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“Congratulations! You’re pregnant.”
Jerri Polain smiled, her hand resting lightly on her stomach. She remembered the morning the nurse had proclaimed her to be with child. It had been the happiest day of her life. Now, in only a few minutes, would be another joyful even.
She groaned, shifting uncomfortably. Such warm thoughts still couldn’t dull the sharp reports of her contracting muscles.
“How are you doing, Jerri?” Dr. White stood in the doorway to the delivery room.
“Uhm, fine. Oh,” Jerri moaned, cutting herself short.
“Well, I’ll measure, see how dilated you are.”
Dr. White hovered about the sheets over Jerri’s legs, a paper measuring tape in her hand.
“You’re nine centimeters. Your cervix is fully dilated and I can see…feet….”
“Yeah, I already-oh- already knew we were gonna be breech,” Jerri conceded, sucking in a sharp breath as her uterus clamped down.
“I know you were hoping to do this naturally, without any intervention, but if the child isn’t out in ten minutes, we may have to do a cesarean.”
Ten minutes later, all that had transpired was Jerri’s agony of pushing. But nothing had become visible, aside from a pair of pink toes.
“I’m sorry, but we have to do a cesarean section, or your baby will be injured.” Announced Dr. White, her dark eyes sympathetic above the purple mask.
Kenneth Polain squeezed his wife’s hand, following the nurse who led him from the bedside to scrub up with the operating team so that he could attend the delivery.
Jerri sat up, feeling the tingle of antiseptic being swabbed onto her back. She suppressed a shriek as a thick needle pierced her skin, slipping between vertebrae and into her nerves, releasing a stream anesthetic. Suddenly the pain vanished, replaced by such a sensation as if her lower body was no longer there.
“Can you feel this?”
Jerri had closed her eyes as she was instructed.
“Feel what?”
“I’m stabbing you with a splintered tongue depressor,” murmured the anesthesiologist.
“Really?”
“Yes. I’ll take that as a successful procedure. Next comes the fun part.”
“I’ll take your word for that,” Jerri said, trying to keep her hands from shaking. Of course surgery was routine to these doctors. But to her, it was little short of terrifying.
On the cold steel of the operating table, her hair tied up in a net, a sheet suspended in front of her face to block her view, Jerri gripped her husband’s hand. He was shaking too; Jerri could feel it.
“It’s okay, hon, it’s okay. We’re going to be parents!”
“Yeah. So Sarah is our name if it’s a girl, right?”
“You bet! But if it’s a boy, I’d love to see him named Henri,” Kenneth whispered to her. He wanted to kiss her, but knew it was inappropriate in the sterile surgical environment.
A nurse from the other side of the draping warned Jerri that she’d soon be feeling some pressure, and if it hurt, “to yell”.
She never did need to shout. No pain was there, though she could feel some vague sensations of prodding.
Kenneth dared to peer around the draperies. He immediately wished he hadn’t . It wasn’t the blood that bothered him; but the fact that it was his wife’s blood.
Crimson fluid was everywhere, a sticky coating on purple surgical gloves and half-formed clots being sucked up by tiny vacuum-like tubes. Shining knives flashed in the iridescent ligh; Kenneth thought he might vomit. He’d never thought that a person had so much blood inside them.
“Hon, you okay?” Jerri was comforting him now. She could see the greenish pallor of his cheeks, the uneasiness in his eyes.
“Yup. Just fine. Your surgeons are artists, my dear. Just think of the baby…”
So it went for several minutes until someone proclaimed “We’re in!”
This was followed by a sickening hush. The first person to speak was Dr. White.
“Oh. I’m sorry Kenneth, but you can’t cut the cord…”
She continued to spout a range of surgical jargon, “…and alert the NICU…”
Jerri yanked on Kenneth’s hand.
“Talk to me. What’s going on?” Her eyes locked onto his, amber orbs that pleaded to know more.
“I-I don’t….” Kenneth chided himself, and reluctantly looked again past the drapings.
What met his eyes was far more disturbing than he had expected.
He had a baby girl, but something was wrong. There was an enormous lump on the far side of her head. She was pink and coated in the film of amniotic fluid. Multiple sets of hands were grasping at her, one holding a needle, another a set of shears as they severed the umbilical cord. Someone else had an isolette waiting already cushioned with blankets.
“I’m not sure. It-it’s okay, though, Jerri,” he sighed, feeling tears spilling down his face, “It’s gotta be okay.”
Dear Lord, please, let that be true! He wasn’t a particularly devout man, but his accustomed beliefs were suddenly foremost in his mind.
……………….
“Hi, you must Mrs. Jerri Polain, correct?” A new doctor stood in the doorway.
“Yes.”
“Congratulations, you have a daughter-ers. She is very unique…or, they are.”
“Pardon?” Jerri sat up, feeling her stitches begin to pull.
“Your daughters are very unique-“
“You have the wrong room. I have one child, not two.” Jerri was now staring disdainfully at the tall red-head man who hovered by her bedside. His monogrammed lab coat read James Ivan, MD.
“No, this is room 419. Same as on my sheet, and you are Jerri Polain. And you have two very special children.”
Kenneth rose from the easy chair near the window.
“The joke is out. My wife had surgery last night. If you don’t let her alone, I’m calling security.” He felt his face grow hot, his fists clenched.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. But the fact is, you indeed have two daughters.”
“I have one daughter, and even if she doesn’t look normal, you don’t have the right to mock her!”
Jerri looked from one man’s face to the other’s. One was coated in day-old stubble, red-eyed with dark circles, the other well-shaven, with glasses, and a crewcut.
How strange, she though, that the well-dressed, well-spoken doctor was so arbitrary.
“The infant you delivered last night has craniopagus parasiticus, ‘siamese twins’ as in, she’s got another head growing from her own cerebellum.” Dr. Ivan had a strange expression, part expectancy, part annoyance.
“What?” The new parents happened to speak at once, the same word blurted from both mouths.
Kenneth began to sob, shaking his head violently, as if to shut out the world.
“Tell me, what this is,” muttered Jerri, lying back down unsteadily.
“Your daughters are joined at the head. From what I’ve heard, the second was at such an angle that the ultra-sound did not spot her. Thus she was rather a surprise, which I regret. We don’t quite know what to do, you see. “
James Ivan stepped over to the whiteboard on the wall, and taking a marker, drew the outline of a baby, and attached to the head of the full body was the shape of another head and malformed stump of a chest.
“This,” said Ivan, pointing towards the fully-formed body, “Is a healthy little girl. This,” he gestured in the direction of the other form “Is a parasite that lives off the fully formed infant. It’s a child, don’t let the body fool you, but she has no lower body and no limbs.”
Jerri’s vision began to swim as tears pooled in her eyes. “When do I get to see my little girls?”
“Oh, you can see them now. I’ll grab a wheelchair, if you wish.”
……………….
“I think we should call her Falon,” said Kenneth, caressing his second child’s face.
“Falon. Sarah Joy and Falon Vevitate Polain.”
……………..
Yes, there is more. Let me know if you'd like to see it.
Thanks for reading!
-Voxina
I love the emotion you put behind it, great job!
