Solo A Hard Day's Night: Part II

[Snaeha Datura]

|| 15th Summer, 514AV ||

"This is why people shouldn't be allowed to keep their surrogates at home." Snaeha huffed as she hurried her way towards the first patient of her day. The woman she would be seeing was a troublesome surrogate by the name of Nancy (she still failed to hear that name without grimacing). The woman had now been at the Place of Purging for ten days, and had spent the majority of her time either sedated or threatening to kill herself and unborn baby.

If she were to be honest, Snaeha was looking forward to the damn woman dying.
Surprisingly, from what she had heard about the surrogate's current status, this appeared to be happening sooner rather than later.

Snaeha had not seen the surrogate since she had first arrived at the Place of Purging. Then, she had been a healthy, furious woman who detested her situation and had screamed and spat at Snaeha. So it was really quite a shock to Snaeha when she entered the surrogate's room to find a pale, weak woman lying on the bed.

"I don't think you'll be needed, Havien." she whispered to the guard behind her. The young man, who had also accompanied Snaeha on Nancy's first explosive day at the Place of purging, was equally surprised at her new weakened state.

She had followed the correct protocol at every step; Snaeha had left clear instructions for her fellow medics to ensure the Surrogate's wellbeing, and it had been the usual ten days since her last check on Nancy. So why had the woman deteriorated so terribly? There was still another two weeks until she was due to give birth; she shouldn't be so negatively affected by the baby's poison just yet.

"She doesn't look good." The guard mentioned unhelpfully.

Snaeha gave Havien a look that sent him backing out of the surrogate's room, a sheepish grin on his face. Once he had left, she turned her full attention back to the pasty woman. "Nancy, do you remember me?" She said quietly, approaching the bed.

The woman's eyes flickered open lazily, and they stared up at the redheaded Symenestra standing above her. There was no doubting the hatred in the dying surrogate's expression, but she said nothing, just turned her head to the side and closed her eyes again.

What is wrong with her?

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[Snaeha Datura]

Snaeha moved her focus from the surrogate, and onto the precious life she was carrying. When Nancy had arrived at the Place of Purging, the size of her bump was too small for a woman at the latter stages of pregnancy. According to the Symenestra mother, Nancy had been refusing her food for the past month or so, which had certainly explained the small bump. Such selfish protests were fairly common amongst the surrogates, but usually they resided in the Nest, where they could be convinced to retain their usual eating habits.

But Nancy, for some stupid reason that Snaeha would never understand, had been invited to reside within the home of the Symenestra family whose child she was carrying. They had clearly indulged her; pandering to her every whim and making her think it was perfectly acceptable to starve herself and the life inside her. It had taken the Symenestra couple far too long to bring Nancy into the Place of Purging. By the time she was admitted, her body - but not her spirit - had been weakened by the self-starvation. A weak surrogate could not provide the nutrition the unborn baby needed.

Word of Nancy had travelled quickly. Snaeha had heard of her co-workers’ experiences with the difficult female, how the vast majority of such interactions ended with her being sedated, just allow the other medics to drip feed her minute amounts of soft food.

She had gained some weight, but Snaeha doubted that it was enough for Nancy to carry her important cargo to full term. The baby had already started killing her, but Nancy's weak body could not deal with even the tiniest amount of Symenestra poison. This, twinned with the fact that a sedated surrogate typically meant a sedated baby, was far from the ideal situation.

It had fallen on Snaeha to make the tough decision of what to do next. She could no longer rely on sedating the woman, as that posed a great risk to the baby. At the same time, the baby was still small for its gestational age, and removing it from the surrogate this early carried an ever more severe risk.

As much as she loved her job - Snaeha adored doing her bit to help the Symenestra people survive - she detested the heavy responsibility that it often carried. She had two choices: to either keep the baby inside Nancy's womb - in which case the woman may die before the baby was born - or to remove the baby, which may snuff out the young life before it had even begun.

In either situation, Nancy was going to die; it just depended how soon Snaeha allowed it to happen. Both options posed huge risks to her baby, but cutting it out of Nancy meant that it could receive the specialised care designed for pre-term, underweight babies.

Decision made.

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[Snaeha Datura]

Of course, Snaeha was by no means qualified enough to carry out the surgery herself, but she was capable of observing and assisting. Usually, Snaeha almost refuseded to admit defeat in a task - she was stubborn and stupidly adamant that she was just as skilful as any other person. But something about her attitude changed in the Place of purging; her selfishness seemed to evaporate, as did her pride. Her actions were wholly dedicated to her patients, who equally depended on her for the high quality of care she tried to deliver.

Of course, by the same token, Snaeha's devotion merely reinforced her idea that - despite not being the most qualified - she was still the one of the most efficient and best medics in the Place of purging.

So it truly riled Snaeha that her superior Svorador Hellebore treated her so offhandedly.

"You think this woman is worth my time?" Her superior's lips curled in derision as he stared down at Nancy. Svorador clearly thought the surrogate was a waste of his precious skill, but Snaeha frowned and nodded persistently.

"The baby is, yes. The woman has starved herself to weakness, so the baby is under developed. It's two weeks until she's due, at which time this woman will be dead and the baby would have died as well." Her challenge was passionate. She was not about to let her boss's superiority risk an unborn life.

Svorador sighed heavily, rubbing his aged face with those hands, which according to him, were so precious. With a final dismissive wave, he came to his decision "Fine. You will assist me. Prepare for surgery in a bell."

--------|--------

There was something really quite beautiful about how flesh could be cut into to reveal the pink, blobby organs and layers of muscle and fat underneath. In Nancy's case, however, there was barely any trace of the latter. The woman had deprived her body of nutrition for quite sometime, and a life of poverty beforehand meant there had been little fat to spare. "A poor example of a woman." Svorador muttered as he sliced a clean, vertical red line into Nancy's swollen stomach. The woman, heavily sedated, remained still as her innards were suddenly revealed.

For once, Snaeha agreed with her employer. "What they were thinking?" She wondered how any Symenestra couple could have seen this woman, with her ratty face and bumped nose, and thought she would be suitable as a surrogate. "A bleeding heart, perhaps? Maybe they wanted to treat her well for the final months of her life." Such gestures of kindness made Snaeha's stomach churn, and judging by the grunt Svorador gave in response, she guessed he felt the same.

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[Snaeha Datura]

"I would rather you concentrate on the task at hand as opposed to asking yourself philosophical questions"

The snappy instruction from her superior was met with an indignant sniff from Snaeha. How dare he think her mind would be so easy to distract from her patient?

Svorador had made quick progress in the surgery, taking less care than he would have done had Nancy been a Symenestra patient. There would be no need to ensure the slice in her body was neat and even; it would not be sown back up.

A nurse standing at the woman's head raised her hand from Nancy's throat, where she had been measuring the woman's pulse since the start of the surgery. "Her pulse has slowed down by more than half. It's nearly time."

The two medics nodded. Svorador had sliced his way down to the abdominal muscles by now, and Snahea watched as he slowly pulled them aside - Nancy was hardly a strong woman, and neither were her muscles. Below the abs was a strange flimsy layer Snaeha knew to be the peritoneum, the lining of the abdominal cavity. "Why should I take great care specifically at this stage?"

The question was undoubtedly directed at her, though for a brief tick, Snahea's mind was empty. "You could..." She said slowly, buying herself more time as her mind desperately grappled for the correct answer.

You might stab the baby in the head?

An exasperated sigh.

"I could cut through the bowels. Which would result in the woman's waste to fill the cavity and could poison the baby."

I knew that. She thought glumly. The layer was so filmy she could see the faint outline of the woman's bowel underneath, I so knew that.

Fortunately, Snaeha knew exactly what her role was next: Svorador had sliced through peritoneum, though now part of the woman's bladder was revealed at the lowest point of his incision. The redheaded Symenestra, equipped with a steel retractor gently pulled the bladder further down towards Nancy's feet, careful not to tug too much. When the squishy organ was out of his way, Svorador continued.

Another peritoneum layer was the final obstruction before Nancy's swollen womb was revealed. Still in her bladder-holding stance, Snaeha felt the flutter of excitement. It was this part of the surgery that was the most thrilling and terrifying. The tiny life was separated from the outside world by just a pink layer of soft uterine wall, and with one last horizontal slice of Svorador's scalpel, the flesh purple-grey mass of the baby's head was revealed.

He was so, so small, but perfectly developed and perfectly healthy. Snaeha almost cheered. Another Symenestra life!

The nurse at Nancy's head abandoned her post to investigate the baby. With a casual nod in the Surrogate's direction, the woman explained: "She's dead."


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[Khida]

Thread Award

Snaeha Datura

Skill	Points
Medicine	+2
Observation	+3

• Anatomy: abdominal organs of the female human
• Medicine: cutting into bowels risks poison
• Medicine: diagnosing a malnourished pregnancy
• Medicine: the risks and benefits of removing a child early
• Medicine: witnessing removal of a child from a surrogate

Notes

I really like that you followed up on the outcome of Nancy's story for this. Not a lot of XP to be had from such a short, observational thread, but a good number of lores.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade. Also, please edit your request to show this thread has been graded.