{Enki | Medical Bay}
Curse the Aegis delivery for preventing a Cesarean. Pablo clenched his jaw to keep from swearing. Triss was bleeding faster than Bethany could transfuse, and their supply of Aegis blood wasn’t eternal.
C’mon, baby Echo, crown.
A cloth touched his forehead. Pablo refused to look away, but he gave a grateful nod to whoever dabbed at the sweat.
And there was sweat.
The salt of it stung his eyes, which was something Pablo hadn’t experienced since receiving his nacre. Unless he wanted to count the extremely exerting sex with Lynn involving a trapeze before Sagan Seamswalked in and made it one of the funniest memories of Pablo’s life.
To this day, Sagan still stopped him now and then to ask, “But how?”
Triss screamed and drew Pablo’s attention back from those more pleasant thoughts. Retreats from his present stress.
Elden, there was so much blood. Yellow and orange mixed and dripped from his elbows. The air smelled of kerosene and potassium. Occasionally, a sound came from inside Triss: meat tearing. Like a percussive ripping of wet cardboard.
The doctor might have blanched a few times, near vomiting. Thank Elden for nacres.
Qas mumbled the least reassuring thing he could have said right then. “Her blood pressure is failing.”
Pablo called, “Lynn.”
His wife nodded and said, “Got it.” To Triss, she added, “Listen, crazy bitch, no one here really wants you to survive this—”
Triss growled in Lynn’s face, and it carried the lilt of a whistle.
“—So do what you do best and fucking disappoint me. You promised Razor—your god—you’d live to see him during this delivery, remember? Or was all that just big talk?!”
While Lynn taunted Triss to maintain her will to live, Bethany emptied the last of the Aegis blood bags into the canister. Wordless, she shook her head with a curiously empty expression on her face.
This was bad—
What…
Was that…?!
Pablo about punched the air with a ‘yes!’ “Crowning.”
Qas sighed with relief.
Triss bore down and screamed—
No, screeched.
Some mutated vibration that made the wavelengths visible in the air until all the surrounding glass shattered.
Pablo grabbed onto infantile shoulders and pulled baby Echo the rest of the way into this world.
Nothing tracked after that for Pablo because the adrenaline was too high. He didn’t remember forming the thought, but he said the words, “Scissors.” Someone cut the umbilical cord and handed him a towel.
Toes.
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Fingers.
Feathers.
Pitch black skin. Bright white fuzzy feather-down mixed in with soft strands of matching hair. Little diamonds stared up at Pablo. Small black lips opened with a bright pink tongue in a toothless mouth.
One cluck.
Two chuffs.
Then, the baby cried a song in the most melodic voice Pablo had ever heard. “Hello, baby Echo. We’ve been waiting for you.” His tears fell onto the blanket of the swaddled infant cradled in his arms.
Only then did everything return to him in a sudden assault of the senses and immediately overwhelm him.
Lynn was trying to tell him something. Her face blanched, and her lovely eyes filled with tears. Not happy ones like his. But sad.
What…
She said something as if she had repeated it before, but Pablo still didn’t hear it.
A hand gripped his shoulder, and he faced Qas’ grave voids.
Why…
Pablo frowned and wondered why Triss hadn’t asked to hold her baby yet. He stood, ready to hand Echo over to her mother, and—
No.
Oh, please no.
Triss lay back with orange and yellow blood smeared all over her black face, gone pale. Her lips were gray. Her yellow eyes stared up at the Medical bay’s ceiling, unseeing.
“No.”
Lynn reached for Pablo, trying to take Echo away. “Please, baby. Just for a second. You’re going into shock.”
Was he?
“Yes,” Qas answered, as if he heard Pablo ask the question.
Oh.
He handed Echo over to Lynn and stared anywhere but at his patient.
Bethany busied herself at her station, detached, drawing more of Pablo’s attention than necessary because he found it too painful to look at Triss.
A villain.
A vile woman with a history of the worst atrocities.
But she was Pablo’s patient, and this felt wrong.
No.
Pablo rushed around the bed to her side. “I refuse to let her die. Any minute now, Korac will show up with Razor upcycled, and this family will spend one precious moment whole. Then everything will fall away as it should, but I will not stand by and do nothing while that moment falls apart. Qas.”
The sorrow in Qas’ voice hurt Pablo’s resolve. “Yes, doctor?”
“Is there anything I can use to defibrillate her?”
Lynn gently rocked baby Echo, who bubbled in her arms. “Triss lost too much blood.”
Pablo closed his eyes and counted to ten. Of course, Lynn was right, but they were all out of blood—
No. Not all out.
“Miy!”
The Lyriki warrior called up from the tier below. “Yeah, doc? What’s going on up there?”
With renewed hope, Pablo asked, “Would you donate for a transfusion? If so, get up here.”
Lynn and Qas exchanged a look Pablo couldn’t miss. They were concerned he wasn’t handling the loss well, and they were right. But as far as he was concerned, it wasn’t a loss yet.
Miy stepped up into the bay with them and… stopped. She stared at a woman who’d caused her a lot of pain and suffering, but who also practically raised her. The history with Triss and the Lyriks was complicated, and Pablo expected any of them would respond likewise to the news of her death. Relieved and saddened.
Miy licked her lips before saying, gently, “Dr. Suarez, she’s…”
Pablo shook his head. “There’s a faint pulse. Please.”
With one last look of doubt, Miy sat down beside Triss, and Qas set her up for the transfusion.
Meanwhile, Lynn cooed at Echo. “She’s so beautiful. Do you want to see her, Miy?”
“I expect to have a hand in her upbringing, so yes, but not right now.”
Miy looked a little ashen. Shock would do that to even the pitch dark complexion of a Lyrik.
The orange blood flowed into the clinically dead woman, and Pablo went to work setting up the device to defibrillate and started. He muttered for his own benefit more than hers, “C’mon, Triss.”
Nothing.
A few more heartbeats passed, increasing the risk of brain damage.
Please—
Qas’ voice was soft, kind, and almost too much for Pablo to bear. “The blood isn’t strong enough. She needs Aegis blood. I’m sorry. Even if you could revive her, she would only fail again without more of it.”
No.
Pablo pounded his fist on the device. “No.”
Miy stared at him with something too close to admiration, making him look away.
Lynn, holding an orphan in her arms, reached out to him—
It was all too much. Pablo needed—
He needed—
Bethany.
Pablo stared down at Kyle’s little sister, who held a bag of Aegis blood in her hand. “How…”
Lynn answered for her, “She squeezed all the residual from the mostly empty bags and managed a full one.”
“Thank you, Bethany… Thank you.”
Pablo emptied the bag into the canister and, on the first defibrillation attempt, Triss sat up and gasped for air. Miy stepped back with tears in her eyes, giving Lynn a wide berth to hand Echo over to her biological mother.
Triss cradled her daughter, weak from blood loss and nearly dying. The hard citrines of her eyes bled orange tears from Miy’s donation. Her voice was hoarse, but full of warmth as she said, “Hello, my darling girl.”
Lynn nudged Pablo and muttered, “You did that.”
He smiled and let the tear roll down his cheek.
Yeah. He did.