WINNER OF THE PHILIP PYKE MEMORIAL PRIZE 2025
Caroline had never liked her name. It felt uncomfortable most days like a coat that you bought in
a charity shop and obviously had belonged to a much older woman. She never wanted to be
Carol, but Caroline felt like patients were addressing a royal. 34 week pregnant first time parents
didn’t want to be bowing or sounding awkwardly formal when you are explaining exactly how
the placenta is removed if you cannot natural give birth to it.
She turned her name over in her head as she went to work that morning, humming it to herself.
She turned into the car park and saw her favourite spot was gone. She consoled herself saying it
was probably a couple turning up for their twelve-week scan, full of excitement and unable to
control themselves as they threw their Ford Fiesta into the first spot they could find. She ended
up parking an extra six hundred feet away. When she thought back later she was grateful for the
extra three minutes of walking as the sky darkened around her and the beginning of her 6pm
shift loomed. Without those three minutes things could have been very different.
CAROLINE she mouthed to herself as she saw a heavily pregnant woman standing by the pay
machine, her partner juggling his contactless card payment and the bright yellow notes that
soon-to-be parents were told to carry everywhere with them. How on earth do people go so
wrong when naming babies? She had been so careful when naming Hannah and Ruby. Just go
straight down the line, nothing crazy, nothing odd, but whatever seems to suit the small blob you
get handed, grey tinged and bloody. CAROLINE she mouthed again, thinking she should ask
her Dad next time she saw him what on earth her mother had been thinking.
She didn’t really register the couple steaming past her until she saw the glimmer of the yellow
folder and wondered how far along they were. Her eyes flicked to the woman’s stomach, which
was was shouldering its way out of her t shirt, and she guessed 40 weeks.
Through the doors to East Wing Out Patients they were ahead of her: the woman was tall, broad
with long brown hair and the air of someone not to be fucked with even if they weren’t on the
precipice of giving birth. Her husband tipped her just about for height, and was handsome in
that annoying way husbands can be when going for ante natal hospital appointments.
Look at him, Caroline thought, he had had time to trim his beard. It was beautifully neat, a ruler
straight line running from his ear down the side of his jaw, and then swooping neatly across his
throat had been carved out by a razor’s edge.
“Which fucking way? Which fucking way?” The woman was shouting at her husband who was
pointing toward the lifts. Caroline followed them quietly, her suspicions building.
“Push the fucking button then. Push it.” The woman was saying.
The three of them got in, Caroline shifting to one side to give them room. The woman’s hands
were holding the rails inside the lift, her knuckles white, her wrists swollen, and she started to
moan. Here we go, thought Caroline.
‘Hello, I’m a midwife, can I check are you in labour?’
‘No I’m fucking not.’ The woman insisted.
‘Yes she is’ her husband interjected ‘This is what happened last time, we had our first in the foot
well of the car.’
‘I am not in labour. I am not doing this again. We honestly shouldn’t even be here; we can go
home. OOOOOOOOOO’
‘Okay, would it be alright if I helped you?’ Caroline asked, her hands now gently outstretched
toward the woman.
‘No, fucking hell, no, I’m not in labour.’
‘Legally, I cannot help you if you don’t consent, but I really think you might be in labour and
need some help.’
‘Let her help you!’ The husband almost shouted.
‘Fine, fucking hell, fine.’
Caroline dropped to her knees, and lifted the woman’s skirt. A baby’s head looked back at her.
‘Okay, we are good to go.’ She told the woman ‘I just need you to push.’
As they reached the third floor, the woman was on all fours, her husband holding her face and
getting her to look at him, whilst Caroline was sat on her haunches behind the woman easing the
baby out. The doors pinged and opened.
‘Keep that open’ Caroline told the man. ‘Stick you leg in there’
Caught in the strangest game of Twister he would ever play, the man stuck his leg out whilst
keeping her hands on his partner’s screaming face. The doors closed on his ankle, then opened
again, then closed, then opened. This went on and on the gentle ding followed by mechanical
clank of them moving becoming the first things the new baby girl heard as she came screaming
into the world.
When it was over and they were moving the mother and baby down the corridor to the Post
Natal ward, crying into her baby’s neck the woman turned to Caroline:
“Thank you. Thank you so much. You were brilliant. You were everything I needed.”
“Yeah, thanks so much, I don’t know what we would have done if we had been alone in that
lift.”
Caroline smiled and nodded. The woman looked down at her baby’s bright new eyes, then up at
Caroline. She seemed to be noticing Caroline’s peculiar blue irises, flecked with brown. She
looked back down at the baby.
“What’s your name?” the woman said, sharing a loving look with her partner.
“Caroline” she answered.
“Oh.” They both said. “Oh right.”
She wheeled them into the ward, got them settled into Bed Six and went to properly clock in.
The rest of the shift whirled around her, two more babies were born, and as 6am dawned she left
and went home to her own kids, her husband with his untidy beard and well-timed vasectomy.
When she returned that evening her colleague said the couple in Bed Six had named their new
baby girl, Louise.
