Disclaimer: I don't own Initial D, Shigeno-sensei and the Kodansha Publishing Company do.

Programmed Lives – Second Stage

Prologue

At the beginning the pain wasn't so bad, just a bit worse than your average period pain. A heavily pregnant Akiko only woke up when, in addition to the pain, she felt a wet and sticky sensation somewhere underneath her legs. Her first reaction was to look at the right side of the bed she'd been sharing with Ryosuke for a bit more than a year. He wasn't there.

'The bloody car…' she complained with the little breath she had left.

Akiko's husband, a former great street racer, was now a part time doctor at her father's hospital and was currently preparing the car that his team would use in the Japanese Super GT300 championship.

With horror, Akiko realised that if Ryosuke was gone, Keisuke would be with him too. This meant that she was on her own in the house.

Making a titanic effort, she got up from her bed and, trying to remain as calm as possible, she picked up the phone and pressing the key to autodial Ryosuke's number, she put the phone to her ear. All she got was the busy tone and this made her do something she rarely did: swearing.

She then tried Keisuke's but her brother-in-law's phone wasn't even turned on. Thankfully, he had his voicemail activated so she left a message.

'Oh for pity's sake!' she muttered still fighting to remain composed.

She then dialled the only number she could think of: the hospital where both Ryosuke and herself worked.

'This is the Arakawa Hospital, how may I help you?' finally someone was answering the phone: the nurse covering the shift from midnight to eight in the morning.

'Hello, this is Doctor Akiko Takahashi, I'm going to need an ambulance to come to my house right away,' she said thanking the heavens that her work as a doctor had prepared her to keep a cool head even in the middle of an emergency.

'I see, could you please give me more details Doctor Takahashi?' the nurse asked testing Akiko's tolerance levels a bit too much.

'Oh yes: I think I'm going into labour,' Akiko replied while she hoped she didn't sound too hysterical. She probably did for the nurse seemed to lose the ability to speak for a few eternally long seconds.

'An ambulance will be right at your house, Doctor Takahashi. Is anyone assisting you at the moment?' the nurse asked and Akiko wanted to smack her for her stupidity.

'Nurse, if there was anyone with me right now, do you really think I'd be forced to call you myself?'

The nurse seemed to realise the magnitude of her mistake.

'No, of course not, I'm sorry,' she said sounding positively mortified.

Akiko couldn't help wincing at how extremely rude she had been to the poor nurse. In reality she was mad at Ryosuke for, in this order, not being there, not answering the phone and having got her pregnant to begin with.

After hanging up, she decided to get ready for the ambulance.

Getting downstairs was specially tricky, even more so because half way down the stairs she felt a piercing pain that forced her to sit down and wait until the it receded enough for her to stand up again and carry on walking.

She felt her swollen tummy with her hand and realised that something was wrong there. It felt abnormally tender and that made her realise something else. What was leaking wasn't her waters as she had originally thought: it was blood.

'Oh my God,' she whispered and with those three words, she lost all hope of remaining calm.

Someone rang the bell as she had finally made it to the living room and, making one last effort, she opened the door.

'Oh my God,' was the paramedic reaction seeing her copying her exact words.

'Let me help you,' said the other one, finally being kind enough to get Akiko in his arms lifting her all the way to the stretcher where he put her down as carefully as he could.

'How often are you having the contractions?' the kind paramedic asked as they got on their way to the hospital.

'I haven't had any. I just feel a lot of pain but no contractions,' she replied finally allowing herself to sound as weak as she felt.

'How far are you along?' asked the paramedic getting increasingly concerned.

'Just over the thirty eighth week,' she replied with just a whisper.

'Alright,' he said and then proceeded to check her blood pressure.

By the time they arrived at the hospital, Akiko was beginning to sweat. The pain was now almost unbearable and she had never wanted for Ryosuke to be with her any more than in that precise moment. Only that her husband wasn't even aware that something was very wrong with her and Akiko didn't even know when or if Keisuke would even listen to her message.

'Oh no…' she wept as they carried her towards the Obstetrics section of the emergency ward. for Akiko, using up the whatever was left of her lucidity, finally realised what was wrong.

'Akiko, it's you!' Doctor Megumi Yamaguchi said joining the paramedics in their sprint.

'Megumi…' she whimpered seeing her colleague and friend.

Doctor Yamaguchi held her hand and said:

'Akiko sweetie, don't worry, you'll see: everything will be fine.'

Akiko knew that Megumi was just trying to make feel better.

'Placenta…previa…' she managed to whisper, then she began to feel weaker and weaker and everything around her became blurrier, then Akiko fainted.

To be continued…