---Oskar’s perspective---
---Monday, 5th of February, 2684 Terran Calendar---
---Southern England---
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAGHhhhHHH!!!!!” screams my red faced wife as she, almost literally, breaks my hand with the force of her grip.
“You’re nearly there, Sublieutenant! Just a little further!” says the army doctor, reassuringly, clearly more perturbed by the display in front of him than he would be by having to saw off her leg!
She completely ignores him, keeping her bright, emerald eyes fixed in a piercing gaze on my brown ones.
Her brow is furrowed, the bridge of her nose creased, her nostrils flared and her teeth bare with rage as she snarls at me in a guttural, animalistic vocal register that I’m surprised her body is even capable of producing “YOOOUUU!!!… YOU STUPID BASTARD! YOU DID THIS TO MEEEEE!!!!… I SHOULD NEVER HAVE SHAGGED YOOOUUUUU!!!!! YOUR STUPID SEXY SHOULDERS! YOUR STUPID BROAD CHEST!!!!! … I COULD BARELY TAKE YOUR STUPID FAT COCK! WHAT POSSESSED ME TO THINK I COULD HAVE YOUR FUCKING BASTARD BABY!?!?!?… FUUUUUCK YOU, OSKAAAR!!! DIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!! FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUUUUUUUCKKKKYYYOOOOOOOUUU!!!”
“I’m sorry to interrupt but… did she say anything I might need to know, Sir?” asks the doctor, not being able to penetrate the thick Lallans she Is currently unable to avoid speaking.
“Just insults… sort of…” I whince, unsure if the ‘stupidness’ of my oversized shoulders, chest and member really count as ‘insults’(!)
The pain is excruciating as she crushes my hand in a, quite literally, vicelike grip!
As bad as it is though, it pales in comparison to the pain she’s in!
No inference is necessary! I have never felt sympathy pain quite like this!
It’s as if some part of the normal separateness of thinking minds has been ripped away!
The pain is so overwhelming that it cannot be contained by a single body and must spill out to wash over anyone who happens to be located nearby!
The fear it fills me with is not rational… I’m not scared because I think I’m in danger, because I think she’s in danger, because I think the baby’s in danger…
There is no ‘because’… It’s as if reason and fear have been entirely disconnected, allowing me a dose of raw, unfiltered terror!!!
She screws up her eyes, banging her head against her pillow as she sobs pathetically “Just cut him out of meeeee! It caaaaan’t be any MORE painful than this already iiiis!!! Cut me up, take him OUT and sew me up after!!!!”
“She’s asking for a caesarean section…” I relay to the doctor.
“Not possible at this stage, Ma’am!” he communicates, simply.
No answer comes from her but more screaming, incoherent sobs.
Minutes pass… or maybe centuries?
It becomes a little difficult to remember a time when I wasn’t sat in this chair, holding this screaming woman’s hand, looking at her anguished face, hearing her tortured cries…
“We’re nearly there, Sublieutenant! Push!!! One more time, with everything you have!!!”
She straightens her back and, gripping my hand with the same force with which she’s crushing the hollow metal railing on the far side of the gurney, clenches her teeth and screams as every muscle in her body contracts.
Some shudder inducing, squelching, vacuum sounds follow as a bloody, moving mass is ejected from my wife.
Esme’s screams subside to feebly exhausted pants of relief.
I hear my son’s voice wailing at the injustice of having been forced to be born(!)
“Skin-to-skin…” announces the doctor, passing my son (still attached to my wife by a horrific tentacle of Human flesh) to a nurse who hands him to her to hold.
He looks like his entire little naked body has been smeared with a mixture of blood and petroleum jelly!
It’s getting all over Esme’s front but she doesn’t even seem to notice as she looks down at our son.
She’s so battleweary from the labour that I’m worried that her feeble arms may not have the strength to hold him…
I prepare myself to catch him if she should let him fall… but she doesn’t…
Seeming to have instantly regained a total mastery of strength control (that she certainly did not exercise on my hand a minute ago(!)) she holds him with just enough strength to support him and nowhere near enough to crush his fragile little, soft boned body…
“Clean and dry…” instructs the doctor as a towel is expertly manoeuvred around the blood and vernix covered infant, rendering him miraculously clean.
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“That’s 5… Clamps!” he says, followed by a springloaded device being clipped onto the umbilical cord around 15cm from my son’s naval and another one a few centimetres further along.
The doctor extends a pair of medical scissors to me, handle first, reassuring me “If you’ve changed your mind… we can take care of it…”
I say nothing as I reach for the handle and take the implement.
I open the jaws of the scissors and bring them to the space between the clamps.
I wince as it takes me two or three cuts to get through the rubbery tube.
If I were somehow able to do this without knowing that what I was cutting was my wife and child’s shared flesh, I wouldn’t be at all squeamish about it… it would just feel like cutting a length of elastic…
Eventually, we’re left alone.
I’m desperate for a chance to hold him but don’t wish to say that I am…
My wife puffs through her nose and extends me the baby.
“Here…” she smiles, feebly “…take him…”
My heart in my throat, I extend my hands to what she holds as if it were a sacred relic of spun glass!
I feel the weight of my child in my arms as I pull him toward me…
He’s… so light… and… yet… the 4kg or so that I hold is just about the most precious lump of matter in the entire universe right now!
I cradle the swaddled treasure to my chest, supporting his head against the crook of my right elbow.
He’s… so… tiny…!
Somehow, his size reminds me of the first time I saw a humpback swim beneath my father’s boat… Seeing their size in books felt abstract and academic… seeing their skeletons in museums felt like architecture… Seeing a living one, in the wild… it was not comparable… It just hits you that that enormous mass is not a structure, nor a landform, nor a giant, dead, submerged tree… it’s a living, breathing creature…
Holding my son is like the opposite of that… He’s so tiny and, yet… here he is!… Not a toy, not a doll, not a statuette… a living breathing Human… to whom… I am as that whale was to me!
“I didn’t… say anything too horrible while I was out of my mind with the pain, did I…?” rasps Esme, her voice hoarse from screaming obscenities…
“You told me to die, told me you regretted ever fucking me, told me to go fuck myself, told me I’d done this to you and called Victor my ‘fucking bastard baby’… seeming to have forgotten our lovely, intimate wedding ceremony last week(!)… Tamsin and Rex were there(?)… Sands and Robert too(?)… You wore red and I wore green(?)… Burrows officiated… ringing any bells(?)” I smile, not taking my eyes off my son.
“Duuuuude?!” she groans “The correct answer to that question was ‘No, sweetie! Nothing I caught, anyway!’!”
Still looking at the minuscule face against my chest, I answer “What a terrible example you wish me to set for our child, Mummy(!) Not 30 minutes old and you wish me to teach him how to lie(!)”
“It’s called diplomacy, lad!”
“It’s called ‘deception’…”
She grumbles.
My son stirs…
I gasp as I see his eyes open for the first time.
He has the same vivid green eyes as his mother…
He has her soft featured face too…
I had always felt that, when people said things such as ‘my heart was filled with love’, that they were speaking in prosaic metaphor…
The feeling I have right now is quite unmistakeably love, quite unmistakeably in my literal heart and quite literally feels like it is being filled up and running over!
--- Ma0219i164A’s perspective---
---Wednesday, 14th of May, 2683 Terran Calendar---
---Southeastern England---
Ruby and I stand in the entrance to the Home, waiting.
She’s quite young and relatively new.
She’s only able to be here doing this job on account of her frail health, untreatable by current gene therapy, which excluded her from service.
“This your first time doin’ this part, Ruby?” I ask the girl, knowing full well the answer.
“Yes, Ma’am…” she answers, timidly.
“Alright, kid… I’d be lyin’ if I said it were gonna be easy… just do your best… and don’t call me ‘Ma’am’… this ain’t that kinda workplace. My name’s Maia…”
“Yes, Ma…ia.” she answers, causing me to giggle.
When my husband woke me up, more than 200 years ago now, we managed a hospital together… I continued doing that, long after he died…
At a certain point last century, I realised that the part of that job that gave me the most joy was… all the stuff where I was looking after the kids… so I changed careers.
Of course, this new job isn’t all peaches and cream!
You have days like this, afterall.
The couple showing up at my door, right now, are far from the first teenaged parents who’ve come here with their baby in their arms… but I believe they are the first teenagers to be married, employed and financially stable.
I open the door and the trio enter.
Ruby has a clear moment of being taken aback.
They are quite visually striking!
The tall, well built, dark haired man with brown eyes and a sharp face.
The soft featured, wiry, green eyed, redhead holding their baby.
Both of them wearing stylish service uniforms.
This couple, that I met for the first time the best part of a year ago, might have had a lucrative career as models if not for the War(!)
“Sublieutenants Taylor… you’re here…” I say, managing my tone to the perfect balance of warmth and sombreness.
Given the circumstances I don’t say anything like ‘it’s lovely to see you’ or ‘it’s wonderful you’re here’.
“We’re here…” nods the girl.
“You’re bein’ deployed tomorrow?”
She shakes her head “The day after… just wouldn’t have time to come here tomorrow… Did… did you get the video diary I sent?”
I confirm “All 17 hours of it. The stories, the songs, the lullabies, the dances… I’ve watched it through, backed it up, here and remotely… He’ll see it.”
“And… did the machine arrive?” she asks, clearly stalling.
“It did, Esme. I had it tested out, it’s still producin’ your milk…”
“OK… erm… genetic screens came up with nothing… He’s lovely and healthy…”
The deep voiced man cuts in, startling Ruby slightly “He hasn’t inherited my ASC… At least, he hasn’t inherited the genetic predisposition to it…”
I nod, not voicing any value judgement.
Long moments of silence follow as the girl just looks at the 3 month old in her arms.
“Esme…?” I prompt, gently “…Would you like to give him to Ms Williams now?” gesturing to the girl at my side.
“Erm… Yes… of course…” she says, still hesitating.
She walks over to Ruby and starts to extend her arms… then pulls back.
“What if… we came back… tomorrow?” she says, clearly bargaining.
“Esme, we won’t have time…” provides her husband, gently and reasonably.
“What if we made time? What if we came here late? Whatifwe-whatifwejusthadhimonemoreday?! Whatifwedidn’tgoatall?!Whatifwejustkepthim!?Whatifweranaway!?It'snot…!”
“Esme…” cuts in the man, firmly cutting short his wife’s avoidant blather.
The two share a few seconds of prolonged eyecontact, their expressions both different shades of heartbroken…
The girl is the first to break, looking down defeatedly and stepping forward to give her child to Ruby.
“It’s… not fair…” she sniffles, quietly, tears starting to spill from her eyes.
“We’ll keep him safe, Ma’am… Safe and healthy… for as long as he needs!” volunteers a slightly breathless Ruby, impressing me.
“You can come and pick him up the moment you get back.” I add.
The girl gives no answer bar a sniffle and a nod.
She makes to go before turning back to plant one last kiss on her baby’s forehead and touch her left hand to his chest.
“I love you, Victor… Please, always remember that!”
She steps away and the man steps forward, extending a single finger which the infant grasps onto.
“Goodbye, my son…” states the man, his tone level but nonetheless filled with emotion.
Ruby and I watch in silence as the pair turn to leave.
The man puts a strong arm around his wife. The moment she feels the contact she launches herself into his side, clinging to him desperately.
The door closes but the wailing sobs are still clearly audible in the entrance hall.