by Keary Taylor
I did as he said and handed the paddles over to Avian. He placed them on her chest and turned them on. Morgan’s chest surged up off the bed before falling flat against it once again. The heart rate monitor blipped once and flat-lined again.
“Charge it again!” Avian yelled. Just as I did, Bill and West appeared in the doorway.
“Is there anything we can do to help?” West asked, his eyes wide as he watched Morgan’s chest surge up off the bed again.
“Go get your grandfather,” Avian said as he nodded for me to charge it again. “I have a feeling this is it. I give her two more minutes before we have to get the baby out of her.”
West darted out of the room and down the hall.
“If she goes, I’m going to need both of you to help get the baby out,” Avian said, tossing aside the paddles and starting chest compressions again. “Bill, you’ll help me roll her into the surgery room. Then you’ll both help me cut her open. I hope blood doesn’t make you squeamish.”
The both of us just nodded. In a world like ours, it was difficult to be turned off by the sight of blood.
Avian glanced up at the monitor that tracked the baby’s heart. It had slowed significantly. He swore, while continuing to press on her chest.
“It’s been two minutes, Avian,” I said, looking up at the clock above the door.
“Okay,” Avian said, backing away from Morgan and pulling the lines from her body. “Time of death is 5:14.” He unhooked the large tube that spouted from her throat. “Let’s get her to the operating room.”
Tunnel vision threatened to overtake me as Bill and Avian pushed Morgan’s bed down the hall to the surgical room, but I focused on the roundness of her belly and told myself I had no place blacking out at a time like this. I held the door open for them and stood to the side as they wheeled the bed in.
I had a feeling that in another time, this surgery would not go as it did. It would be far more sterile, more organized, less chaotic. And the mother wouldn’t be dead.
But we had precious seconds and a doctor who had never performed this type of surgery before.
“Bill, you take this here,” Avian said, handing him a small, ghostly white tube. He flipped a switch and it started sucking air. “Keep the blood and fluids out of the way so I can see what I’m doing. I’m going to make the incisions and Eve, when I tell you to, you’re going to help push the baby out from the top of her stomach.”
I felt the blood draining from my face as I nodded.
Avian lifted the hospital gown Morgan wore. He opened a package and pulled out a pair of gloves that rose up to his elbows. Bill and I followed suit.
Picking up a scalpel from the shiny silver tray next to him, Avian placed it on her skin. A heavy line of blood beaded up as he made a twelve inch incision along her lower abdomen. Adequate at his job, Bill suctioned the blood away.
It took longer than I expected, for Avian to cut through the layers of muscle and what little fat was on her body. My stomach started turning, seeing the inside of a human body like I never had before. This was much different than seeing a bleeding bullet wound.
Avian had me use clamps that looked a lot like scissors to hold the layers back as he continued to cut. My hands shook and started to sweat beneath my gloves, but I did as he asked.
And finally, he got to what looked like a latex glove inside of her body. As soon as he very carefully sliced it open, fluid started gushing out.
“That’s the amniotic sack,” Avian said, making the incision larger as Bill sucked the fluid away. The fluid covered Morgan and splashed down onto the floor.
My stomach gave another sea-wave twist.
“Okay,” Avian said, using his fingers to stretch the entire hole bigger. “This is it. Eve, I need you to use your hands to gently push the baby down and out.”
Avian reached a hand inside the hole he’d cut just as West and Dr. Evans burst into the room.
“West, I need you to get that oxygen going,” Avian said, nodding toward a tiny bed that sat in one corner of the room. There was a dome over it that covered the whole thing. Attached to the side of it was an oxygen tube. “Now, Eve.”
I placed my hands on the top of Morgan’s stomach, at the bottom of her ribs and gently started pushing. The child inside squirmed against me.
That was the first moment I pictured the future of this tiny human being. How we had a chance of giving it a tomorrow, a tomorrow free of Bane, a future that was actually a future and not just a daily fight for survival.
As what felt like a tiny fist punched against my hand, I knew I would do anything—anything—to give this child a chance at that future.
Avian’s left hand came free of the opening with a teeny tiny foot. He swore under his breath. “The baby’s breech,” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Coming feet first. Back off on the pushing until I can get the other leg free.”
I relaxed my hand on Morgan’s stomach. The trapped child within punched against my hand once again.
“How’s the TorBane looking?” I asked, darting a look over at Dr. Evans. He stood two feet back from Avian, observing.
“No change on the test cells. They look like they’re behaving correctly,” he said, his eyes fixed on Avian’s hand inside of Morgan’s stomach.
A moment later, another tiny foot broke free of the opening. “Now, Eve,” Avian breathed. “Gently.”
I applied pressure once again and five seconds later, the entire baby was free of Morgan.
Avian was a flurry of activity, moving so fast I could barely process what he was doing. In one movement he set the baby on the bed between Morgan’s legs, in another he cut the strange looking cord that ran from its stomach back inside of Morgan. In the next, he whisked the baby to the tiny bed with the strange dome. A second later he had a tiny oxygen tube down its nose and was rubbing its entire body with a soft blanket.
“If you think that concoction is ready,” Avian said as he continued sucking gunk out of the baby’s mouth and nose with a strange blue bulb-shaped tool. “Let’s get it started now. This isn’t exactly a newborn intensive care unit. Let’s get her all the help we can.”
Her.
Morgan had been right. It was a girl.
I stood frozen next to Morgan, as did Bill. Dr. Evans crossed the room, and very carefully handed two syringes to Avian. “One needs to go directly into her lungs, the other to her heart,” he said, moving to one side of the bed. He stood back a foot, his hands held firmly behind his back. “It will be painful for her, but at this point, it might be good for her. It might get her adrenaline system in gear and speed things up.”
Avian nodded.
I had to look away as he held up the first syringe.
Instead I looked down at Morgan. All eyes had turned away from her. She just lay there on the table, her stomach a deflated, open maw. She looked wrecked.
Gathering the sheet that had been pushed to the bottom of the bed, I drew it up. Pressing a brief kiss to her forehead, and whispering a goodbye, I covered her face.
“How long until we see if she starts improving?” Avian asked from across the room. Certain he had put the needles away, I crossed back to the tiny bed. Bill joined us as well. Everyone was gathered around it, staring at the child Avian worked on.
She didn’t open her eyes as Avian hooked all kinds of monitors to her. One on her chest, one strapped around her foot. She opened her mouth in a silent cry, but no sound came out.
“By tomorrow morning we may start seeing small improvements to her heart rate and breathing,” Dr. Evans said. “It will probably be a few weeks before she is breathing on her own, but we may be able to manage travel in five days.”
“You think she might survive the trip?” I asked, my brow furrowing. She was so tiny, so fragile. I couldn’t even imagine her surviving being moved from the bed.
“It won’t be easy, but infants are resilient. Especially when they’ve been given TorBane. You survived.”
Avian threaded another tiny tube down her nose. “It’s a feeding tube,” he explained. “We don’t have an ideal mixture, but we’ll do our best.”
“I have to say, I am very impressed with your coolness and work, Avian,” Dr. Evans complimented. “You would have made an excellent physician if I hadn’t ended the world.”
“Thanks,” Avian chuckled. “I guess it would have been nice to actually attend medical school.”
“How does it feel, looking at a mini you?” West asked. He placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re not alone anymore.”
And suddenly my throat tightened and the back of my eyes stung.
I had never felt lonely or isolated or different in a way that made me sad. But in truth, I had always been very different. No one would ever fully understand what I had gone through in my life, and the one person who would understand was nowhere to be found.
As I looked down at this tiny infant who would have to fight for her life as I did, I vowed that I would never let her feel alone or different.
“Like nothing I ever expected to feel,” I breathed.
Avian looked over at me, his eyes catching mine. Despite the craziness that had just happened, there was warmth and love in his eyes.
I didn’t have any more words, so I simply smiled and looked back down at the child. By now, she had started to calm down and was still once more except for the tiny rise and fall of her chest.
With nothing more he could do at the moment, Avian returned to Morgan. A tightness closed around my throat as I finally accepted the fact of what I was seeing: she was dead. We’d just lost one more member of Eden.
West and Bill went back to the surface and set to digging a place to bury her. They hadn’t said a word, but I knew they were dealing with their grief in their own ways. Even if they hadn’t known her well, she was one of us.
Avian stitched her closed, using slow, precise sutures. He was calm and collected as always.
I stood next to the infant, trying to focus on the fact that she might live, and was barely able to look away from her.
“I know I fought this,” Dr. Evans said. He stood silently next to me as well, observing the baby girl. “But it does feel good, to be able to save one last life with TorBane.”
“Feels like things have sort of come full circle, doesn’t it?” I mused quietly. She worked a tiny hand from her blankets. I reached for her, to tuck it back in, when she gripped my finger tightly and didn’t let go.
My heart skipped a beat.
She was so soft, so tender. Nothing like my world.
“Yes, it does,” Dr. Evans said. I looked over at him to see a small smile on his face.
“You did a good thing here,” I said, feeling truly appreciative inside.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “That’s nice to hear after committing fifteen years of wrong.”
Without another word, he turned and walked toward the door. He paused in it, his hand on the frame. “We’ll give her the next dose in twelve hours, and then another in twenty-four.”
Avian nodded as he covered Morgan up once again. Dr. Evans left.
Avian walked to my side and smiled when he saw the child clinging to my finger. He slipped his hand into my other. I’d never felt more complete in any moment.
“How much does she weigh?” I asked, marveling that any human being could be this small.
Avian glanced down at a red digital number at the bottom of the bed. “Two pounds, one ounce.”
“That’s almost nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
“That’s probably about what you weighed when you were born,” Avian said, brushing his shoulder against mine. “You weren’t quite this premature, but since you were a twin, you would have been smaller. I, on the other hand, weighed almost ten pounds when I was born.” We both smiled about that.
“She’ll be okay then,” I mused, brushing my thumb across her tiny knuckles. “Won’t she?”
“Yeah,” Avian said. He brushed his lips against my shoulder. “She will.”
The baby gave another kick and the wire that led to her foot caught on her other, pulling the heart rate monitor band loose. Using gentle fingers, Avian adjusted it.
“She is going to need a name,” he said quietly as he rewrapped her in the blanket.
I nodded as she let go of my finger and her hand disappeared into the blanket. “It should be something important.”
“Like how you were called Eve?” he said, looking up at me. “The first of your kind.”
“I guess,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Except she’s more about the future of mankind. She’s the belief and promise that we’ll do anything to make that future.”
“Creed,” Avian said quietly.
“What?” I questioned, turning my eyes on him.
He looked at me, a small smile pulling in the corner of his mouth. “Creed. It’s a set of beliefs, a guiding principle.”
“Creed,” I said, smiling as I said the word. “It’s perfect.”
EIGHTEEN
We buried Morgan off to the side of the NovaTor building. We wrapped her in a sheet and Avian and West gently lowered her in the ground. There was a pang of guilt in my chest that because of my decision to bring her out here and save the baby, she couldn’t be buried next to her husband, Eli.
I just had to hope that it really didn’t matter and that they were together now in a way that actually did.
Few words were spoken, but they didn’t need to be. None of us were close to Morgan, but she was human and that made us close enough in all the ways that counted.
Twelve hours later, Creed was given her second dosage of TorBane and five hours after that, her heart rate normalized. The next morning, Dr. Evans suggested we do a scan to see how things were progressing.
She stayed solidly asleep as we laid her on the scan table. She didn’t even wake as the machine made a racket and the scan started.
“There is her liver,” Dr. Evans said, pointing to strange green shapes on the screen before us. “Her colon, kidneys. Her stomach.” The scan continued and then the screen suddenly showed something brilliantly white. “And there would be TorBane at work.”
“That’s her lungs,” Avian said, tracing his finger along one of the lobe shaped objects on the screen. It was littered with the brilliant white. Like a fine, thin lace. “And there’s her heart.” We could see it pumping. And with each beat, the white in it spread a little further.
“How long before it takes full effect?” I asked, mesmerized by the slowly spreading white particles.
“Like you, it will take years to spread throughout her body,” he said. The miracle that was TorBane seemed dampened when he mentioned it spreading throughout her body. “But it will stabilize her heart and lungs within two weeks would be my guess.”
I nodded, my eyes still transfixed on the monitor.
With the scan done, Avian returned to Creed’s side and transferred her back to her portable incubator. No one was allowed to touch her besides Avian, in an attempt to keep sickness and germs to a minimum.
Bill knocked, and entered one second later.
“You may want to see this,” he said, looking at me and then Dr. Evans.
I glanced back at Avian, and then Creed.
“It’s okay,” Avian said. “Go. I can take care of her.”
Nodding, I turned to Bill, and Dr. Evans walked out with us.
“West and I were getting bored,” Bill explained as we started up the stairs. “So he was showing me around the building. He showed me his old apartment and we found something.”
We came out onto the main lobby floor and started up the next flight of stairs to the top one. We started down a hall that didn’t look much different from the one on the floor below, but the doors
were more spread out, indicating bigger spaces behind them. We reached the end of one hall and took a left, only to stop at a door to the immediate right.
West was inside, looking through things.
It reminded me of the simplest of residential units we had started to set up in New Eden. There was a simple kitchen, a simple, small dining table. A simple couch. Three doors split off at the back of it, opening up to what looked to be two bedrooms and a bathroom.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, stepping inside. I searched for any signs that looked out of the ordinary, but everything seemed normal.
“Just before Grandpa had me transported away,” West said, meeting my eyes, “this place was a mess. I had to gather things in a hurry. There was stuff everywhere. There was next to no food in the apartment.”
“I never returned here after you left,” Dr. Evans said with a doubt in his voice. His brow furrowed as he looked around the space. “Neither did your father. He turned quick.”
West nodded and crossed over to the kitchen. He opened the cabinet doors. They were all stocked full of non-perishable food.
“Someone’s cleaned the place up and stocked it full of food,” West said, his expression uncertain. “There’s been someone living here. Recently.”
“Most likely whoever went through the solar tank two days ago,” I said, pulling my handgun from its holster. “They’ve probably been watching us this whole time.”
“But why not say anything?” West asked, his brow furrowed. “I mean, they’re well stocked up here, so I see why they didn’t take anything from our van, but why just watch us this long and not speak up?”
I shook my head, not having an answer. Something cold leaked out into my blood, inviting my adrenaline to draw everything into focus.
“I think we should sweep the whole building,” I said. “We may be playing a game of hide and seek in such a big building, but we’ve got to check things out.”
West nodded, adjusting his grip on his handgun. Bill unslung his assault rifle from his shoulder.
“I know this building better than anyone,” Dr. Evans said, standing a little straighter. “Come on.”