JackxCarly Ficlet Thirteen
Here it is, the Epic Childbirth Chapter! I tried very hard to avoid most of the cliches.
Title: At the Hospital
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1416
Warnings: Well, obviously, there's a childbirth scene. It's not very graphic, but it's still there.
By the time Jack landed in New York, disembarked from the plane, and found his way out of the airport, it was nearly midnight. He'd been in such a rush, he hadn't brought any luggage, so he'd been forced to spend the nearly six-hour flight flipping through the boring magazines and wondering why they couldn't make the plane go faster.
Then it took another hour for the taxi to get to the hospital. Honestly...how was it possible for there to be so much traffic so late at night? When they finally got there, Jack paid the fare (which was ridiculously expensive, but he barely even noticed), threw open the door, and ran full-speed into the hospital.
“WHERE'S CARLY?” he screamed in the general direction of the help desk. The receptionist hardly even batted an eyelash (well, this was New York, after all).
“Sir, you will have to wait your turn like everyone else,” she ordered. Damn it...not another line! Fortunately, there were only a couple of people ahead of him, but by the time his wait was over, he was pretty sure that steam was rising from his ears.
“I...take it you're looking for somebody?” she asked. For once, Jack had the good sense to be slightly ashamed.
“Yes, my wife, Carly Nagisa,” he said in more civilized tones. “She's having a baby. Where is she?”
The receptionist checked her computer, much too slowly for Jack's liking, and gave him directions. He started running again...until he saw the huge “NO RUNNING” sign on the wall. As much as he hated to admit it, getting into trouble would probably take up even more time than plain walking would.
By the time he reached the maternity ward, he was a nervous wreck. If something bad had happened and he hadn't been there for Carly...he would never, ever be able to forgive himself.
He found the right door and double-checked the number to make sure. All right...this was the moment of truth. He swallowed and knocked on the door.
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The good news was, Carly was alive, and the baby hadn't come yet. But she looked like she'd been through Hell.
“Jack...?” she whispered in a hoarse voice, while turning her tear-swollen face toward him.
He felt absolutely terrible. He should never have let her move to America. He had pushed her away before because he didn't want her to get hurt again...and that was just what had happened.
“What's going on here?” he growled at the nurses. He was not happy to find out that they had hooked her up to an IV drip of something called “Pitocin”. They claimed that her labor had stalled, so this would help things along. However, there was one problem with this.
“Carly is scared of needles,” he informed them.
“Well, yes, we sort of figured that out,” answered the older of the two. “But we explained it to her until she understood. It's routine procedure.”
“ROUTINE MY ASS!” Jack exploded, equally enraged and relieved that it wasn't all his fault. “I AM GOING TO FIND SOMEONE...RIGHT NOW...AND TELL THEM THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TORTURING MY WIFE!”
“Jack, no!” Carly cried. She grabbed his hand and said quickly in Japanese, “They're just doing their job. Come on, you know me...I can handle this, okay?”
That was Carly, all right...always wanting to stay strong even when she was way over her head. But right now, Jack knew he had to do things her way, no matter how much he disagreed. So he shut up and sat down, preparing for the long haul.
As it turned out, he didn't have to wait as long as he had thought. About a half an hour after he arrived, Carly's IV drip kicked in and she began having strong contractions. She stubbornly refused to take any drugs for the pain, though. Per Japanese custom, she was trying very hard to not scream, but every now and then a yelp would escape. She even threw up once, which the nurses said was a common side effect of the medicine. Jack was all set to do more yelling, but Carly put a stop to that with a warning poke to his ribs.
He wished he could do something besides just sitting stupidly by her side. He was Jack Atlas, after all...he was supposed to know how to fix everything. Even Carly herself was coping with this better than he was.
After a couple of hours, the doctor walked into the room and said it was time to start pushing.
“Oi!” Jack complained as Carly's feet were being set into the stirrups. “Watch it! She's a person, not some piece of meat hanging in a shop!” He'd wanted to say “butcher shop”, but he'd forgotten the correct English word.
By now, however, all the medical staff were simply ignoring his rants.
He tried to get into the spirit of things, doing the counting and everything. When Carly shot him a more poisonous glare than he would have ever thought her capable of, though, he decided that it would be better to keep quiet and let her crush his hand bones to powder.
At one point, a nurse cautioned him, “If you start to feel faint, let us know right away.”
Jack managed a snort.
“Hey, I grew up in Satellite. You think I'm going to freak out over a little blood? I'll be fine.”
Shortly thereafter, he realized that he had been mistaken. He happened to look down at just the right-or rather, wrong-time. His face drained of color at what he saw, and he started to teeter back and forth.
“Head between your knees! And take deep breaths!” the nurse barked at him. Once Jack had done this and the dizzy spell had passed, the woman told him, “Don't worry...happens all the time!” The words themselves were reassuring, but Jack was fairly certain he could detect more than a hint of smug satisfaction in her voice. But he didn't have time to dwell on this, since right then Carly stopped trying to control her screams.
“Almost there!” the obstetrician shouted encouragingly over the shrieking. Jack knew that he would probably regret not watching this later, but he didn't want to risk passing out again.
He thought a last-minute prayer: Please, don't let me screw this up...
Then everyone started talking at once, and Jack heard the fateful first cry.
Someone said, “It's a girl!”...even though Jack and Carly had known that months ago. Jack anxiously looked over, and it felt like his heart dropped to somewhere around his ankles.
“Is she...deformed?” he asked tentatively.
“Don't worry...she looks completely healthy!” said one of the nurses.
“But her head!” Jack insisted. “It's all pointy in the back! It's not supposed to look like that!”
The nurse couldn't help laughing.
“Actually, it is supposed to look like that,” she corrected. “The skull bones are squeezed so the head can fit through the birth canal. It'll go back to normal on its own.”
“Okay, then...” Jack said skeptically. Then he turned to Carly and added in Japanese, “Just so she doesn't have a huge onion-head like Crow does.”
Carly barely had enough energy to roll her eyes at him.
Jack was proud of how he managed to cut the umbilical cord without any mishaps, only for the nurses to have to go through another round of telling him that everything was normal when the afterbirth came out. He brushed Carly's sweaty bangs out of her eyes and wiped her glasses on his shirt as baby Erika was weighed and measured. She weighed seven pounds, five ounces and was twenty inches long...both parents were hastily trying to convert that into the metric system.
Then, she got all swaddled up and they could finally take a proper look at her.
“She looks just like you, Carly!” Jack proclaimed.
“Jack, don't be silly! She's just a few minutes old...you can't tell yet.”
“Trust me...I can!” Jack retorted. Then he saw that Carly's eyelids were beginning to droop.
“Here, I'll take her. You get some sleep,” he cajoled. Carly obviously wanted to stay awake a bit longer, but realized it would be a losing battle.
“Jack?” she said just before nodding off.
“Hm?”
“Next time, we're doing a homebirth.”
Title: At the Hospital
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1416
Warnings: Well, obviously, there's a childbirth scene. It's not very graphic, but it's still there.
By the time Jack landed in New York, disembarked from the plane, and found his way out of the airport, it was nearly midnight. He'd been in such a rush, he hadn't brought any luggage, so he'd been forced to spend the nearly six-hour flight flipping through the boring magazines and wondering why they couldn't make the plane go faster.
Then it took another hour for the taxi to get to the hospital. Honestly...how was it possible for there to be so much traffic so late at night? When they finally got there, Jack paid the fare (which was ridiculously expensive, but he barely even noticed), threw open the door, and ran full-speed into the hospital.
“WHERE'S CARLY?” he screamed in the general direction of the help desk. The receptionist hardly even batted an eyelash (well, this was New York, after all).
“Sir, you will have to wait your turn like everyone else,” she ordered. Damn it...not another line! Fortunately, there were only a couple of people ahead of him, but by the time his wait was over, he was pretty sure that steam was rising from his ears.
“I...take it you're looking for somebody?” she asked. For once, Jack had the good sense to be slightly ashamed.
“Yes, my wife, Carly Nagisa,” he said in more civilized tones. “She's having a baby. Where is she?”
The receptionist checked her computer, much too slowly for Jack's liking, and gave him directions. He started running again...until he saw the huge “NO RUNNING” sign on the wall. As much as he hated to admit it, getting into trouble would probably take up even more time than plain walking would.
By the time he reached the maternity ward, he was a nervous wreck. If something bad had happened and he hadn't been there for Carly...he would never, ever be able to forgive himself.
He found the right door and double-checked the number to make sure. All right...this was the moment of truth. He swallowed and knocked on the door.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The good news was, Carly was alive, and the baby hadn't come yet. But she looked like she'd been through Hell.
“Jack...?” she whispered in a hoarse voice, while turning her tear-swollen face toward him.
He felt absolutely terrible. He should never have let her move to America. He had pushed her away before because he didn't want her to get hurt again...and that was just what had happened.
“What's going on here?” he growled at the nurses. He was not happy to find out that they had hooked her up to an IV drip of something called “Pitocin”. They claimed that her labor had stalled, so this would help things along. However, there was one problem with this.
“Carly is scared of needles,” he informed them.
“Well, yes, we sort of figured that out,” answered the older of the two. “But we explained it to her until she understood. It's routine procedure.”
“ROUTINE MY ASS!” Jack exploded, equally enraged and relieved that it wasn't all his fault. “I AM GOING TO FIND SOMEONE...RIGHT NOW...AND TELL THEM THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TORTURING MY WIFE!”
“Jack, no!” Carly cried. She grabbed his hand and said quickly in Japanese, “They're just doing their job. Come on, you know me...I can handle this, okay?”
That was Carly, all right...always wanting to stay strong even when she was way over her head. But right now, Jack knew he had to do things her way, no matter how much he disagreed. So he shut up and sat down, preparing for the long haul.
As it turned out, he didn't have to wait as long as he had thought. About a half an hour after he arrived, Carly's IV drip kicked in and she began having strong contractions. She stubbornly refused to take any drugs for the pain, though. Per Japanese custom, she was trying very hard to not scream, but every now and then a yelp would escape. She even threw up once, which the nurses said was a common side effect of the medicine. Jack was all set to do more yelling, but Carly put a stop to that with a warning poke to his ribs.
He wished he could do something besides just sitting stupidly by her side. He was Jack Atlas, after all...he was supposed to know how to fix everything. Even Carly herself was coping with this better than he was.
After a couple of hours, the doctor walked into the room and said it was time to start pushing.
“Oi!” Jack complained as Carly's feet were being set into the stirrups. “Watch it! She's a person, not some piece of meat hanging in a shop!” He'd wanted to say “butcher shop”, but he'd forgotten the correct English word.
By now, however, all the medical staff were simply ignoring his rants.
He tried to get into the spirit of things, doing the counting and everything. When Carly shot him a more poisonous glare than he would have ever thought her capable of, though, he decided that it would be better to keep quiet and let her crush his hand bones to powder.
At one point, a nurse cautioned him, “If you start to feel faint, let us know right away.”
Jack managed a snort.
“Hey, I grew up in Satellite. You think I'm going to freak out over a little blood? I'll be fine.”
Shortly thereafter, he realized that he had been mistaken. He happened to look down at just the right-or rather, wrong-time. His face drained of color at what he saw, and he started to teeter back and forth.
“Head between your knees! And take deep breaths!” the nurse barked at him. Once Jack had done this and the dizzy spell had passed, the woman told him, “Don't worry...happens all the time!” The words themselves were reassuring, but Jack was fairly certain he could detect more than a hint of smug satisfaction in her voice. But he didn't have time to dwell on this, since right then Carly stopped trying to control her screams.
“Almost there!” the obstetrician shouted encouragingly over the shrieking. Jack knew that he would probably regret not watching this later, but he didn't want to risk passing out again.
He thought a last-minute prayer: Please, don't let me screw this up...
Then everyone started talking at once, and Jack heard the fateful first cry.
Someone said, “It's a girl!”...even though Jack and Carly had known that months ago. Jack anxiously looked over, and it felt like his heart dropped to somewhere around his ankles.
“Is she...deformed?” he asked tentatively.
“Don't worry...she looks completely healthy!” said one of the nurses.
“But her head!” Jack insisted. “It's all pointy in the back! It's not supposed to look like that!”
The nurse couldn't help laughing.
“Actually, it is supposed to look like that,” she corrected. “The skull bones are squeezed so the head can fit through the birth canal. It'll go back to normal on its own.”
“Okay, then...” Jack said skeptically. Then he turned to Carly and added in Japanese, “Just so she doesn't have a huge onion-head like Crow does.”
Carly barely had enough energy to roll her eyes at him.
Jack was proud of how he managed to cut the umbilical cord without any mishaps, only for the nurses to have to go through another round of telling him that everything was normal when the afterbirth came out. He brushed Carly's sweaty bangs out of her eyes and wiped her glasses on his shirt as baby Erika was weighed and measured. She weighed seven pounds, five ounces and was twenty inches long...both parents were hastily trying to convert that into the metric system.
Then, she got all swaddled up and they could finally take a proper look at her.
“She looks just like you, Carly!” Jack proclaimed.
“Jack, don't be silly! She's just a few minutes old...you can't tell yet.”
“Trust me...I can!” Jack retorted. Then he saw that Carly's eyelids were beginning to droop.
“Here, I'll take her. You get some sleep,” he cajoled. Carly obviously wanted to stay awake a bit longer, but realized it would be a losing battle.
“Jack?” she said just before nodding off.
“Hm?”
“Next time, we're doing a homebirth.”