Episode 222: Dr. Panic (Spaden)

Guts looked liked spaghetti. It was the worst way for Spaden to think about it, because he loved spaghetti, but it was true: Guts were like oversized, super dense, gross, foreign, stuffed, spaghetti.

He was at risk of seeing guts soon. Not just random guts though, the queen’s guts. His aunt Aadya’s guts.

With any luck, she’d die. He had no idea what he was doing but he knew the royal family burned pain medicine off to quickly for his dad to bother with it. He knew his dad did lots of things, but c-sections were rare.

Not just rare, Spaden had no idea how to do a c-section.

He hid in the makeshift medical office, placed between Aadya’s birthing suite and Talise’s birthing suite, and watched videos on a computer about c-sections.

He hoped she would just die before he got to her.

His dad was busy, he wasn’t responding to dragon message. No one was responding to dragon messages.

Spaden was out of luck, because Aadya needed the c-section now.

He was just waiting on some help to arrive, his older half-brother (he guessed, he had just shown up a few days ago) to help him.

He knocked.

Spaden knocked over the chair with the force of standing up too eagerly. He pulled the door open. “Hey. Can you come in?”

Rhyss had no idea what was coming. Not spaghetti, to everyone’s loss.

“Yeah.” Rhyss looked around the room. “Where’s….”

“Out.” Whoever he wanted to see had left this to them: remove babies, without killing anyone, from the queen.

“I have an emergency.” Spaden dragged Rhyss into the birthing suite before he could protest. “Spence isn’t free either, so good luck.”

Rhyss’s head snapped toward him. “Good luck?”

Spaden washed his hands and slipped on a pair of gloves. He was almost certain Aadya couldn’t get an infection, but he wanted to be careful in the ways he was capable of. “We’re giving Aadya a c-section, right now.”

Rhyss’s eyes got even wider and he stared at the queen the same way Spaden bet he had.

“A c-section?” Rhyss clarified. “Is.. Nell around?”

That would have been perfect, since Nell was the rumoured dad and he handled other animal births, except Nell seemed to have lost the desire to communicate with anyone.

“Talise in labor too, so we need to work fast,” Spaden added. Nothing screamed exciting like ripping babies out of a queen, with a clock running in the background, and no experience.

Rhyss nodded, and began helping him. First, they lined up the sharp things of all sizes. While they did that, his mom got towels and some blankets and…

What were they supposed to do with the babies? Spaden looked around for little boxes, like in the video.

“Um.” Spaden said.

Everyone looked at him. He was in charge.

Spaden: The spaghetti guy.

He tried to leave the room, but Aadya yelled, “Now! They can hold them.”

“So.” Spaden turned back and held one of the scalpels in his hand. “We just do this, and she heals. Each of you will have a baby, and then… She said it’s going to get bad for her.”

He couldn’t imagine something worse than having him cut her open and deliver her babies, but it wasn’t his perspective.

“Why?” Rhyss asked.

“Well.” He glanced at Aadya again. “Greg is going to be passing pain through her. So, she needs help surviving it. Magical help.”

He turned back to the counter, and retrieved a bottle of alcohol. She wanted it, all, the second the babies were out.

“Why would he do that to her?” Rhyss asked.

“He’s going to be tortured and killed.” He looked down at her exposed belly. “So.”

“They have a connection from their marriage,” his mom told Rhyss. Then she turned and nodded to him, calm and certain he wasn’t about to kill the queen of the fairies.

“I can help,” Rhyss reaffirmed. He stepped next to the sharp stuff and some little clothes that were supposed to sop up blood.

Spaden held the scalpel above her belly and sanitized it with iodine.

“You’re going to be fine, Spaden,” his aunt Aadya assured him. “I can heal from anything you do.”

His mom laughed. “Nice.”

Spaden tried to laugh, but it sounded more like pained air.

“What she means is you’ll do great, Spaden,” his mom assured him again.

He was getting a ton of assurances for something he had to watch a video about.

He pressed the scalpel to her skin. He was doing this.

“Do you need like… a rope?” he asked his aunt, imaging one between her teeth.

“Just do it, Spaden,” she insisted. “Quick movements.”

Nell slipped into the room and stood beside him. “Everything alright?”

“Fine,” his aunt Aadya said. “Spaden was just starting.”

“But…” Spaden tried to argue. With Nell there…

“Good.” Nell pulled up a chair next to Aadya’s face, looking at her. “I’ll watch them, if you need to go somewhere else.”

Aadya closed her eyes, and Spaden took the opportunity to dig the scalpel into her flesh. She recoiled, just a little, and relaxed. He continued to cut through the layers of skin and fat and muscle and then her uterus.

It was exactly as the video had shown it, but it smelled weirder than he had anticipated.

Once he had started, his mind focused on what he was doing and forgot that there was anything else to it. The scalpel cut away at flesh and then there was the bags of water. He used water magic to keep everything visible, but he didn’t absorb so much that she dried out. He lifted the first baby, tiny and dark pink almost purple, and watched the cord pulsating with life. The baby screamed, air filling its purpley body. For a few more seconds, the cord pulsated, then it stopped.

“Clamp?” Spaden asked Rhyss.

He slipped it across the cord and pressed down, then cut above it.

Spaden handed the baby to Indigo, on the other side. She cradled the baby in her arms.

It was a boy or a girl. He had forgotten to look. He took a deep breath and glanced over. A girl. “It’s a girl,” he told Aadya. “The girl.”

He looked back into her belly, which looked more like body soup than spaghetti.

“One down, one to go.” Spaden began working to remove the second baby, his mind focused.

Aadya started to twitch more, which meant he was hurting her or the torture had started. He tried to ignore it: it was going to get worse and he had one baby left.

He lifted the next baby out, using the same procedure to remove excess fluid and wait for the cord to stop pulsing before Rhyss clamped it. This time, Rhyss took the baby.

“Is there medicine for her?” Rhyss asked.

Aadya’s body sparked at intervals. Whatever caused the sparks, it wasn’t from him.

“Just hurry,” his mom said

Spaden turned back to the body soup.

“Isn’t there an afterbirth too?” Rhyss asked. “Or two afterbirths? Or is that just in movies?”

Right. Placentas. He had to get the placentas out and make sure everything looked ready to heal.

When he was done, he looked up. Blood coated the table and his arms and Rhyss’s arms. The sharp things tray was covered too. The placentas sat on the edge of the tray.

It was a mess.

“Do you … just heal?” Spaden asked.

“The dragon babies will eat the placentas. She’ll heal,” Nell insisted.

“So… okay.” Spaden peeled the gloves away. He’d done it.

“Who do you want first?” his mom asked his aunt. “Palila or Rhen?”

“I can’t,” Aadya choked.

“I want Nell not here for this. We can bring the babies to their dragons.”

His aunt nodded, and they all began to get up, but his mom stopped and turned to Rhyss. “Stay with her,” she ordered.

Rhyss turned the chair Nell had been in, and sat beside her.

Spaden didn’t want to abandon him, when he had helped, but Talise was nearby… his dad was still missing…

Spaden took a deep breath. “I’ll be with Talise.”

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