Maddie's Angel Drove a Volvo

I made a big mistake that day, thinking I knew enough to know everything there was to know.  One labor, one birth, one baby made me a mother.  Nothing more.  The pain crept in low and slow, like a leopard on the prowl.  I believed I had Time.  I read.  I ate. I lounged. I fooled myself a little longer.  Ripples of pain became waves, threatening to drown.  All alone, I labored, still believing I had Time.  Serendipity and Telepathy heard their cues in my cries.  They took center stage.  The phone rang to say that Help was on its way.  An hour passed, and Help was at my door.  She grabbed my bag, gripped my arm and stuffed me in her car.  The back was made ready for me.  Towels and plastic lined the seat.  Racing to the hospital, I was aware of very little. Pain.  The rush of warm fluid. Something was Wrong. The air outside was hot and sticky for our arrival.  A nurse was waiting (did Help call ahead?) wheelchair in tow.  The wind blew back my hair as I shivered in my nurse-powered chair.  We rocketed down the icy, air conditioned corridors. (No one moves faster than a nurse not wanting to catch a baby in a hallway.)  At last, I was delivered into the waiting hands of my midwife. Her calm smile melted my fears. A flurry of nurses whisked away my clothes and twittered away everything I tried to say.  "No need to fear.  It's just your baby, dear."  It seems I was not the only one who made the mistake of believing I knew it all that day.  The rest is just a blur, until I woke and saw Help standing by my bed. "You have a beautiful baby girl" her smiling face said.  Later ,one doctor said she saved her own life by sitting in the womb just right: "The cord hung right between her legs." Yet another claimed she must have had an Angel looking out for her, for she surely should have died.  But Fate smiled on us all.  That day, Maddie's Angel drove a Volvo.