.  It didn’t matter that she had never done it before, she could tell as a woman that she was quickly moving through the process.  It didn’t matter if the hospital was a block, a mile, or a whole city away.  They weren’t going to make it.

            “Pull over,” she said as she gasped for a breath.  She was feeling the strong urge to push and she knew she would have to listen to her body soon.

            “We’re not there, just hang on lady, I’m doing the best I can.”

            “You don’t understand,” she said, in one breath as she clutched the back of his seat.  “You have to pull over.  Now.  This baby is coming.  We’re out of time.”  Sadie spoke in short, staccato sentences.  It was all she could do.  She wanted to describe to him what she was feeling so that he would understand the urgency of the situation.  But it was all she could do to get out the words she had already spoken.  Now, she had to concentrate on what her body was telling her to do.

*          *          *          *          *

            Jed couldn’t believe his ears.  Was this woman actually telling him to pull over?  Was she going to have her baby right here and now?  How in the world had he gotten this fare in the first place, of all the cabs in the city?

            Jed pressed the accelerator farther to the floor.  The hospital wasn’t far away now.  Maybe if he just went a little faster…his thoughts were interrupted by a moan in the backseat.  He felt her arms clutch his head rest and shake it a little.  She was telling him that he needed to do as requested.  There was no longer any time.  He had to pull over.

            Jed searched the road in front of him.  There weren’t many options.  New York didn’t exactly have areas in which you could just pull off and have a baby.  Jed found the parking garage for one of the city’s many high rise office buildings and quickly turned in.

            The immediate area before him was filled with cars.  There wasn’t one space in which to park.  The woman’s breathing in the backseat told him that it didn’t matter.  Double parking was the least of his issues at that particular moment.  Jed pulled the cab up behind two other vehicles and threw it into park.  Without looking into the backseat again, he could tell that she was very ready to have that baby.  She was no longer sitting up and the noise she made was entirely different.  She was also no longer talking to him, no matter what he said.

            Jed said another prayer, this time silently, and threw open the driver’s door, rushing around to the side of the vehicle.  He opened the side door that he had so slowly opened for a pregnant woman hailing a cab just minutes ago with a whole new fury.  The first thing he saw was the woman’s blonde hair, splayed out on the seat.  She looked at him upside down, her face filled with fear.

            “You’re going to have to do this,” she said, with a new sense of peace in her voice, as if she knew her body was going to take care of the main part of the work.

            Jed nodded and closed the door.  It wasn’t her head he was going to need to attend, though he wished more than anything that he could just stay on that side of the cab and talk her through the agony she must be in. 

            He rushed around to the back of the cab and popped the trunk.  Under the flap in the back was an emergency kit.  He grabbed the kit and extracted the blanket from it, leaving the jumper cables splayed on the cement below the trunk.  He uncovered the emergency medical kit and took a quick inventory.  There was a bottle of water, a few bandages, and the blanket.  Not much with which to deliver a baby, but it would have to do.

            Jed stuffed the items under his arm and ran to the other side of the cab.  He opened the door and saw the woman’s knees jammed up into the air.  He couldn’t hear her breath and for a second, the whole world stopped.  She soon let out a huge gasp and Jed realized she must have been pushing.

            “The radio,” he said.  “I need to call for help.”

            The woman nodded emphatically and Jed opened the front passenger door and grabbed the radio from the front panel.  He wasn’t sure why he didn’t think of that even before the situation became so dire.

            “Control, this is car number 414, Jed Leida at the wheel,” he said as he waited for a response to ensure that someone was listening to his report.

            The woman took a deep breath in the backseat and let out a grunt.  She was pushing again.

            “Control here, go ahead 414,” the crackly voice on the other end stated.

            “Need emergency assistance in the World Bank parking garage,” Jed rushed on, “passenger in labor.  Repeat, passenger having a baby.  Medical personnel requested immediately.”

            “Calling emergency services 414,” the crackly voice said in an almost bored manner.  “Ambulance will be dispatched shortly.”

            Jed threw the radio back onto the seat and slammed the door, rocking the cab a bit as the woman moaned.

            “Sorry,” he said as he opened the back door and revealed blood on the backseat of the cab.  “What should I do?” he asked, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

            “Help her,” the woman cried, “help my baby.”

            Sadie couldn’t believe this was happening.  Hadn’t she been through enough?  She tried to block out her fear so that she could take the situation one minute at a time.  One second at a time, even.  She closed her eyes and tuned in to what her body was telling her.  She wasn’t in any pain.  She had heard plenty of horror stories about child birth…each of them more horrible than the last and all of them filled with pain and suffering.  Sadie, on the other hand, would not have described the experience as overly painful.  Extremely uncomfortable, yes.  Terribly frightening, definitely.  But she didn’t feel like her senses were blocked by pure pain in the least.

            Sadie could feel the baby dropping by the minute.  The precious little bundle was about to make its way into the world, whether she or her driver liked it or not.  She watched his dark brown hair bob in near her knees as he positioned himself between the door and the seat.  The terror in his eyes was enough to suffice the way she felt.  And yet, she continually prayed for peace and believed she was getting it in high doses.

            Breathe.  She reminded herself.  She took another big breath as she felt another wave-like contraction hitting.  When the contraction got at its height, she had the urge to push unlike anything she’d ever felt before.  Sadie placed her chin on her chest, held her knees with her hands, and pushed with all her might.

*          *          *          *          *

            Jed had never seen anything like it.  In the movies, women always screamed and cried while they were having their babies.  Sadie made plenty of noise, but he wouldn’t have described any of it as screaming or crying.  He positioned the blanket beneath her as she gave a big heave.  And then…in a matter of seconds…he had a baby in his arms.  The baby cried and Jed felt someone standing behind him.

            “Is that…did she…” the voice said as a bystander happened past the taxi.

            Jed nodded.  “It’s a girl,” he said to both the man behind him and to the woman in the back of his cab.

            He handed the baby over to her mother as he tried to decide what to do next.  The baby was still attached to the cord and he knew that would have to be rectified.  Before he could get too far in his thought process, he heard the sirens.  They were close and getting closer all the time.

            Jed watched as Sadie cried peaceful tears and gazed into her newborn’s scrunched up face.  The baby had had a rough birth.  It’s not every day one comes into the world.  And most New York babies are allowed to do it in the comfort of a hospital.  With warming lights, fresh blankets and plenty of attention.  This one had done it all on her own with very little to help her other than a fear stricken cab driver.

            The EMTs pulled up with a screech and before Jed knew what was happening, he was pushed aside so they could tend to the mother and the new baby.  Jed stood in the crowd, which had started to form after the first man noticed a woman had just given birth in the back of a cab.  Several people were on their phones.  It was only a matter of time before the news crew showed up.

            Jed hoped, for the sake of her privacy, the ambulance would be well on its way to the hospital by then.

            He stood back and let them do their work as they quickly cut the cord that tied the baby to the mother and suctioned out the baby’s mouth.  Before long, they had the mom on a stretcher and the baby wrapped in a larger, warmer blanket.  Once they loaded the patients into the ambulance, they were on their way.

            Jed stood to the side, watching the lights flash and the sirens howl in disbelief.  Had he just been a part of that?  As the ambulance rounded the corner, making its way out of the parking garage, the first news crew arrived.

            The cameraman ran towards the cab, shooting footage of the ambulance as it rushed away.  Once the sirens could no longer be heard, the camera automatically turned to the cab.  The reporter quickly approached and started shooting questions at Jed since he was the person closest to the cab.

            “Can you tell us what happened here?” she asked, pointing a microphone in his face without asking.

            “Uh, a lady, she, uh, had a baby,” Jed said, staring in the direction the ambulance had just gone.

            “A woman gave birth in the backseat of a cab, is that correct?” the reporter said, filling in the details.

            “Yeah, yeah, she had a little girl,” Jed said.

            The reporter looked from Jed to the cab and then back to Jed, putting the pieces together quickly as the rest of the crowd began to disperse and Jed still remained stationed next to the cab.  “Are you the driver?” the reporter asked.  “Did you deliver the baby?  What’s your name, sir?”

            “Jed.  Jed Leida,” Jed replied, ignoring the other two questions.

            “Did you deliver the child?” the reporter asked, not giving up on her original questions.

            “Um,” Jed stuttered.  “I think she pretty much did that on her own.”

            The reporter gave him a confused look.  “But you were there, weren’t you?”

            Jed nodded.  “Oh yes, I was most certainly there.”  He didn’t even really understand that he was being interviewed by a TV crew.  He was in such shock from the events that had unfolded that he was just answering the questions without really understanding that he would likely later be on the news himself.

            “What is the mother’s name?” the reporter asked.  “Did she name the child?”

            Jed stopped listening after the first question.  The mother’s name.  He didn’t even know her name.

            He started to realize that he was on camera and being interviewed by a news station about the events that occurred just moments ago.  He no longer wanted to answer any questions.  The woman gave birth to a child, which normally is a very private manner.  And yet it had become very public very quickly.  Jed did not feel that it was right to violate her privacy any more than he already had.  Plus, he did not have any more answers to give.  He didn’t know her name.

            “No more questions,” he said, waving his hand in front of the camera to indicate that he was ready for it to be turned off.

            The cameraman lowered the lens and the reporter sighed.  Her news scoop was turning into a dud.

            Jed began walking away from the cab, unsure as to where he would go.  He needed to call dispatch, get a ride home, and get the cab towed.  It was unlikely that it would be driven again.  At least not for a while.