Labor and Delivery

Chapter 59: Labor and Delivery

February 2005

Annie felt a sharp sear of pain low in her abdomen. She cried out from it, waking herself and her husband.

"What is it?" George whispered urgently.

"Hurts," was all she could gasp.

"Another contraction?"

She managed to shake her head. There was no squeezing, no dynamic rise and fall of the pain level. Just a stabbing, constant pain concentrated in one spot.

"Annie?" he asked, panicked.

Must be too dark for him to see, she thought. She was going to have to speak. "No... just hurts," she gasped again.

She felt the bed shimmy slightly as George leaped out of it, heard him dressing quickly. Then the baby moved within her. The pain soared to new heights along with the fetal movement, and Annie cried out again, failing to fully muffle the scream into her pillow. A few moments later, once the baby was still again, the pain settled back to the previous level of agony.

George had frozen in place, only one leg of his trousers pulled on.

"She's okay," Annie hissed to reassure him. "She's still moving."

In the next second, George was dressed and disappeared. Five seconds later, he was back. "I sent Winky to the Burrow to get my parents. Let's go."

Annie tried to shift her weight in order to make it easier for George to lift her and felt a small gush of fluid between her legs. If she hadn't been in so much pain, she would have been mortified.

George took a deep breath. Secrecy laws be damned, he thought, clearly envisioning the hospital entrance. He'd personally Obliviate every one of them later if necessary. Under the cover of pre-dawn darkness, he Apparated with Annie in his arms, then dashed through the emergency entry doors.

Ten minutes later, strapped into what George reckoned was every monitor the hospital owned, Annie lay once again on a hospital bed. Her knuckles were white as they gripped the side rail bars, and her face was wracked.

"Can't you give her anything for it?" he growled pleadingly as the doctor began lifting the bed sheet covering her.

"Mr. Weasley, we must first determine what's happening," the doctor explained, speaking infuriatingly slowly and calmly. He then turned to Annie. "Mrs. Weasley, I need to examine you now. Please try and relax."

Annie laughed at the idiot now leaning between her propped-up and spread-open legs. "Oh, sure... why didn't I think of that sooner?" she said softly with a snort.

Despite the tension – or maybe because of it – George couldn't stifle a smile either, even though he truly hated witnessing this part. He took her hand in his.

The smile on his face was gone as soon as Annie sucked her breath in through her teeth a moment later. Her eyes began to roll back into her head before she screwed them shut. He desperately wanted to look away, or at least to rip the doctor's fool head from his neck for causing her more pain, but couldn't do either. It was small consolation that his hand felt close to breaking as she crushed it in her grip – he would've taken all her pain onto himself, if he could.

"Yes, well, this is simple enough. I've found the trouble right here.... Mrs. Weasley, your cervix is about four centimeters dilated, I'd say, perhaps fifty percent effaced, most likely due to your previous pre-term labor. And at this very moment, I am touching your baby's foot."

"The baby's foot?!" cried George.

"Can't you... push it back in?" rasped Annie, grimacing. "Still too early!"

"I could, yes, at great personal discomfort to you, Mrs. Weasley. But there would be no point. You see, I can feel the actual foot, not the amniotic sac around it. Your water has broken. The baby must be born this morning."

"But... it's still a month before she's due!" said George, still in shock.

"Yes, I know it's a bit early. But still very good odds. Much better than six weeks ago, I assure you. There's nothing else for it, after all, once the water breaks. No turning back now, I'm afraid!"

Half an hour later, George was dressed in a surgeon's costume, feeling idiotic and frightened. Annie was not in labor, and due to the fact that the baby's foot seemed to be stuck where it was, their daughter was going to be delivered "cesarean." George was not entirely sure what was meant by this word, but judging by the fact they were making him dress up for the occasion, he was confident it wasn't going to be like anything he'd seen before.

And he was right. He followed an entourage of nurses as they wheeled Annie into yet another room and warned him not to touch anything. Then one of them asked him if he could stand the sight of blood.

"Yes?" he answered her, perplexed. He'd seen his share of blood, having witnessed three prior deliveries. What an unnerving question to be asked, he thought. Doesn't exactly bode well, does it? He began to fret, nervously drumming his fingers against his thighs.

Then the nurses lifted Annie from the bed onto a table like she was a slab of meat and literally strapped her down to it, causing George's sense of alarm to escalate rapidly. He glanced at her face as they draped large pieces of light blue-green paper over her. But Annie was calm and awake, and she smiled at him. He assumed she was trying to reassure him with her smile, rather than expressing any enjoyment of the process.

A nurse directed him to stand by Annie's head. "You don't have to watch, you know," she instructed him, her eyes searching his face with a worried look.

What is it with this nurse? Why is she saying such odd things?

Then Annie looked searchingly into his eyes and spoke to him in a carefully regulated voice, like she was comforting one of their children. "This is perfectly all right, George. It happens all the time, I promise. Whatever you see, don't panic, all right?"

Annie apparently knew something he didn't. He was about to ask what she meant by that comment when the doctor announced he was ready to begin.

George stood in paralyzed shock as his wife was gutted before his eyes.

"George, it's fine. I can't feel anything. Do you hear me, George?"

The murderous monster standing next to his wife reached inside her and began rooting around.

"George, look away! George!"

The two masked demons standing on either side of his wife's disemboweled carcass both continued defiling her body, one nearly elbow-deep inside her, the other pushing and pressing on her belly from above. Her blood was everywhere, lurid red against the blue paper.

George hated himself for standing here, mutely watching this horror happen. Murderers! I have to stop them! He reached for his wand as a fiery rage flared within him. They will pay!

"GEORGE! LOOK AT ME!" Annie yelled, and everyone in the room flinched, including him.

Annie yelled? He must be hallucinating her voice. There was no possible way she could be speaking after this. He looked at her face.

"George!" she cried in relief. "You see that I'm okay? Keep looking at my face!"

Her lovely violet eyes held his attention now. Was she truly still alive? She kept talking to him. He had no idea what she was saying – his brain couldn't process the speech – but he saw her lips moving and heard her voice. That had to mean something, didn't it? She was speaking, therefore she was breathing, ergo she must be alive.

Another sound now penetrated his consciousness: a tiny wail. Not from Annie. He hazarded a glance toward the abattoir the other end of the room had become.

The baby. Their daughter. She was alive and crying. The butcher handed her off, bloody and squirming, to a nurse who whisked her away.

"Go with her, George. Stay with the baby. Do you understand me?"

George looked at his wife's face once again, searching for confirmation of the command he'd just heard.

"Stay with the baby," Annie repeated. "I'll be fine, I promise. Go!" she urged him.

He nodded and took a few steps away from his wife, his gaze still locked onto her eyes.

"I'm all right, George. Go!" she repeated.

He finally turned away from Annie and faced the bustle of activity around his newborn daughter. He sucked in a shocked breath as he registered how profoundly tiny she looked. One of the nurses was rubbing her briskly, attempting to clean off the muck covering her. Another was holding a tiny plastic oxygen mask in front of her face.

But his baby daughter stared right at him, completely ignoring the chaos and gore around her. Her dark blue eyes were open and alert, her face calm and serene despite the rough treatment from the nurse scrubbing her. He could almost imagine she was trying to reassure him somehow, letting him know she was all right. That everything was all right.

They began wheeling the strange contraption she was lying on out of the room, and George silently followed as if he'd been Imperiused by her. He watched as they finished cleaning her, weighing and measuring her, examining her, and poring over her every physical aspect.

He had no idea how long he'd been standing there, mute as a post, when one of the nurses announced cheerfully, "She's perfect, Mr. Weasley! Would you like to hold her?"

Would I? This hospital is staffed by idiots and monsters, he thought. Never again would he or his wife set foot in this slaughterhouse! Hell would be better than this den of sadism and butchery!

"Yes," he answered simply, reaching out for her.

He gathered the tiny swaddled thing in his arms, looking all the more miniscule as he touched her rosy cheek with his rough finger. Her eyes opened, and she gazed up at him again. How can she be so alert, he wondered, after all that? He quietly communed with his daughter as they stared into each other's eyes, leaning against the wall of the nursery.

George felt a tap on his shoulder, startling him. He glanced around. His daughter was still in his arms, asleep now. He wondered when had he sat down in this rocking chair, and where was he, exactly? He looked up at the clock: it was after ten in the morning.

A nurse whispered, "Mr. Weasley, your wife is ready to see you now. She's in a recovery room, resting. You may take your baby with you."

George nodded, thinking of Annie for the first time since he'd left the operating room. He smiled at his daughter, imagining how impatient his wife must be to see her by now. He rose carefully to avoid disturbing the sleeping baby in his arms, and the nurse led him to Annie's room.

"There you are, you two!" came a weak voice from inside when he reached the doorway. "Stop hogging her, George. It's my turn now!"

George tore his eyes away from the baby and looked at Annie. A visceral stab of shock hit his gut as he took in the sight of her. His wife had not kept her promise to be all right: she looked deathly pale, utterly spent. Her eyes were sunken into her head. She was smiling, but it was a forced smile that failed to belie her pain.

"Give her to me, George," she whispered shakily, weakly lifting her arms. The small movement looked as if it took every ounce of strength she had left.

She doesn't look strong enough to support a feather, he thought with dread as he eased himself onto the bed next to her. He carefully passed the bundle in his arms to her, but kept one arm underneath their daughter, just in case.

Annie's smile grew bigger, became far more genuine now that the baby was in her arms. "So lovely!" she cooed. "And so impatient! What was so important about today that you couldn't bear to miss?" she said softly, stroking the ruddy fuzz on her head.

Their daughter began to root against the blanket swaddled around her face. Annie spoke soothingly to her as she gingerly moved to offer a breast. The baby eagerly took it and began to nurse.

"Poor little Georgia! So hungry!" she whispered.

"Oh, don't start with that," George groaned, leaning his head gently against Annie's. He couldn't look away from the tiny, angelic face before him. She was mesmerizing.

"Get used to it. It's her name," Annie giggled, unable to tear her eyes from their baby, either.

"Absolutely not. Look at her – she's the spitting image of you. Annie would be much more fitting," he argued.

"Not a chance," she said smiling, shaking her head.

"Perhaps a compromise?" another voice came from elsewhere in the room.

All three of them were startled by it. Annie and George looked up to see a nurse had entered the room and had been checking on Annie's monitors.

"How about Georgeanna?" the woman said. "That's both of them covered."

"You know, that's not half bad," offered George.

"I could live with that," agreed Annie. "What do you think, little one? Are you a Georgeanna?"

The little girl began rooting against Annie again, and the motion of her head was identical to a nod. Her parents chuckled as Annie helped her find the nipple once more.

"Georgeanna it is," George said softly as their daughter nursed greedily.

"Georgeanna Muriel," added Annie.

George was incredulous. "You want to name her after that old bat? After all the crap she gave you?"

"She gave us a roof over our heads! She opened her home to us when it was very dangerous to do so!" Annie argued.

George conceded the point, however reluctantly. Great Aunt Muriel had housed a good portion of the Weasley family when it was her neck on the line for it during the last days of the war. He wondered if the old battle axe would be pleased to be memorialized by his daughter's name or – more likely, in his opinion – spinning in her grave.

"You look tired," he whispered. Actually, Annie looked far more than tired. He'd never seen her look worse, and that was saying something.

She nodded. "I am, but I wouldn't miss this for anything," she answered with a weak smile, still gazing down at their daughter.

*

Three days later, they were still in the hospital. Tiny Georgeanna was improving: eating well and gaining weight admirably. Annie, on the other hand, was not.

George was nearly frantic with worry. His wife was still bleeding too much, the doctors had said, to go home yet. And as of this morning, she had begun running a fever. None of the nurses would look him in the eye any more.

George looked up as he heard a quiet knock on the door to find the doctor motioning for him to join him in the hallway. He nodded and rose carefully to avoid jostling the baby.

On his way out of the room, George glanced at Annie – she was asleep, as usual. She had barely enough energy to feed the baby every three hours and slept all the rest of the time. When he wasn't curled around Annie in her sick bed, keeping her warm (because she shivered constantly, otherwise), he was holding Georgeanna. Wrapping his arms around one or the other of them was the only thing that kept him from putting holes in the walls out of impotent frustration.

He reached the hallway and stood there, swaying gently as all parents reflexively do while holding a sleeping baby.

"Mr. Weasley, I would like to give your wife a transfusion, if that's all right," the doctor said in a pretense of requesting permission. "Perhaps a round of blood will help strengthen her system, give her some energy to fight back against what may be an infection developing."

George nodded without understanding, unwilling to display his ignorance by asking for clarification. Why in hell is he asking me? He's the doctor, after all.

"I like to ask family members of transfusion recipients if they would be willing to donate blood," he continued. "Do you know your blood type?"

"Human?" George answered, completely at a loss with this effing Muggle's infuriating questions.

The idiot chuckled in response. "Very funny, Mr. Weasley. I'm glad to see you still have your sense of humor. I'll tell the nurse to arrange for you to donate a few pints. If you're compatible, we'll give it to your wife. I find it often helps the family to feel like they're actively doing something to help."

"Sure... whatever she needs."

The doctor pasted a false smile on his face, lasting only a moment.

"There's something else, isn't there?" George asked.

He nodded solemnly. "Mr. Weasley... I'm afraid I must warn you... it is imperative that your wife not attempt another pregnancy in the future. She ought not to risk it, after this."

George nodded slightly, unable to produce any other response. He calmly, numbly absorbed the information. He understood what the man had said – could comprehend the words he'd used – but had nothing in reserve to process what in any other instance would have been a crushing blow. Little Georgeanna would be the last of his and Annie's children. Never again would Annie glow with pregnancy, never again would he feel a baby kick from within her.

"She'll be all right, though? After you give her my blood?" George asked a moment later, his voice shaky. He was unabashed by the pleading tone heard there.

The doctor smiled faintly but did not answer.

*

When the doctor returned the next morning, his tone was far more upbeat. "Well, Mrs. Weasley, you've made some excellent progress overnight. The transfusion helped even more than I expected. The bleeding now seems under control, and your vital signs are much better. And no more fever, I see."

"I'm thinking of becoming a vampire. I had no idea how good it feels to have other people's blood pumping through my veins," she replied. Her voice was quiet but stronger than it had been for days.

"Your husband's blood, to be precise," the doctor added, scribbling a note on her chart. "He's type O negative – what we call a universal donor. I do hope he'll consider donating regularly."

"Now that I have a taste for it, he'd better be on his toes," she warned hoarsely.

"That's no way to thank someone for rescuing you," the doctor chided her teasingly.

"George does it so often, it's becoming passé," she explained.

The doctor looked up at the strange couple. They were smirking at each other for the moment. Far too young to have so many bloody children, he muttered silently to himself. Hopefully, this will knock some sense into them!

"I'm pleased to say that if you continue to make as much progress throughout the day today as you did last night, I'll be releasing you tomorrow morning. That ought to provide sufficient motivation for you to pursue the path of improvement, I'll wager," he offered.

"Deal," the woman said simply.

"No take-backs," said her husband.