Max Main ≡ Lois Lane (bylined) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-08 16:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | lois lane, ramona flowers |
Who: Max and Audrey
What: Delivery
Where: OAH 3
When: Let's say Monday?
Warnings: None
It had begun more simply than Max had expected it to.
They’d gotten to the hospital early, just Thomas and her, because the doctor had warned that it might be twelve hours, might be twenty hours. First-time mothers, they had been told, were predictable in their lengthy deliveries, if nothing else. Max hadn’t believed the man. For some reason (and now she wondered if all first-time mothers did this) she had thought she would be different, that it would all be over in a whirlwind of pain and done.
She had been so very wrong.
Twenty hours in and Max didn’t think she’d ever been so exhausted in her life. Her blood pressure had spiked somewhere in the last hour, and Thomas looked at pale as a ghost at the end of the bed. She knew he felt helpless, unable to do anything but listen to sounds of pain as the contractions lengthened and came faster. She knew, too, that not being able to see didn’t help. The room was a faded blur of white, things beeping and voices that came in whispers. frantic and calm by turns. Off to the side, the NICU team waited, ominous and indicative that this wasn’t a normal delivery. Max was glad Thomas couldn’t see them.
When they came with the epidural, Audrey came with them. Max had called her that morning (or was it yesterday?), and then the epidural was being administered and she was screaming, and the nurses thought Thomas was going to pass out. Her blood pressure spiked again, and they ushered him out of the room before they had two patients to deal with. It would be soon now; a few hours. Max wanted to ask him to stay, but it would have been a selfish thing to do, and so she stayed quiet until the door had closed behind him. She knew Luke and Roger were outside, knew Thomas would be fine with them. And she wanted him with her, oh God did she, but she was used to doing things on her own. She didn’t want to get used to anything that might not be there in the long run - it only made her clingier, and she’d gotten clingy enough the last few months.
Audrey, Max noticed as her gaze swept back from the door, was pressed back against a wall looking distinctly uncomfortable, and Max couldn’t help but smile through the haze of pain and medication. “What color are you dying it next?” she asked, grateful for the distraction.
Audrey was uncomfortable, for a whole variety of reasons. She’d never seen anyone give birth before, so it was frightening and fascinating at the same time. And now Thomas had been ushered out but she was still here, which also seemed weird. She and Max weren’t even all that close. Yeah, things had been better lately, but Thomas was the father of her child - didn’t he deserve to be here more than she did?
Audrey was glad, though, that she had been allowed to stay. She felt strongly that somebody ought to be here for Max, and if Thomas wasn’t going to then she definitely needed to. There it was again, that perverse sense of duty. They could fight until the cows came home, but Max was her sister, and this was the sort of thing you did for your sister. The screaming had been pretty unnerving, but she calmed that thought with the logical answer, which was that it had been bad, and it had hurt, but in the end it would be a good thing and put Max through less pain. When Max turned her head and spoke to her, she stood up straighter. She was tired, admittedly. She’d been in and out of the room, to use the bathroom and sit for a while and get coffee, but it had been a couple hours since the last time she left. “I’m thinking red,” she said, drifting a little closer to her, but not so close as to crowd out the doctors. She talked like they weren’t in a delivery room, because she assumed that was the whole point of even talking right now. “Might as well take the femme fatale thing to its logical conclusion. I might get a cigarette holder.”
The epidural helped, and Max relaxed slightly as Audrey neared and the nurses began reading monitors and writing down numbers, pretending they weren’t there (as if they could ever be possible to miss). “So what’s wrong with just being Audrey?” she asked, though she knew very well what was wrong with just being Audrey - being Audrey had never been enough, and when you’re told you’re not good enough for long enough, well, you try to be something else so that it didn’t hurt so badly. She knew, even if Audrey didn’t understand that. And she was just now coming to realize that whatever she’d thought Audrey’s life had been, it hadn’t been that at all.
The question surprised Audrey. Max wasn't supposed to be thinking about things like that right now, and the idea that she could focus so neatly on her while laying in a hospital delivery room was a little baffling. She smiled a little, not quite sure how to respond. "That's not very interesting," she said, a little halting, some mirth in it. She was maybe a little more conscious of herself than Max might expect of her, but it wasn't worth dwelling on. Being herself had never, ever been enough, and even if it was, she was no longer sure what was her and what were things she'd decided to be for other people, constructs on the surface that her personality had wrapped around and absorbed. Who she was or who she might be was such a tangled mess that she couldn't imagine unraveling it. It was much easier to just be whatever seemed fun or convenient or right or to have the right effect, or to make her good enough or to make it unnecessary to be so. She shifted the subject, trying not to make it too obvious and failing. "You're lucky I don't knit, by the way, or you would be hip deep in adorable little punk booties for the kid. Neon pink ones, With little lightning bolts and skulls on them and shit."
It was, in fact, easier to concentrate on Audrey. Max was afraid, exhausted and still in pain, and even though she’d been conditioned to withstand countless methods of torture without breaking, this was different. It was different because the key to withstanding terrible things was to step outside of yourself, and she couldn’t do that just then, not when every beep and movement and touch dragged her right back to what was happening. So Audrey was easier, standing there looking scared and uncomfortable. She was a distraction, and she wasn’t going to manage to get off so easily.
Another contraction hit, this one longer, and Max could think of nothing at all for a few moments, not beyond what was happening, but it wasn’t as bad as the one before, thanks to the epidural, and once it passed, she turned her attention on Audrey again. “Thomas pussied out, and now you’re stuck being the center of attention,” she said, the statement fond; she didn’t blame Thomas. For a man like him, being ineffective was nearly unheard of. “Seriously, Audrey. Dad isn’t here. Don’t let him keep controlling your shit. Thomas was right about that.” It was telling, that he wasn’t the General in that moment, their father. And then the pain was starting again, and she was gripping the bedrails to try to not scream through it. “Give me a middle name.”
"Goodie," Audrey said, and she was standing next to the bed by the time the next contraction was done, not even thinking about it. She was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that they were having this conversation between contractions with all the nurses standing there and everything. "He - He doesn't," she said, not entirely sure about that, but wanting to believe it, anyway.
A middle name. Audrey wracked her brain, nervous and rambling. "Siouxsie. With an ioux, that'd be good. Catherine, maybe, we could get a Hepburn theme going. Alice if you want her to have her head in the clouds and fall down rabbit holes. I could go on." She put a hand on Max's, on the rail, for her to take if she wanted it.
“Yes he does,” Max said, letting her head fall back onto the pillow. She closed her eyes a minute, taking the break between contractions gratefully. “Something that sounds good with Amanda,” she added. “Something you like.” Max took her hand, squeezed her fingers a little too hard as the next contraction began. They were coming fast now, and the nurses were whispering again and calling the doctor.
Audrey felt a sudden, unfamiliar fear that Max would not be fine, which, though she tried to wipe it out, settled in as soon as she thought about it and would not move. "What about Rose?" she tried, squeezing her fingers back. "It's a cliche, but it could work."
Max nodded. She had no idea if Thomas had managed to counter the contracts she’d signed all those months ago, and so she squeezed Audrey’s fingers tighter. “Make sure they spell it right,” she said, glancing over at the monitor and the doctor, who was talking in a tone of voice she found worrisome. She tried to ignore it by looking at Audrey again. She considered telling Audrey everything, then. Drugged and exhausted and scared enough to want someone other than her to understand, but it wasn’t hers to tell, and then she remembered about the threats and Corvus. “It might not be safe here,” she warned her, not really thinking clearly. “Make sure you don’t walk out alone,” and then the words of caution were swallowed up by a new contraction, and the doctor was paging someone, and the nurses were handing Audrey a sterile robe and half mask.
"Why wouldn't it be..." but then there was another contractions. As usual, something was going on that no one had bothered to tell Audrey about, something that had nothing to do with the danger in the room.
Audrey felt scared. She didn't want Max to see that, however, so she took the robe and the mask, intimidating enough on their own, and put them on, and she hoped. Situations like this were the sort where she wished that believing in god wasn't so fucking difficult. It would be nice to pray right now, throw things up to a higher power, but that wasn't going to happen, so she hoped. Hard.
The contraction passed as Audrey was putting on the robe and the half-mask, and Max just watched her. She saw the fear in her eyes, and she remembered how young her sister was in so many ways, ways Max was pretty sure she had never been. She touched the nurse’s arm, and when the nurse leaned down to reassure her, she told her that she was worried about Audrey, and maybe the nurse could take her out for some air.
The nurse, of course, did as Max asked (mother’s requests trumped in the delivery room), moving to Audrey’s side and touching her arm. “Don’t wander far from the room?” Max asked, and it had nothing to do with her own fear of being alone and everything to do with her concern about Mockingbird.
Audrey hesitated, looking between Max and the nurse, who seemed pretty insistent about taking her out, and then nodded. "I'll be right back," she said, because they weren't going to be able to keep her out for long, not with Thomas gone.
By the time the nurse led Audrey into the hall, the nurses were unhooking Max from the majority of the monitors, and they were rolling the incubator close to the bed, which they were raising. Max was grateful not to have anyone she needed to be strong for right then. Audrey was her baby sister, and she always felt like she had to be mature around her. Thomas felt helpless and couldn’t see, and she’d done her best not to cry or yell while he was in the room. Now, now she cried and screamed, and within a few minutes it was over and done.
The baby was small, so small Max couldn’t believe anything could possibly be that small, less than four pounds. She sounded like a weak kitten when she cried, and they put her on Max’s chest for only a few seconds before the NICU team was taking the baby away, and Max’s arms felt empty in a way that was entirely new. She felt alone, and she wanted someone to cling to, someone, Thomas, and they rolled the incubator out of the room a second later. Once the nurses had Max cleaned up and all the equipment moved out they motioned Audrey back in, and Max put on a brave face.
Audrey had tried to get back into the room when Max started screaming and crying, every hair on the back of her neck standing up at the sound, but the nurse stood between her and the door and told her she would be better off staying outside, so that her sister didn't feel the need to temper her reactions for her benefit. So she stood in the hallway, anxious and on edge, listening and waiting and hoping until finally she heard that weak crying. It was so much weaker than she felt a baby should properly sound, and then she was coming through the door, little Amanda, so tiny and fragile in the incubator, and she was around the corner before Audrey had seen her for longer than a few moments.
Audrey took a deep breath and walked back into the room. It seemed almost unnaturally still after the screaming and crying, and she walked up to the bed. Max was still breathing and the baby was alive, and these were things worth celebrating. "Hey," she said. She was still unsure, but she was smiling behind the mask, and it showed around her eyes.
Max knew the doctor would give Thomas the news, and she knew neither of them would hear anything definitive about the baby’s health for awhile still, and she looked exhausted, but calm when Audrey walked in the room. “Get that stupid thing off,” she told her sister, motioning to the mask and the robe. “She look okay?”
Audrey pulled the mask off after a quick glance at the nurse, holding it at her side by the string. "She looks great," she said. She was worried for the baby but it sounded genuine - the baby being alive qualified as great, she was pretty sure. "Gorgeous. She lucked out, looks like she inherited the genes that skipped you this generation."
Max laughed. “You are so full of shit,” she said, and it was a tired laugh, but a genuine one. “Luke or Roger would have come to tell us if Thomas died of panic, right?” she asked, but it was a joking question; she was pretty sure Thomas was fine, and he couldn’t see how small the baby was, or see all the things they would hook the baby up to, which was (she thought) a blessing. She patted the edge of the bed. “Sit down a second.”
"I'm pretty sure they'd let us know," Audrey said, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. "How do you feel? Aside from tired?"
“Not pregnant,” Max said with a tired smile. It was clear she wasn’t going to manage to stay awake long, not with the sedation they’d given her because of the spikes in her blood pressure, and she took Audrey’s hand in an uncharacteristic show of affection, and she squeezed Audrey’s fingers. “Thanks.”
Audrey smiled a little, and it was less nervous, then. "Yeah. You know, any time." It widened a little more. Everything suddenly seemed like it might turn out alright. Hell, she'd even managed to feel like a real sister for a day, and that was some kind of accomplishment.