The House

By Dawn Natelle

The penultimate part of the Sapphire arc: Dawn.

Chapter 22 – At the hospital

Two nights later Sun got a message from Red Oak: «You are needed, come with me.» Suddenly Sun was inside her own mind somehow, and an aged native stood near her. «This is needed,» he said, and she recognized the voice of Red Oak. «Come,» he said, and they departed the house and were soon travelling through the air at a great speed, faster than an airliner.

«This is Quinte reserve, two hours into the future,» Red Oak said. They pulled up to an older house. She immediately knew somehow that it was where Hawk lived with two other single natives. They settled in front of the house, and then walked into the backyard. Everything was misty, like in a fog, grey and colorless.

Sun saw it first, and shrieked. She was surprised that there was no sound from her voice as she ran over to the body hanging from a tree. It was Hawk, cold and still, waiting for one of his roommates to discover the body.

Sun wailed in silence, and then looked at Red Oak. «You said it was two hours in the future. Can I come back and stop it?»

«You can try. We will have to go back and get your body.»

They sped back at the same speed, and during the short trip Red Oak explained: «When he left you he came home and started drinking. He hasn’t stopped since. For three weeks he has been in a stupor. He was fired from his job, and barely missed being arrested for going to the liquor store to get more booze. He misses you and doesn’t want to live without you.»

«Why didn’t he call, or come talk to me?» Sun said. «Anything but this.»

Soon they were at the house again, and Red Oak released her into her own body. For two minutes she was disorientated, but when she felt she could drive she immediately took the LTD and headed south.

At normal speeds you can get to Quinte in 42 minutes from the house. Sun made the trip in just under 30. She found the reserve, and then found the house just as it had been in her trip with Red Oak. She killed the car, and then hurried around the side of the house.

She saw Hawk: drunk, but not completely inebriated. He had a noose and rope over one shoulder, and was carrying a stepladder towards the tree.

“Need help?” Sun said, and he jumped.

“I have to do this,” Hawk said.

“Why?”

“Because I love you, and that means I am gay,” he blurted. “I don’t want to live without you.”

“So don’t,” Sun said. “And you are not gay.”

“Yes I am. I love you and you are a man,” he said.

“No. I pretended to be a man for a few decades,” Sun said. “But I was always a girl: a girl with a birth defect that I plan to correct as soon as possible. If you can wait for me, I can be the woman you want.”

“But it is gay!”

“Nuh-uh,” Sun retorted. “You have two male roommates. I assume you have seen one or both naked at times. Did that turn you on?”

“Yuck, no,” Hawk replied.

“See, you are not gay.”

“But I love you.”

“And I am a girl. A girl who loves you back. And now you are planning this? Do you know how much this would hurt me? It hurt when you ran away, but this would be a million times worse. Are you going to do this to me?”

Hawk dropped the rope and the ladder and fell into Sun’s strong arms. After five minutes of holding him, she backed off and said: “Let’s put the ladder and rope away and go back to the house. You can live there if you are willing to wait for me.”

“Oh yes,” Hawk said. “I will wait forever if I must. You complete me.”

“You will drive back with me,” she said. “We can come back for your truck and your things later. You are in no condition to drive right now.”

“What about my job?” Hawk said. “I kinda messed that up.”

“We will see about that. You can call them tomorrow and apologize for skipping out on them. It is a fair commute into Kingston from the house, but people in Toronto do that distance and more. And if they have hired someone else, then you can build canoes with Grey, if you can get him to forgive you for what you did to me. It won’t be huge money, but living at the house is not expensive.

The same evening that Sun tore off to save Hawk, Billy came by and picked up Sapphire from the house. Afterwards, the entire house became somber, as though they were already in mourning for the poor unborn babies. The following day Sapphire did not return as was usual, and everyone just assumed that the girl had decided to put her evil plan into motion.

Then, after supper the phone rang. Daisy was next to it, and answered. She came out into the Great Hall and announced that it had been the hospital and they needed Grey to come over urgently.

A confused Grey had Dan drive him into Tweed, uncertain why he was being called. When they got there a harried nurse thrust a clipboard into his hands and said: “Finish filling this out. Your wife is in labor.”

Grey was about to hand the form back and say that Sapphire was not his wife when Mimiha interrupted him: «Fill it out,» she said. «Those poor babies have a horrible woman for a mother: at least let them have a good father. One is a boy, and one a girl.»

Grey sat down and went through the form. It seems that Sapphire had started to fill out the form, and had listed him as the father. One of the things left blank was the line for the babies names. Surely Sapphire would want to name her own children, but the area was empty. Grey filled in the names Daniel Flint Wolf for the boy and Daisy Mimihaha Wolf for the girl. Most of the rest of the form was empty, and Grey filled it out as best he could, and then signed the back page under the line reading ‘father’.

He gave the form to the admitting nurse, who ushered him back to the maternity room. By the time he got there the birth was over, and the nurse was giving the boy to Sapphire to nurse. “Do you want to hold your daughter, Mr. Wolf?” the nurse asked as she handed him to Grey. He held the tiny bundle, weighing just over 3 pounds, several ounces less than her brother. He fell in love with her immediately.

“Why did you list me as father?” Grey asked Sapphire when the nurse stepped out of the room.

“Who else?” she said with a sneer. “I’m certainly not going to look after them. Billy will be back in two days, and then I am out of here. Look at this little parasite, sucking the life out of me. I can put up with it for a few days, and then I am gone. At least now I don’t have to worry about getting an abortion.”

The nurse popped in, and switched the babies so little Mimihaha could nurse for the first time, and Grey got a chance to hold Flint. He again poured his love into the little boy.

An hour later Dan took Grey home. The hospital was satisfied that the paperwork was done, and Grey was handed forms to be filled out for birth certificates. The babies were both premature, as well as naturally small due to their mother’s size, and they were kept in ICU unit incubators when they weren’t being fed. No visitors other than Grey were allowed.

Grey was stunned when he got home. Everyone was up, and after he told them the story, they all congratulated him, as if he really was the father. All but Sun, who held back, irate at Sapphire for what she had planned to do. All her happiness was tied up with Hawk, who was now living with her in her room.

On the following day Grey went back to the hospital, and spent several hours there, where the nurses were getting fed up with Sapphire. He returned to the house, planning to return before noon the next day. However that morning he got a call from the hospital, saying that Sapphire had fled the building and left on a motorcycle. Dan had just left for his senior visits, so Grey asked Sun to take him to Tweed.

On the short drive to Tweed, Grey glanced over and noticed two wet spots on Sun’s deerskin tunic. “It started about a half hour ago,” she confessed about her leaking breasts. “I don’t know if the potion is acting up or what.”

They arrived in the hospital and Grey was allowed to see the babies, still in the ICU. When they arrived there, and Sun saw the two tiny bodies in incubators, she sighed. She then introduced herself as ‘the wetnurse.’

“Thank goodness,” the nurse in the ICU said. “They are due for a feeding, and I don’t have time to wean them to bottles today. She went and got Mimihaha as Sun undid her tunic and freed a breast from her bra. Mimihaha latched right on, and started to suckle.

“I will bring you the other when you finish with her,” the relieved nurse said.

“I can handle both of them,” Sun replied, and eventually convinced the nurse to bring Flint out. While nursing Mimihaha, Sun could not remove her other breast on her own, so Grey pulled back the tunic and raised the second cup of the bra, allowing the leaking breast to wobble free. The nurse raised Flint, and he too latched on.

Up until this point there had been rumors in Tweed that Sun was really a man, but once the nurses in the hospital saw her nursing, that rumor was fated to end as word got out on the street. How can you nurse with false breasts?

Both babies nursed contentedly. Grey was amazed at how tiny they were. Each one disappeared under Sun’s large hands. Mimihaha finished first, but just lay on Sun’s breast until her slightly bigger brother finished. Grey made a quick trip to the washroom while they finished.

He came back to the sound of yelling in the room. When he got there he saw Sun grabbing a baby from the nurse, who was cowering in front of her.

The head nurse was there, and soon Grey heard what had happened. The duty nurse had taken Mimihaha to return her to the incubator without warning Sun what she was doing. Sun had seen it as someone taking her babies away, and had grabbed the woman by the collar and held her two feet up in the air before dropping her and taking the baby back.

“I cannot allow you to have this woman in the hospital after she assaulted one of my nurses. You can find another wet nurse, or have us wean them to bottles,” the head nurse said. “You could also take the babies away, but I warn you, in their premature condition they are unlikely to survive.”

Grey didn’t need to think long. Sun had fallen for the kids, and couldn’t live without them, now that she had nursed them. The only option was to take the babies home. He told the head nurse that, to her dismay, and went out to sign the release papers. Sun continued to hold the sleeping babes on her breasts. As they left, Grey heard the head nurse say, half under her breath: “You can bring the bodies back tomorrow.”

Soon they were in the car. Grey had to hold the babies while Sun pulled down her bra so she could drive. They went straight to the house and Sun immediately ran around to the passenger door to take the babies from Sun.

Inside, Dr. Nora was on hand immediately and inspected the babies. “They should be in the hospital,” she said immediately looking at their premature bodies. Even if you can’t go back to Tweed General, you can go to Kingston or Peterborough. They should be getting specialized care. Should I could call an ambulance?”

Just then Mimihaha started crying, and Flint followed suit two minutes later. Even when Sun nestled them to her breasts, they continued to wail. Finally it clicked for Nora. “They are in withdrawal,” she said. “When they were nursed by Sapphire, she still had Percocet in her breast milk. But with Sun’s pure milk, they have started withdrawal. They are so small, I don’t think they will survive withdrawal. In fact, I doubt they would survive the ambulance trip to the city.”

Sun looked Grey in the eye: “Grey. Save my babies.” It was not a request. It was an order.

They laid the screaming baby girl on the table, and Grey started his healing song. Soon he was inside the tiny baby. His Medicine Man voice told him of the many problems. Heart: undeveloped. Lungs: undeveloped. Digestive system: badly underdeveloped. Brain: severely undeveloped. Prognosis: terminal.

But Grey kept going. He saw a yellowish haze throughout the body, and started to attack it with his stave. It was the addiction to opiates, and was causing the withdrawal. He managed to clean it up over about an hour, and soon everything was pink. He stopped singing. His daughter was cooing on the table in front of him when he came out of it, while her brother continued to scream on Sun’s shoulder. He took a long drink of water from the pitcher that Daisy had brought, then told Nora about the undeveloped organs, and asked her to triage which he should work on first.

Sun swapped the babies, and Grey started chanting again. He found the same situation with Flint, but worked first at ending the withdrawal and addiction. When that was done he looked at the organs closely. It seemed that Flint was slightly more developed in most areas, and his final prognosis was only ‘Possibly terminal.’ Grey stopped his song, and took another glass of water in what was now a quiet room.

“Thank you Grey,” Sun said, taking the second baby up. Mimihaha was now nursing again, and she lifted Flint up to join them. “You have saved my babies.”

“For now,” Grey cautioned. “Mimihaha will not survive without more help, and Flint may not as well.” A look of horror went over Sun’s face.

“They will probably survive the ambulance trip now,” Dr. Nora said. “But if you want to try to heal them more, the heart and lungs are the key areas. Leave the brains for last: I don’t know of any cases where severely diminished brains can be cured. The best we can hope for is that they live, even if they are developmentally impacted.”

Grey rested, and took more water while he waiting for a baby to finish nursing. Mimihaha was done first, and Sun laid her down. Grey started singing. He was inside for two hours, and when he came out he had brought the heart and lungs up to a newborn condition. The prognosis was now upgraded to poor, a major improvement over terminal.

The babies again needed feeding. Dr. Nora said that the mending of their little bodies was consuming a lot of energy. Luckily Sun was capable of providing the two-hour feedings. When Flint finished, Grey sang himself inside and duplicated the healing he had done with Mimihaha.

After another feeding break Grey went back into his daughter. She was clearly healthier now, but the digestive system required a lot of work, nearly three hours. Soon it was fixed. The nervous and muscular systems got a bit of healing, then an exhausted Grey came out.

Sun was in a near panic. Mimihaha had started crying for food an hour ago, and Sun was willing to crawl up onto the table to nurse while Grey was healing, but Nora had advised against it while Grey was working on the digestive system. Sun immediately picked up the crying child to feed her, and Grey went into Flint after only a short break for water.

Another three hours, and again the boy was crying for food when he came out again. Grey was exhausted, and Dan, who was now back, had to practically carry him to bed. This time when he regained consciousness it was not Sun feeding him: she had other charges to feed. It was Dary who would spoon chicken soup into him. It took a week to bring him back to consciousness. That was when Grey went into Sun’s nursery to tell her the bad news. Nora came into the meeting.

“Their brains are still badly premature,” Grey told Sun. “They will not develop any further than a three-year-old, even if they live past their teen years.” He didn’t think it was good news. Essentially, Sun would have full-grown infants to care for, possibly for many years.

But Sun actually smiled. “I don’t care. I have my babies. They will live. That is all I want.”

“I will try again, maybe in a week,” Grey said. “But we can’t hope for much. Dr. Nora says there is little that can be done.”