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CHAPTER EIGHT: APRIL AND MAY AGAIN (EILEEN AIRYOU)

Now it was the end of April again.

Ranma was by Na-chan’s side, tightly clasping her left hand with his right and gently stroking her hair with his other hand as he kept vigil over her broken and shattered body. She was laid out on a hospital bed and buried under a mountain of blankets. The mattress was flexed forward in a semi-Fowler's position in an attempt to relieve some pressure on her ravaged abdomen. Her beautiful, heart-shaped face with its porcelain doll complexion was wan and ashen, framed by her once smart and silken bob-cut hair now dishevelled and flattened on the pillow. A plain pink 3-ply surgical mask covered her mouth and nose. She was finally asleep, but the horror of her agonized, tortured screams was still there echoing endlessly in the ears of his mind.

The unscheduled C-section had come so close to going very, very wrong.

# # # ##

Everything started a little over a week earlier than expected, but it had begun so simply and with such seeming innocence. "Wake up, Ranma. She's kicked the balloon," Na-chan had joked just after 2 in the morning. That was nearly two days ago now.

Things were brisk and reassuring at first. Effacement and dilation moved along even a little faster than she or even her OB colleague, a young doctor named Yuna Kim, had expected.

Then things changed.                                                                                        

She failed to progress after nearly 8hours of heroic efforts involving strange contortions of all sorts, a stability ball and some other devices, and even an unmoving lotus sit for 2 of those 8hours. Just after 10 in the evening, she  turned to him and said that there was nothing that could be done for it.

"I'm just too small," she told him, exhausted resignation in her voice as she reached out and held his hands in her own. She had warned some months back that being petite was a known risk factor for requiring a C-section.

"Are we in danger now?" he had asked nervously.

She glanced over at the tocometer by the bedside, noting the reassuring regularity of its creaking groans. "No, but we will be if we wait too long. We should make this decision while it's still not an emergency."

They were now approaching 20 hours after her water had broken. She and the OB had both told him earlier that 24 was as long as the whole thing could be allowed to go on safely.

His hands were shaking as he braced himself to have the will to say the obvious. "Not really much of adecision then, is it."

He knew that she knew what he was thinking. She almost always seemed to know. She offered him a warm, tender smile, willing it to convey as much reassurance as she could muster."Don't be like that. It's not really that rare or even so terrible. About a third of the time, it ends this way actually."

They were ready to go by midnight. Nabiki was rolled into the OR, and Ranma was by her side in a white bunny suit. She was being transferred off the gurney to the table, however, when an emergency case bumped them, sending the on-call team scrambling. They were left alone together waiting. The air was chilly. The white sterility of the room was harsh and austere. The tocometer continued to groan in the background.

An excited but nervous silence settled between them as they held each other's hands. He was grateful to be able to be with her. He had worried about her otherwise being  alone in that moment. Only the availability of the new vaccines BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 over the past few months had convinced leadership to allow any visitors back into the hospital, even for childbirth.

Now nearly 5 months ago, Nabiki had been among the first to receive one of the new vaccines. Medical providers had been given the highest priority. By that time, multiple reports had established that in utero transmission of the virus was rare, but preterm labour risks were clearly increased as well as maternal risks for severe illness if infected.

Still, he had worried about her taking the vaccine. "There's a lot they say they still don't know about it, particularly if you're pregnant, yeah?" he had said.

"I definitely think I should," she answered without any hint of hesitation. Mechanistically, she told him that she could not conceive of how it could be dangerous for their unborn child. She considered the risks of her actually getting sick and the dangers that posed for all three of them to be far more real and almost certainly infinitely worse.

"But seriously, Ranma! You have no idea, but in medicine 95% efficacy is unheard of! Most of the time, you get numbers in the 70s or 80s, and that already is your next multi-billion-dollar product."

His Na-chan was incredibly cute when she was consumed by passion like that.

She had been apoplectic, though, about the naivete of the policymakers who had written the priority guidelines and consequently how long it had taken for those with actual medical risks for severe disease to gain access to the new vaccines. He was among those individuals, excluded because of his age and with no allowance for consideration of real relevant factors such as his disease and its required treatments.

"Those f-#-ing money-eyed arses!" she had spat. "It's all economics, not medicine! We get to keep working, and the vulnerable get to keep on getting sick. What better way to cash in on the perpetual revenue opportunity we have now!"

"Down, Dragon! You don't want to end up pre-maturely ejecting our kid into the world like this?" he had teased.

"No!" she shouted in vehement disgust. "I most definitely will not be quiet about this! I'm supposed to go to my clinics and my lab; strut around among my patients, my tech, and my students like a privileged self-assured schmuck in a smock; and come home and look you in the eye every night like this?!"

"You mean waddle?" he teased. That was a mistake. She became even angrier.

"MR. TENDOU!" she snarled as she reached up and yanked at his collar, lowering his face to hers as her gravid belly bounced between them. "You work at the Bank! You know that the multi-dimensional inequities around the distribution of this thing are ahumanitarian crisis in the making. And, yes, I mean inequity – not inequality!This is not right! None of it on any level!"

He started to tell her about a new globally supported consortium to increase worldwide supplies of available vaccine doses. "It's called COVAX. They want to set up production primarily in India of the Oxford vaccine to send to Bhutan and other low-income countries. It's – "

"That ChAdOx1 rubbish?!" she roared. "I should probably be more loyal, but putting our name to that thing was probably the stupidest thing Oxford has done in a generation! And that horrible, arrogant lady who was behind it?! Aargh! What fool goes around giving pre-emptive interviews before a single human is even dosed and declares'I am 80% confident that it will work and that we will be producing by September' or other such disgusting distortions as 'COVID will just one day end up causing a common cold'?! No wonder half the world thinks Hubris is the flagship college of our great University! She should take a jab of her own sh#t and try having a blood clot of her own!"

"Calm down, Mrs. Saotome!" he urged. As a last ditch effort to pacify her, he ambushed her and pressed his lips against hers, running his fingers through her hair before she could say anything more. He loved his Na-chan’s fire and spirit, but pregnancy had definitely made her into combustible material on a whole different level altogether.

# # # ##

The memories brought a warm smile to his face under his mask now. She had been right, of course, but the world was full of inequitable injustices such as these. It always had been and always would be. He was able to complete his series with BNT162b2 a week ago, which was just in time to be eligible to be with her here and now. That was what mattered.

He could not have imagined in any of his wildest dreams what was just about to come for her and for him. In the background, the groans of the tocometer had changed. They were no longer steady, confident, or even really rhythmic. Pained consternation flashed in her eyes suddenly as she snatched his hand.

"Get help!" she rasped.

Ranma was scared.

Within seconds, the world around him disintegrated into a blur of controlled chaos as an army of doctors, nurses, and techs flooded back into the room. They were folding his wife's hands across her chest like a mummy and slipping her across now from the gurney to the table. Other hands were waiting to secure black straps and pads over her arms and legs. A tornado of deployed drapes and sheets followed immediately after.

"We have late decels bottoming out in the 40s," one of the house officers called out.

"Anesthesia is still scrubbing in," another voice stated in the distance.

"I'm here!" a man said as he parted the gathering of people at the head of the table.

"Go, Yuna! Go now!" Nabiki shouted.

"I need to re-dose the epidural," the anesthesiologist called out.

"Just go, Yuna!" Nabiki said."Let the epidural catch up. Go before my husband figures out what's going on here! Just save our baby!"

"Na-chan…?!" Ranma rasped out in shock, reaching fearfully for her hand.

"Incision! Mark time!"

Her body suddenly exploded with the most wretched, agonised, screams he had ever heard. These were more horrific than even Akane's dying cries. Nabiki’s arms flailed helplessly in the safety restraints like a pair of dying fish. Desperate tears of suffering filled her bloodshot eyes as the knife sliced into her flesh.

"Knock me out! PLEASE!" she begged.

Ranma helplessly pressed his entire being through his forehead into her convulsing hand. Hot tears were running unchecked over his cheeks.

"I need 1 unit hanging!" Yuna called out over Nabiki's helpless, unending cries of pain.

Dimly, it dawned on him that Yuna meant blood. Na-chan, his wife, was dying. Her and the baby too.

"NABIKI!" he screamed as her hand turned limp and still in his.

I love you....

# # # ##

He remembered the first time that he had actually ever seen his daughter. That was back in November when he had gone with Nabiki for the 18-week ultrasound.

They had watched in awe as visible strands of hair had fluttered in the black shadow of amniotic fluid. The outline of ahand had floated by shortly after, as if in a flippant, playful gesture. The doppler echo of the heartbeat and the clearly distinguishable gyrations of grey and white matter in the brain had set something trembling in the very core of his bones.

He was most shaken though by the pronouncement that they would be having a girl. A sudden deluge of feelings had washed over him. Trepidation. Consternation. Fear. Even sadness. He realised in that moment that he had somehow always assumed even when he was a boy that his first child would one day be a son. Things seemed like they would have been simpler that way.

Nabiki, of course, did not miss the look that had crossed his face. "You're disappointed," she had said quietly after they left the OB's office. "Why…?"

He was ambushed by the stricken expression on her beautiful face. Unshed tears silently welled up in her eyes as if he had hit her.

"Na-chan…!"

"What's wrong if she's a girl?!"

"That's not it! You know me better than that!" he bit back indignantly.

"Do I? I thought I did."

"Dammit, you do, Na-chan! I'm not like my misogynistic a## of a father! Don't ever compare me to him!" The bitter memories of Genma Saotome and the lifetime of psychological abuse and neglect that his mother had endured rose up and burned like bile in the back of his throat. Nabiki knew those stories, and he knew hers! He wanted to puke.

"I didn't compare you to anyone!" she retorted.

"You implied it. And I used to be agirl half the time myself before in case you forgot!"

"Ranma, please! I don't want to fight. Today was supposed to be a happy and special day. Just tell me, what is it? What's wrong?"

He struggled to calm down and find the words. "There's nothing wrong with our kid being a girl. Nothing wrong with her at least, but I'm worried about how the world will treat her, what will be denied to her just because. If our kid were a son, these wouldn't be things we'd have to worry about." Images of the stories from around the world that had propelled the #MeToo movement to the forefront of the global consciousness flashed in his mind.

Nabiki's gaze softened as she took his right hand in both of her own and leaned her head on his shoulder. "Then do something about it. You are her father. Teach her how to be her own dragon so that she can stand up and protect herself, take and keep what is rightfully hers."

Ranma remembered fervently hoping that his daughter would be like her mother – but not this way. Not without a mother as Nabiki had been.

# # # ##

For a moment, there had been a fight after Nabiki had lost consciousness, but she was going to be fine, Yuna explained, as they now worked calmly to close her up. Still, he wanted to vomit. The air smelled of burnt, cauterised flesh. An unsettling pile of bloodied surgical towels and pads was discarded on a steel tray visible to the side of the drape still up just downfield of the base of Nabiki's ribs.

She was still unconscious and did not know, but in the end, Eileen Airyou Saotome-Tendou was born safely at 0111 hours. Ranma had been reeling in his numbed daze when he heard the baby's first cry piercing high above all of the increasingly ordered chaos. There had been anuchal cord, but the Apgars were an 8 and a 9.

"Remember those two numbers," the nurse told him as she handed him the freshly swaddled baby. "It will be the first thing your wife will ask about when she wakes up."

He was afraid to touch his daughter. She was so little, but she did not cry when she saw him, instead looking back curiously with wide open eyes under long, delicate lashes, melting away in that moment any and all reservations that he had. She had so much hair, and it was thick and silken just like her mother's. Her cheeks were huge, but the skin on her face was impossibly fine and delicate. She smelled clean and new as only ababy could.

She was more beautiful than he could ever have imagined. Holding her, he realised, felt more natural and intuitive than he had ever expected.

The name Eileen Airyou had been Nabiki's idea. Eileen was Celtic for "The Bright and Shining One." The kanji for Airyou meant "The Passionate Dragon." It had taken them months to come up with a name that made sense. He was pleased with the result.

Now Nabiki was groaning out his name as she slowly came around. He was immediately at her side, holding Eileen for her to see as he recited what the nurse had told him.

"8 and 9."

She choked on a fresh wave of unchecked tears, unable to form words as Ranma gently laid their daughter on the bed by her side.

"She's so beautiful, Na-chan. Thank you for her," he whispered lovingly as he touched his cheek to hers and wept with her. Eileen was sleeping peacefully now between them without a care in the world.

# # # ##

"Little angel soon to be little devil!" the neonatal peds attending teased kindly as everyone walked out of the OR alongside the gurney taking Nabiki to recovery. "Rest while you can here, Kiki. You and your husband will have your whole lives to deal with her after." Heeding the kind advice, they sent their daughter to the nursery after Nabiki was released from recovery and sent to this room, giving her a few hours to dose off and begin healing.

Now, the sun was rising over the city, visible through the east-facing windows of her room in the Zayed tower as they ended their brief call with her older sister. Nabiki had asked that they not tell Kasumi the gory details of the C-section and instead simply focus on the fact that Eileen Airyou had been born safe and healthy.

"There's nothing she can do from Tokyo except panic and worry. It's like I told you. Kasumi is fundamentally like Daddy. Maybe even worse. She's just a lot better at not showing it."

Ranma, still not able to fully process or understand himself what had just happened, had readily agreed.

"Ara! Congratulations!" Kasumi chirped happily as she looked back at their masked faces. "I'm so happy for you both, and I can't wait to see her. Such a beautiful name too that you've chosen! I wish we didn't have this awful pandemic and that I could be there with all of you at the hospital right now."

"Us too," Nabiki said evenly,"but we'll see you soon."

Somehow in the complex calculus that Ranma had discovered about the relationship between his wife and sister-in-law, the latter had ended up booked to fly to them the following week in line with the original expected due date. Having completed her own vaccination series about aweek before as well, Kasumi had been adamant about making the trip from Japan.

"I've already missed your wedding, and there are just some things that someone should teach you both at least once. Besides, I owe you," she had added, as if knowing that this would intrigue Nabiki enough to accept. 

"We could probably use the help anyway, even if it’s for just a little bit in the beginning," Ranma had told his wife. 

And so Nabiki had agreed, albeit with misgivings.

In the present, Kasumi was regarding them now with her kind and serene trademark smile. "You're both truly grown up now. Our parents and Akane would have been so proud!" Kasumi's eyes began to mist over.

"Thank you, Kasumi," Ranma replied for them both. A knowing glance passing between him and Nabiki.

"Of course, Ranma," Kasumi said."You have no idea, by the way, how thankful and happy I am that you and Nabiki have found each other and that you are building your family together. Even if Nabiki doesn't believe I know, she is a good and loving girl. It's just that she's always been a bit inhibited in her ability to express her passions and feelings – and also a little bit arrogant"

"Oneechan!" Nabiki squawked.

"Still," Kasumi continued, ignoring her, "you've brought out the best in her, convinced her to open up as she never has to anyone else, made her happy and completed her humanity in the ways that I used to worry no one ever would or could. Human beings are not meant to live alone or without passing on something of themselves to another generation."

"Thank you, Oneechan," Nabiki said, visibly moved and suddenly on the verge of tears from the unexpected words of long wished-for vindication, tinged as they were still with the subtle hint of a sideswipe.

"Of course, Nabiki," Kasumi said. She then suddenly fixed Nabiki with a piercing gaze. "I know too that there's something important that you're not telling me just now, but it's okay. I want you to know that I'm not worried because I know that Ranma is there with you. Call again in a few hours with Airyou-chan. I have to finish dinner and help the kids with their homework. I love you both."

Ranma looked at Nabiki, stunned as Kasumi disconnected the call.

Nabiki laughed despite herself."Should've known better, I guess. It was Kasumi, after all, who first taught me how to read people."

"She can read through even you?" Ranma noted, clearly impressed.

"Oh no," Nabiki answered with another laugh. "Not ever me if I don't want it. It's you. You're so tense!"

"I was afraid of losing you," Ranma told his wife, his voice suddenly shaking.

"I'm sorry. I just didn't want you to have to choose," her eyes shining with love as she reached up and touched his face. "I couldn't do that to you."

"Nabiki…."

"I'm hurt, yes," she conceded,"but I'll be fine. It wasn't really ever about me. It was about her - our Airyou-chan. She was…." Nabiki was now choking back tears as she fought to form her next words. "She was dying. Time was running out."

"What exactly happened?"

"It's usually because they're being strangled by the cord. She had to get out."

The fresh, haunted memory of her tortured, unending screams came back as he listened to her. A new swell of pride so deep that it hurt hummed in Ranma's bones and detonated inside of him. He wanted to cry again. "You did the right thing."

"Thank you for telling me that," she replied, her voice heavy with loving sincerity. "But I know that you would have done the same if you were me."

He nodded. "You would have been so proud. Her first cry was so strong."

"You told me. 8 and 9 you said," she recalled proudly.

"You should go back to sleep now, Mrs. Saotome. I'll be here."

"I know, Mr. Tendou," she giggled. "I love you too. Everything will be okay now." In less than 5 minutes, the room was filled with their snores as they both fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Nabiki's left hand was clasped firmly in Ranma's right.

# # # ##

Her words seemed to be true for a little while.

The first month of Eileen Airyou Saotome-Tendou's young life had gone by in a numbing daze of endless sleepless nights. Despite even the history between Nabiki and Kasumi, they were still grateful in the end that her sister came to be with them. Kasumi, though, had enjoyed many moments of great amusement at their expense. Ranma had never seen his sister-in-law so entertained.

Kasumi had initially gone to Kalorama to wait and test out of quarantine. He had agreed with Nabiki about keeping the old studio for the time being as talk had begun of a potential return to office at the Bank. Nabiki had told him though that she was sceptical. From her perspective, the real reason for holding onto the unit had been to have apotential refuge in case she was ever forced to quarantine because of a work-related exposure.

As they had waited for Kasumi, the nights had been consumed by endless, agonising rounds of crying, followed by having to get up, turn on the lights to change a diaper, soothing the baby, laying her down in the bassinet, and finally settling back into bed only to have the whole two-hour or so cycle start anew within minutes. Nabiki herself had been woefully overconfident about the extent – or complete lack thereof - to which her years of training had actually prepared her for the punishing lack of sleep.

The lifting and transferring of the baby from the bassinet to the table and back, of course, fell to Ranma. The staples and ties of her still-fresh closure made lifting even Airyou shamefully painful for her. Once, in frustration, he had suggested that they should let their daughter try crying out for a few minutes or so. The miserable puddle of tears that had collected on the bassinet mattress had been so heartbreaking that Nabiki had furiously smacked him upside the head and made him swear that they would never consider anything at all resembling that again.

The attempts at breastfeeding left Nabiki repeatedly near tears of equal parts frustration, worry, and shame. For all of her formidable brains, knowledge, and training, she struggled mightily to convince Airyou to latch with any regularity. When the baby did latch, there was hardly anything to compensate her for her trouble.

At one point, Ranma tried to tease Nabiki about it, thinking that some humor appealing to the resilience of the self-deprecating British spirit might make her feel better. For that, he was threatened with homelessness as Nabiki, in tears, struggled to compose what remained in her mind of her womanly dignity. Only the inescapable need for him to lift and hold the baby for her prevented Nabiki from throwing him out of their home on the spot.

"I'm sorry!" he offered desperately. "It's not yours or anyone's fault or anything that anyone did! They said in the classes that it was hard, right?"

"Whatever!" Nabiki spat back at him. "I'm so fat and ugly now, I'm a cow that can't even make milk, and my baby would rather starve to death than take whatever little I make! You're such a jerk, Mr. Tendou, but you're not a lying jerk!"

"Na-chan! I never said any of that!I'll gladly take whatever she doesn't want!" he blurted out like adesperate idiot.

Nabiki laughed and cried at the same time out of exasperated amusement, but he had at least managed to save his hide."Go make yourself useful and order some formula online right now!" she had barked.

Still, however either of them tried to spin it, they were simply and utterly destroyed and overwhelmed. The neonatal peds attending's ominous prophecy echoed as an incessant, unspoken refrain between them. Little angel soon to be little devil….

Kasumi, however, just laughed when they briefed her on her arrival. They were in the living room under the watchful gaze of the Kandinsky canvas. She was sitting on the blue couch, Airyou tucked away and sleeping on her arm in a peace they had not yet seen as the three of them talked.

"So, what are we doing wrong?" Ranma asked desperately.

"Tell me again how the nights go?"

"Well, oneechan," Nabiki started, "we have rounds of crying, followed by having to get up, turn on the lights to change – "

"Say that again, Nabiki."

"She cries, Ranma and I have to get up, we turn on the lights to – "

"You say you turn on the lights," she deadpanned, cutting off her sister. "Tell me, Nabiki, Ranma, how well do the two of you sleep with the lights coming on every hour or so of the night?"

The two of them shrivelled into themselves. A sheepish look of comprehension at the obvious passed between

"As for feeding, yes, doing it the natural way is hard work. No one really thinks about that until you have to do it, but it is and has been since the beginning of Time. Regardless, whether you do it naturally or with formula, there are millions of mothers who do it each way or a little of both. Can you actually tell whose mother did what when you see them going down the street or in the office?"

"There is a lot of evidence of benefit supporting breastfeeding," Nabiki pointed out, slipping back for amoment into her professor's voice.

"Maybe," Kasumi said with ashrug, surprising them both. "Over what time period, though, and for how long, really. Nabiki, Airyou-chan is yours forever. This is a marathon, not asprint. No matter what your guidelines or experts say, you have to remember that you're the one who is her mother and that the two of you are the only ones who will ever know her as parents should. You're the one always pointing out how much even your medicine still doesn't know, and even this 'aequanimitas'you've been talking about for years from that nice Osler man reminds you that it is always about the quality of your judgement," she chided.

Turning to Ranma, she said with a smile,"If you haven't realised yet, Nabiki is the Tendou sister who always had the biggest ego. You need to remind her to stop and listen to how she sounds once in a while."

"Oneechan…!" Nabiki squealed indignantly in a very un-Nabiki way.

"Look. I know that we haven't always seen eye to eye about how the world works, but this time I'm being serious, Nabiki," Kasumi replied, no longer smiling. "You don't have to agree, but I do think you should listen before you decide. Parenthood is a humble pie unlike anything you've known until now, and it is harder than you probably have ever imagined. Now, if Ranma doesn't mind, maybe he can go take a stroll and enjoy the lovely Spring weather while I humor you with talk about breastfeeding, postpartum recovery, and other womanly things."

Nabiki glared back at her sister with ascowl. Suddenly, Kasumi surprised them all when she stood, wrapped her younger sister in a fierce embrace, and whispered something in Nabiki's ear, which brought the younger woman to silent tears. 

"Okay," Nabiki eventually said softly after a long moment. "Let's talk...."

Ranma smiled to himself as he grabbed his keys and wordlessly made his exit. He understood what was happening, and he was happy for Na-chan.

Everything really seemed to be fine now.