A Small Part of the Pantomime (Prompt 029, 100OriginalFic Challenge)
Title: A Small Part of the Pantomime
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 029 (Birth)
Rating: R for subject matter and a little gore.
Length: 396 words
A/N: The title is taken from a line in Wallace Stevens' poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'.
Summary: There's a reason her parents indulged her.
When she was born, her heart stopped. Her parents were wealthy professionals. Epitomes of modern, successful lives, they had been trying for years to have a child, any child, of their own. In the days before IVF became widely spread, this was less easy than they had at first thought.
Two miscarriages and a stillbirth preceded her. When her mother, on that bright summer’s morning, felt the first birth pangs, they were accompanied by a fear so great that she thought her heart would burst out of her chest.
There was blood. More than there should have been. And a baby who tried to come out neck first. Too dangerous to push, too far down for a quick caesarean, she was rushed into theatre.
Looking back, her mother was devoutly grateful for the painkillers that had kept her swimming only on the edge of consciousness. Not a naturally imaginative woman, she carefully blocked out all thoughts of what could have happened to her in another century, at another doctor’s hands.
Here and now, under the harsh white lights, she shut her eyes and prayed to a God she wasn’t sure if she believed in. Her ears refused to listen to the stark words of the surgeon and his team, passing over her head like distant ships, words not meant for her. They spoke of the tiny body, still encased within hers and painted a picture she would not accept. If her baby died, she decided, then so would she.
Those awful moments, the moments before the CPR took effect, before the miniature lungs re-inflated and the heart reregistered itself on the monitors, were moments she swore she would only relive in her nightmares. It had taken them a full minute to pull her daughter out and resuscitate her. A minute without oxygen. The doctors were unsure as to the effect it would have. More words flew around her head; disabled … brain damage … impaired motor function.
Gazing down into the tiny cot, her mother could not bring herself to care. At long last she had a daughter, a beautiful human being to call her own.
As the girl lay there, oblivious to her surroundings, the parents made up their minds. They would not worry about the future. This tiny bundle of flesh would not want for anything - her every desire would be fulfilled, no matter the cost to them.
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 029 (Birth)
Rating: R for subject matter and a little gore.
Length: 396 words
A/N: The title is taken from a line in Wallace Stevens' poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'.
Summary: There's a reason her parents indulged her.
When she was born, her heart stopped. Her parents were wealthy professionals. Epitomes of modern, successful lives, they had been trying for years to have a child, any child, of their own. In the days before IVF became widely spread, this was less easy than they had at first thought.
Two miscarriages and a stillbirth preceded her. When her mother, on that bright summer’s morning, felt the first birth pangs, they were accompanied by a fear so great that she thought her heart would burst out of her chest.
There was blood. More than there should have been. And a baby who tried to come out neck first. Too dangerous to push, too far down for a quick caesarean, she was rushed into theatre.
Looking back, her mother was devoutly grateful for the painkillers that had kept her swimming only on the edge of consciousness. Not a naturally imaginative woman, she carefully blocked out all thoughts of what could have happened to her in another century, at another doctor’s hands.
Here and now, under the harsh white lights, she shut her eyes and prayed to a God she wasn’t sure if she believed in. Her ears refused to listen to the stark words of the surgeon and his team, passing over her head like distant ships, words not meant for her. They spoke of the tiny body, still encased within hers and painted a picture she would not accept. If her baby died, she decided, then so would she.
Those awful moments, the moments before the CPR took effect, before the miniature lungs re-inflated and the heart reregistered itself on the monitors, were moments she swore she would only relive in her nightmares. It had taken them a full minute to pull her daughter out and resuscitate her. A minute without oxygen. The doctors were unsure as to the effect it would have. More words flew around her head; disabled … brain damage … impaired motor function.
Gazing down into the tiny cot, her mother could not bring herself to care. At long last she had a daughter, a beautiful human being to call her own.
As the girl lay there, oblivious to her surroundings, the parents made up their minds. They would not worry about the future. This tiny bundle of flesh would not want for anything - her every desire would be fulfilled, no matter the cost to them.