The Ensign Arrives

Stardate: 25th Feb 2007
Listening to: Quiet
Build Queue: 100% - COMPLETE
Cynicism: 25%
Naming Convention: 100% - COMPLETE

The day started like any other day, except earlier. Accustomed to a routine of waking at 8am in time to drag myself to the White Collar Sweatshop by 9:15am, or 9:30am or maybe 9:45am, my senses were still dulled by the veil of sleep when the ungodly hour of 5am arrived. For some reason, we'd been booked to clear the build queue at 6:30am that morning, hence the early start. I rolled and reached for the She_Admiral, but found nothing but an empty half-bed, my rigid boner lying like a massive granite jousting stick across her side of the mattress, Jap's eye winking at me in the wardrobe mirror through a gap in the doona. "This is all your fault anyway" I muttered to the inseminator, the eye simply staring back at me in penile mockery.

Gradually my other senses came online, and a heard a faint crackling from somewhere near, accompanied by the mouthwatering smell of bacon. This revived me, despite the scant 8 hours' sleep I'd been limited to. In preparation for the long day ahead, I'd hit the sack early, and then after mopping up with tissues, I'd dragged myself to bed. Sleep hadn't come easily though; a thousand thoughts running through my head at the same time. What would the day ahead hold? What really was the difference between a throwup, a piece and a tag, and why did anyone care? When would the she Admiral stop banging around outside trying to get that second hand baby change table out of the car boot and into the house, then come to bed? "I just want to be prepared" she'd said earlier that night, and I couldn't disagree. I'd spent the last 3 hours before bed filling my Toshiba Gigabeat player with music in case the labour was long and/or noisy, and stocked up on beers in a small foam esky.

I pulled myself groggily from the bed and stumbled towards the bacon smell, just in time to spear the She_Admiral in the upper thigh with the turgid flesh-lance waving in front of me as we collided in the hallway. "I made you this!" she said brightly, offering up a plate of bacon, eggs and toast, vigorously massaging the tennis ball sized bruise rapidly appearing on her leg. "Cool!" I said, retreating to the PC to scoff down the greasy fried goodness that was somehow reminiscent of the spam forums I read at the same time, my stiffy shrinking to flaccid normality with each uninspiring post that met my eyes. "They're still analysing cYn's freakin' car crash" I spoke in disbelief to nobody in particular, my member receding an inch at the news.

A brisk 30 mins later we were ready to leave for the hospital. I was travelling light, with just my book, my music and my esky, whereas the She_Admiral was grunting and puffing under the load of what seemed like a month's supply of clothes, toiletries and other various mysterious women-stuff that needs to be lugged everywhere. Maybe she had boiled towels in there - I didn't know. I placed my esky into the car boot, the barely perceptible weight causing the car's springs to sag one or two millimetres with an inaudible squeak. Inaudible that is to the human ear, which unfortunately is not the model attached to the vacuous head of the small dog next door. The stupid creature immediately began alerting its owners to the important fact that car suspension had been activated nearby, via a constant barrage of yapping. "Well, that's the last dumbarse dog I'll hear before I'm a father!" I quipped, before hearing the stupid dog over the back fence join in the yapping, and then the other stupid dog 2 doors down initiate its own canine assault on the tranquillity. I realised this was a stupid game to play in this neighbourhood of stupid little barking dogs. Would fatherhood make me more tolerant to these yappy little creatures, I wondered as I slid into the passenger seat, cranking it back and hoping to sneak in a few precious minutes more sleep on the way. Or like Elaine's father on Seinfeld, would I simply be less tolerant of stupid people (much less stupid animals) because I could now "make my own people". Somehow I favoured the latter.

Arriving at the hospital we went to reception and checked in. I must have looked pretty rough, as the desk woman waved vaguely towards a small lineup of wheelchairs against the wall and said it looked like we could use one. I said "Hah no, I'm right thanks. I enjoy exercise!". She just stared back with a blank look which in combination with her soft, pudgy roundness confirmed that she for one didn't. I reached the lift and stabbed the "up" button with my finger before spinning around to check the She_Admiral's progress. She was stationary, hands on knees and puffing quite heavily some ten metres away. Just then the lift arrived with a cheerful "BING!" and I yelled "Better hurry!", momentarily muting "Unknown Artist - Track 12" on the Gigabeat in preparation for her reply. I needn't have bothered. The reply was simply an exasperated look, tinged for a brief moment with what looked like anger. "Angry at herself for packing so much stuff!" I mused to myself. "Hey hey now relax! You'll know better next time!" I cooed reassuringly, and relieved her of my esky so she could concentrate on lugging the rest of her stuff. "We're a team!" I said, slapping her heartily on the back and jamming my foot into the lift door to fool it into waiting longer. A young Asian intern brushed past, his round head, chipper demeanour and glasses reminiscent of that guy from Heroes. "I wonder if he can stop time too" I pondered, waiting patiently as the sounds of feet shuffling and scraping bags full of too much women-stuff finally made it inside.

We eventually made it into the delivery room and unpacked. It was unlike any delivery room I'd seen before - no dock leveller, no pallet jacks, no storeman's desk. Instead there was a huge mechanical bed that could raise and pivot in almost any direction. It looked like it could fold a person in half with one flex of its hydraulic muscles, like the device that tortured Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back. Fittingly, the midwife looked like Lando Calrissian. A female Lando Calrissian. As the She_Admiral was strapped into the bed and the head mechanically raised I reflected on the deep emotional bond that we shared. If she [b]was[/b] Han Solo about to get tortured in some remote cloud city, and I was Luke Skywalker cruising around aimlessly in my X-Wing, I was sure that I'd feel the pain across the galaxy. I'll pull on the space-handbrake and drop the clutch on that curious little spacecraft, deflector shields on double-front in case of galactic bump steer and orbital railing and speed to the rescue. That's not to say we'd be gay lovers or anything though. It would be an appropriately blokey rescue. The beep of an IV drip machine being powered up snapped me out of this reverie and brought me back to the present. Lando was busily puncturing the arms of the She_Admiral while another doctor was feeding fishing line into her spine. "Epidural" murmured the She_Admiral as I cracked a Pale.

Apparently the drip contained Oxytocin which is supposed to cause "contractions". I vaguely remembered hearing the word "contractions" at antenatal classes and recalled it had something to do with breastfeeding. Or something else. I wasn't really sure. I'd heard it though and that should count for something! "Bit early for breastfeeding drugs" I scoffed to myself, "The baby's not even out yet". Yup, 30 mins early for breastfeeding I reckoned, 45 at the latest, mentally calculating how many tracks I should cue up on the Gigabeat to pass the time before they handed us a baby and sent us home. "Push honey!" I murmured absent-mindedly, fiddling with the mp3 player's infuriatingly non-intuitive interface. I looked up. Lando and the She_Admiral were looking as me as if I was retarded. I soon realised why - I was holding an empty stubby like an idiot.

About three hours later, the Gigabeat player's battery was as drained as the six-pack of empty bottles crowding around the "no sharps" bin on the floor. The She_Admiral was still being pumped full of drugs, and Lando was still robotically scanning the output of "The Machine That Goes 'BING'" that had been going "BING!" the whole time. Apparently it measures the baby's heart rate on one graph, and the strength of the "contractions" on the other. Lando was concerned - the baby kept falling asleep she said, as evidenced by the steady, unwaveringly contented heart rate on the BING-o-meter. As she turned away, I thought I saw accusation in her eyes. She knew something, something dark and secret and terrible. "She drank wine all through the pregnancy!" I blurted, my outstretched finger quivering in the direction of the She_Admiral's barely-covered chest, "it's made the baby lazy, hasn't it!?". The She_Admiral's eyes rolled - from the drugs I expect, and Lando simply shook her head, obviously not happy with something else she'd seen on the bing-graph. About that time, someone in the adjacent room pushed the button for the nurse, the nurses' station being just outside our room. "BEEENG-BOOONG-BUUURNG!" echoed the most annoying electronically generated sound since Pseudo Echo's sysnthesizer guitar. I mused that it sounded like the inter-mission sound effect of the Capcom® classic 1942, my thoughts interrupted by another booming "BEEENG-BOOONG-BUUURNG!" from the hall. Then again: "BEEENG-BOOONG-BUUURNG!", and again. Every 30 seconds the sound from 1942 pierced the air. Nurse Lando muttered the nursing equivalent of "WTF?" which might actually have been "WTF?" and went to investigate. "Broken" she reported, "Stuck" she clarified. "WTF?" indeed.

Six hours in, and the bing-o-meter was still binging, and the 1942 machine was still broken (stuck). There could be people dying all over the ward, hopelessly sacrificing their last vestiges of strength pushing their nurse buttons, all made worthless by the machine that cried wolf. The She_Admiral was still in position, except every now and then Lando's replacement (Lando had changed shift) would occasionally peer deep inside her ham wallet and then return to monitoring the bing-o-meter, studious concentration creasing her brow. The "contractions" were apparently getting stronger and the She_Admiral was "dilating". I looked at her pupils with scepticism and saw they were normal size. Did these people know what they were doing!? At one point, the obstetrician breezed in, cackled spiritedly "So, how we all doing!?" and looked at the bing-o-meter. "Ah, baby keeps sleeping!" she observed gleefully, snapping on a latex glove. I was torn between pointing out the She_Admiral's antenatal drinking habits once again and correcting the obstetrician on her grammar, (surely it's THE baby) but decided to keep quiet. Abruptly she shot her gloved hand into the She_Admiral, like a hand puppeteer late for a show. I admired her slim, bony forearms and wondered if she was born like that, or somehow maintained them in that state, having chosen a career that evidently regulary required her to go "elbow deep". "No foreplay or anything" I noted resentfully, mentally filing the fact away under "Facts to be recalled if ever my skills on the marital workbench are called into question". Sclurping her arm back out, the obstetrician chirped "Good! Back later!" and vanished.

Eleven hours in, and they'd finally fixed the 1942 machine. I imagined dying people all over the ward were relieved. The obstetrician had returned and decided it was time to get this show on the road. "About time!" I muttered, concluding my attempt at contacting the time-controlling Asian I'd met in the lift earlier via telepathy. The oxytocin had rendered the She_Admiral "fully dilated" - again, her pupils looked normal to me, and she had a catheter in. "Make it two!" I'd suggested, my own bladder now brimming with VB, the waste product of the Pale I'd consumed hours earlier. No dice apparently, so I was left to piss the boring way, practising writing baby names on the cold hard steel of the urinal down the hall. "T-R-O-G-D-O-R" I spelled out, hosing a urinal cake into a fullstop with the last stream I could muster. Zipping up, I returned to "Childbirth Stadium" and the Iron Midwives battling it out within.

It was now full steam ahead, the She_Admiral shedding the last vestiges of dignaty along with whatever flimsy garments had previously shielded her nether regions from prying eyes. A steady trickle of amniotic fluid was the ever-brightening headlight of the train that was about to exit this slippery pink tunnel. "TOOT! TOOT!" I hooted, pulling an imaginary cord attached to an imaginary train whistle, only to be silenced by a bracing backhander from the She_Admiral, the drugs clearly robbing her of muscular control and replacing it with a tendency for involuntary and rapid, sweeping, slapping movements in my direction. Blinking back tears, I wondering when the boiled towels would arrive and heard the obstetrician urging the She_Admiral to push. "Puuush, puuuush, that's right puuuush". "Push it! Push it real goood! Hah Hah!" I recited silently, the 1980's classic distracting me from my stinging face. "Puuush!" encouraged the obstetrician, "Puuuush!" joined in the midwife. The She_Admiral wasn't listening because she didn't appear to be pushing anything. In fact all she was doing was holding her knees to her chest and murmuring in apparent pain while doing some kind of ab-roller abdominal crunches. What did they want her to push anyway - the side of the bed, the other side of the bed, what!? "PUSH!" screamed the midwife, and I was about to interrupt with "Yah, we get it FFS!" when an abrupt gush of viscous semi-clear fluid spattered the two vaginal observers with a sticky, dripping paste, like Ripley exploding alien eggs deep inside the bowels of some crippled mining facility on LV423.

It was then apparent that the midwife was calling me for a quick single, her rapid hand signals and frantic tone urging me to leave the relative safety of the non-strikers end. Not about to sacrifice my wicket for a trip to the amniotic Krakatoa that had manifested itself somewhere deep inside by spouse, I shook my head weakly, but was savagely yanked from my crease by the obstetrician. "Look!" she cried, pointing at a slick dome of membranous, bloodied jelly encasing a hairy ball of goop, "it's baby's head!". Choking back a wave of second-hand beer, I nodded with feigned understanding and retreated shakily back into my crease down the other end of the birthing wicket, embracing the comfort that came with ignorance of what was going on "down there". The bespattered duo still entreating the She_Admiral to "PUSH!", there was more excitement down the business end of the bed, as the obstetrician hefted a tangle of purple, bloody mucous up and beamed "Say 'Hello' to your baby!". Expertly lofting the sputtering mass above the bed, and briskly waving a set of female genitals inches from our faces, she continued "It's a little girl!". The She_Admiral ceased the panting that had been the soundtrack to the last 30 mins, and beamed as a gelatinous minature of Yoda was hastily wiped and deposited on her chest. Recovering somewhat, I joined in the gentle baby-cooing that's genetically programmed to awaken in any new parent the moment they clasp eyes on their newborn, vaguely aware of the obstetrician still fiddling with something downstairs. "Have you thought of a name?" beamed the midwife, still dabbing at spots of blood here and there. My reply of "Apollo Cree.." was silenced by a curt instruction from the obstetrician, who was engaged in trying to manipulate what seemed like a freshly slaughtered side of beef from the baby making facility. The midwife joined the action, proferring tongs, handing clamps and peering intently. "No good, get her to theatre!" barked the obstetrician, striding out dramatically. The She_Admiral's face, moments ago flushed with the exertion of childbirth was now replaced with the gaunt pallor of anaemia, and frozen in a mask of questioning anxiety. I risked a look at the object of the obstetrician's interest and saw nothing but a rapidly swelling pool of blood around a puddle of meaty sauce.

A team of nurses appeared from nowhere, disconnecting cords here, unhitching lines there and hastily relieving the She_Admiral of her newborn before wheeling her away. "Back in 30 mins!" a voice called from the distance. The well-wrapped baby burrito was thrust into my arms and off we went to measure its stats, give it a bath and whack some little baby clothes on it. This took roughly 30 mins. "Perfect timing!" I thought and headed off to join the She_Admiral in the recovery room. Except when we got there, there was no She_Admiral in sight. Just a large empty room where a bed should have been. "Wait here and I'll see what's going on" advised the nurse who'd helpfully prevented me from drowning my baby in the bath minutes earlier. "Err, rogor" I muttered, wondering indeed what was going on. "Don't do anything weird" I nervously instructed the freshly created infant.

Thus I remained for the next hour, engaged in futile guessing games, asking silent questions of a baby daughter who had no answers. Back and forth we paced the room in the semi-darkness, the warm bundle in my arms intent on taking in her new world, oblivious to what might or might not be happening beyond the realms of her own simple consciousness, her contented baby-noises doing nothing to assuage the vague dread building in my own mind. The silence was regularly punctuated by a piercing SMS, or the low grumble of the Blackberry that sat vibrating on the window ledge, inevitably in response to some well-meaning friend or family member seeking updates on a process that should have concluded happily hours ago. At length, as I was sitting in a chair staring down at my daughter's eyes as they flitted inquisitively around the room, the midwife and the obstetrician re-entered the room and announced in measured tones "There's been some complications". They explained that the placenta had not detached as it should have, so they'd had to knock the She_Admiral out and claw the clotted cocktail of blood, membrane and flesh out manually. "We got it all out" the obstetrician reported, "but we're having trouble controlling the bleeding". "She's lost about 3.5 litres of blood - that's over half the blood you have", she continued, the blunt mathematical equation not lost on my primitive understanding of biology. She then gave a confusing account of the number of units of blood they'd transfused, and more about the list and quantities of other drugs they'd pumped in to try and get the body to cooperate in its own salvation. "If we can't stop the bleeding, we'll have to remove the uterus" she concluded, searching my face for any unspoken reaction to the news, "Any questions?". "So, it'll grow back then, like the appendix?" I chuckling bitterly to myself but said "Nup, do your best then". "If it's a choice between saving the mother or saving the uterus, we have no choice" she offered by way of further explanation, "but at least you have this one" indicating with a flick of her finger that she was referring to the baby. She then advised that depending on the outcome, the She_Admiral would be sent to intensive care if it went badly, or recovery if it went well, her clinical detachment mingled with obvious pity that comes with telling a clueless father that his hours-old first-born may also be his last.

So again they left, and once more I paced the room, less reassured than I'd been before. My mind churned with endless permutations and scenarios over which I had no control, left in bliss-less ignorance of what was taking place downstairs. All I knew was an outcome was being inexorably forged one way or the other, a collision of practiced medicinal skill, unavoidable circumstance, and biological inevitability all combining to bend fate towards one conclusion or another. I could only wait, the SMS's slowly tapering off as friends and relatives resigned themselves to waiting until morning for news, until it was only the persistent grandmothers left to probe for the story that was not yet written. Soon, the only sound left was the meaningless baby-noises eminating from the newborn, her restless sleep mirroring my own dull discontent.

Another long hour later, the obstetrician reappeared, her bearing this time marginally more buoyant, as if less weighed down by the burden of news she was bound to deliver than the time before. "The bleeding's stopped" she said "for now", her tone infused with encouragement but retaining an edge of guarded pessimism. Apparently if the next hour in recovery was OK, the She_Admiral would be groggily transported to the room, where she'd be able to meet the whimpering bundle she'd ejected hours previous. She'd be battered, sore and weak, having lost so much blood and having had her insides violently scraped and prodded. "We see one in 1500 like that" said the obstetrician wearily, "one in 2000 require the surgery. If you'd had a home birth, or this was 50 years ago, your wife would have bled to death". Still, she was alive and was eventually wheeled into the room, 4 or so hours late, finally to meet the daughter her tortured insides had nurtured into life over the preceding months. My 4 hours as "favourite parent" were at an end, as arms punctured by drips encased the baby in a mother's embrace, both drifting to sleep in unison as I sank into a chair. Sipping the warm, complimentary light beer I'd been given, I looked down at old one eye, reassured that we got the sweeter half of the baby-making deal.