Shelter In Your Love (Beatles Fan Fiction)

59. Apple Scruffs

Now I've watched you sitting there
Seen the passers-by all stare
Like you have no place to go
But there's so much they don't know about Apple Scruffs

'Alright, Mrs. West. You can get dressed again now,' the doctor says casually, as he walks around his desk and sits down. He puts his glasses on and scribbles something on the paper in front of him.

I get up from the cold, leather covered table, pull my underwear back on and yank my dress down. Minnie, loitering in the corner of the examination room gives me a watery smile. She'd insisted on coming with me to the doctor's appointment - to ensure I actually went, I think - so I insisted she come into the exam room with me as well. I know how uncomfortable this makes her. She hates this kind of thing, although, probably not quite as much as I do right at this moment.

I sit on the hard wooden chair beside the doctor's desk.

'When did you say you were due, Mrs. West?' the doctor asks, not looking up from his papers.

'Um, end of February. Maybe March...' I reply.

'And you think you're about... six or seven months along?'

'Yes, I think so.'

He shakes his head. 'No. No, I don't... That's not right, Mrs West. You're much further along than that.' He looks up at me. His dark eyes are cold and unfeeling. Not a trace of any empathy. I shift uncomfortably in my chair. The doctor flicks through his notes again, his brow furrowed as if he's trying to solve a particularly cryptic crossword clue.

I have given the doctor a bit of an underestimation for how far along I am. I thought if I gave a slightly conservative number, then I could just say the baby arrived a tad early. I know I'm more than six months, but I didn't want to explain why I've left it this long to see anyone. I feel the baby move inside me. At least he has a bit of sympathy for me. Still, I've only just started feeling him move, just a couple of weeks before I came back to London. Surely that would mean I couldn't be that far gone?

'I would say you're around thirty-two, maybe thirty-four weeks. That's more like eight months, Mrs West.'

I look round at Minnie. She widens her eyes at me. 'Oh, really?' I reply, feebly.

'So there's only a month to go?' Minnie asks.

The doctor ignores her and rests his contemptuous gaze on me instead. He's hardly looked at me directly the entire time I've been here, including when he was examined me, which I thought was rude, but now I wish he wouldn't look at me. I feel like he's accusing me of something.

'A normal pregnancy will be around forty weeks,' he says. 'The date you've given me, when you think you conceived, could it have been any earlier?'

'It was the...' I turn to Minnie. 'When was the May bank holiday last year?'

Minnie frowns. 'There are two bank holidays in May.'

'When we went to West Bay. It was the second one, wasn't it?'

'No, we went on the first bank holiday,' she replies.

I turn back to the doctor. 'Although, it could have been before that, by a week or... or so...' I say, pained. 'I'm sorry, I'm getting confused. I thought we went away on the second bank holiday, but...' The doctor's not listening to me now anyway, he's reading through his notes again instead. He clearly couldn't care less.

'Where did you say you went to the antenatal clinic?' he asks. 'What was the name of your doctor?'

'I, uh, didn't say. I mean, I haven't been to any.'