We have a baby
Posted on Tue Sep 2nd, 2025 @ 4:51pm by Leiddem Kea (*) & Dr. Izriel "Jaxx" Lonn
Mission:
Shackles
Location: SS Mary Rose Sickbay
2528 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure
"Massive uterine rupture. BP’s crashing, she’s bleeding out."
"Fetal heart rate’s dropping; eighty and falling."
"We’re losing both of them. Prep for emergency extraction."
"O2 sat is sixty-two percent, have to guess that's not good. She’s not stabilising."
"Foetal heartbeat’s erratic, no variability."
"Start transfusion, push fluids."
"We can’t wait. We need that baby out now."
It was like surfacing from the bottom of a deep, dreaming ocean; torn upward by forces the child could not name, still half-made, half-floating. Pressure bore down on her from all sides, not just physical but psychic, as if the world itself were folding inward and breaking apart.
Their bond, her first knowing, the warm hum of Her, is unraveling.
For so long there has been only Her: an expansive, soft presence, immense as the sky, Her thoughts cradling her own like hands made of light. Now, that presence is flickering, bleeding at the edges. Her rhythm, once steady and deep like a lullaby, has become erratic; jagged pulses of pain and fading warmth. Every contraction is a jolt through their shared mind, an electric surge followed by static.
She reaches for Her without knowing how, her thoughts raw, shapeless things. She is fear and light and breath not yet drawn, and still she reaches. But Her mind is sliding, like sunlight on water, slipping out of reach.
She feels the sudden pressure of cold air, the sting of separation. The great current that has carried her all this time snapped taut, then frayed. For one suspended instant, there is a final burst of warmth; Her last thought, wrapped in fierce love and unbearable sorrow...
...and then silence.
"She's out! No cry, no breath. Come on, sweetheart, best time of your life to get angry."
"Mother’s coding; full arrest!"
She screams. Not from air or noise or shock. She screams because something vast has ended, and though she has only just begun, she already knows what it is to miss Her.
Leiddem stared in horror and wonder at the baby screaming blue murder as Jaxx attempted to revive the little girl's mother. It had all happened so quickly that it seemed like a blur. One second the woman had been in labour doing as well as a woman practically kidnapped from her home and brought to a futuristic ship could be, and the next Dr. Reynolds had been relaying instructions to encourage her to push when hell had broken loose and all her stats had dropped. It had been the paleness that had alerted Leiddem even as he felt the strange confusion from the woman he had become uniquely connected to over the last few hours of attempting to guide her through a silent labour.
It was a terrible thing to bear witness to the death of a mother in childbirth. Both Izriel and Evelyn wished they could claim this is their first but, as cruel tragedy would dictate, it would not be true in either case. To be a telepath in such a circumstance, however, especially when the mother-child pair-bond is also psionically-linked, was an entirely different kind of grief. It was not callousness that prompted Jaxx to shove himself away, withdrawn from both Leiddem and the squalling child like the whiplash of an elastic band snapped loose. He had a patient to tend to, now deceased, and she deserved the dignity of restoration before his mind collapsed in on itself.
To the side, Evelyn was struggling to stabilise the newborn.
"Leiddem, help her."
The glacial serenity of Izriel's command offered no explanation but it ought not have been necessary. You didn't have to be an expert, simply a Betazoid, to know that the agony the child was suffering from had nothing to do with physiological symptoms.
"I have her. Come here, sweetheart." He said quietly as he wrapped the baby up in a warm blanket, as he could feel the telepathic waves coming off her demanding attention and connection. "Shh..." Leiddem soothed as he took off his t-shirt off slowly as he held the newborn. His medic training kicked in as he remembered another similar situation with a telepathic newborn. He pressed the baby close to his bare chest in a kangaroo hold; he knew it helped regulate the baby's temperature, heart rate, and breathing, and promoted bonding, which she desperately needed.
The only non-telepath in the room had sense enough to hesitate before she interfered. Evelyn held the medical scanner in place and scrutinised the readouts before wheeling over a chair and motioning for Leiddem to sit. "I'll prep a cot," she directed at Izriel, lingering only a moment to consider the man's profile before moving to the adjacent area to begin calibrating a piece of equipment nobody had expected to need any time soon. It was rare for Reynolds to take a back-seat but the situation was unique and she was not beyond the capacity to recognise when she was the least qualified of all available options.
Jaxx worked with quiet precision, his focus on the task at hand despite the insistence of stray thoughts intent on bringing him entirely undone. His hands moved without hesitation, the clinical motions of his medic training kicking in, even as the grief tugged at him. It was difficult to explain, a father's perspective was unique and neither of his current companions had children of their own. He had been there for Oryn's birth, for the entire pregnancy, he had known his son before ever laying eyes on him. That he had failed to prevent such a catastrophic ruination of a vital bond cut deeply. They knew nothing of this woman, not even her name, and certainly nothing about how to tend for her now-very-abandoned child.
“Shhh you are okay little one. Uncle Leiddem has you.” He soothed softly both mentally and aloud to fill the silence for Evelyn. He kept the small baby against his chest as he sat down and leaned the chair back on an incline to get comfortable. This would be a long process, he would have to get Jeassaho and maybe even the vulconoids with their touch telepathy involved in caring for this telepathic newborn until they could work things out. “You are going to be absolutely fine. I know your mama is gone but you have the kindest people around you.” She said thinking of how he might not be a dad but he was the fun uncle, the one all his nieces clambered to be around because he was that person. He could be that person right now.
There were no rules for this kind of situation but Evelyn, more inclined to respect the expertise of others when she knew her own experience to be lacking, quietly discussed options with Jaxx even as the surgeon withdrew into the stoicism of restoring the body for burial. Once or twice, he looked up, nodded in agreement and then returned to his work, at which point Reynolds stifled a sigh of frustration and moved over to Leiddem and the baby, wheeling the ship's only infant isolette.
"Set her down," she instructed gently, already putting the finishing touches on a recallibration of the smallest cortical inhibitor she could manage. "It won't hurt her," she added as reassurance, "but it should provide some temporary relief. I need to run some scans, see what we can learn about her and her needs and I can't do that if she's glued to you."
“You say glued to me like it’s a bad thing.” The man smiled as he slowly settled the whimpering child into the isolette. He took a step back and watched as she scrunched up in a way only a newborn could and cried loudly. “You are fine little one.” He assured soothingly. “Evelyn is amazing and she is trying to help you.” He assured himself and Evelyn.
"Lung development seems promising at least."
The brevity was delivered with Reynold's usual reserved wit, understated enough that it sometimes took a moment to realise she was trying to keep the mood light. In this instance, though only acting on a hunch, it seemed unwise to focus on the frustration of losing a patient in the presence of a newborn that was likely overwhelmed by emotional input as it was. It took several attempts to attach the inhibitor to the child's temple, aided by the application of additional tape to secure it in place, but as Evelyn brought it online and set it to synchronise, the cries eventually abated. Shuddering occasionally, the little one let out a whimper and Evie shared a glance with Leiddem before turning to approach Lonn.
"We'll need a sample of the breast milk to replicate it properly." Gentle in a way that wasn't often always evident amidst her intensity, Evelyn reached out to touch the man's elbow. "I'll do it and finish up. You have a baby settle."
Izriel, having just healed the last of the deceased's visible wounds, held the woman's gaze for a moment before relenting. Moving first to disinfect and clean himself, he then hesitated a moment before joining Leiddem beside the isolette. Though the baby's crying had stopped, she was still fussing.
"Do we know if there are any records, do they know where she was taken from?" His voice, tired, cut quietly through the brittle silence.
“Nothing that they have revealed from the surface but they are still trying to work out what is going on down there.” Leiddem said softly as he got comfortable and touched the little girls hand softly. He had listened to the back and forth between the medical pair but it was nothing that the man had not heard before and it meant nothing to him as he was there for the little girl and felt the telepathic waves from her trying to work out why the man was there but not quite the same wave length as her. “She is a feisty little thing.” He said proudly.
"That she is."
With a slow, deliberate exhalation of air, Izriel moved to the base of the crib and gently slid his hands beneath the squirming infant. "Let's get a good look at you then."
His hands moved, gently and yet with purpose, until they cradled the little girl's head and allowed the pads of both thumbs to smooth the fair brows. Rather than lift her free, Jaxx steadied himself and bent forward until his forehead touched the wrinkled displeasure of a newborn's scowl and he allowed his eyes to close. With no information to work on, and only intuition and a handful of preliminary scans to guide him, the Betazoid took himself back to all the pre-natal preparation he'd willingly undertaken in the lead-up to his son's birth and searched for a way to wrap his mind around the child's, the first overtures of bonding that the device silently pulsing at her temple couldn't possibly provide. It was, both professionally and culturally, a huge presumption given the irreversibility of the tether but having already failed once, there was no question of allowing suffering to linger if he had the means to reduce it.
The initial phase after birth was significant for most species but in the case of Betazoids, there was a reason most preferred to give birth in their own homes provided medical assistance wasn't required. Immediate family formed an infant's first psionic scaffodling and, over the course of the first few weeks, that was typically expanded to include the extended family. It wasn't unusual for the first month to be spent in isolation otherwise, and it had been no different with Oryn. Bold, intentional exercises provided foundational infrastructure but it was also vital that the primary caregivers, usually the parents, utilised their own support structures to provide temporary shielding. Izriel did this now, the start of many sessions if it proved compatible with the child's own mental landscape. It certainly didn't seem to cause her more discomfort, which was a start.
"I will stay with her," he quietly declared several moments later, straightening once more and allowing his hands to slip free of the noticably-subdued baby. "I can only guess at the damage caused by a severed maternal connection, she's going to require constant psychosensory synchronization and some pretty hefty neuroempathic intervention if she's ever going to function without a device attached to her head."
Leiddem frowned a little bit. “I am happy to stay if you want a moment. I can get Jeassaho down here?” He added as an afterthought thinking Jeassaho would know about all of this from the other side of a parent losing a child. He did not want to delve into that with her but she did know all of this and would want to help the little girl.
"This isn't a matter of babysitting, Leiddem."
Having already reached for the diagnostic padd, Jaxx frowned at the data he would likely spend the rest of the night analysing and then glanced upwards at the younger Betazoid, his expression clearing for a brief moment to acknowledge the offer with better grace.
"There will be a time for that but I need to work with her in a professional capacity, see what we're dealing with. Make sure that anything we do attempt will be therapeutic and not cause her further distress."
Reaching out, he clapped Leiddem several times on the arm and offered a rueful smile.
"What you can do is see if you can find out anything about her mother. If there's any records of where she was taken from, any behavioural and social information the others have picked up on... Even what they called her. The more we can piece together, the better our chances are of figuring out what to do next."
“I am not completely useless in regards to children and being a medic but I was thinking of Jea due to her being a mum or was a mum for a little bit. She’ll know but I’ll see what I can do.” Leiddem was trying to not be unkind when they were all highly volitive after what had just happened.
"And I am actually a father."
It was a firm response, equally as measured because Jaxx had some notion of the potential of neonatal connections but the moral obligation extended well past the point of personal preference. He needed a Security specialist with information retrieval expertise, and that left Leiddem as the best qualified.
"We need to find out how to get her home, to her people," he added softly. "Or at least we owe it to her to try."
The younger betazoid rolled his eyes but gave a firm nod. “I will see what I can do.” He muttered still not entirely placated but he would leave it there Ashe knew the ship had some of the data from the service now maybe he could work out where the ship had been and plotted the journey enough to see. There had to be a reason they had taken the mother.
