June Baby
Rated T for medical stuff. Tongue-in-cheek; no medical advice or recommendations should be taken from this story.
Posted April 17, 2019, written back in nursing school, originally supposed to be part of a larger collection.
The T rating is because of references to surgeries and medical stuff.
"Danny," his mom said, setting down the phone. "The hospital called."
"The hospital called?" Who had been hurt this time? If this was due to a ghost attack…
"One of the doctors wants you to work there." His mom beamed with the news. "I told them you'd show up bright and early tomorrow."
"You did?" Danny said anxiously. "What time?"
"Oh, you have to show up about 0630 in the morning. But it's summer, and you don't have school; and it should be easy."
"But-"
"Ah, glad you made it, Danny." A man with a blue hair net shook Danny's hand excitedly. "I'm Doctor Spurgeon, one of the hospital surgeons."
"Nice to meet you," Danny said nervously, he didn't expect a surgeon to be so direct. They were in a hospital stock-room with a lot of items that Danny had no idea what their uses were.
"I look forward to working with you," Spurgeon said.
"What sort of work will I be doing?" Danny asked, stepping back slightly.
"Well, it's easiest if I show you." Spurgeon walked Danny over to a computer and showed him an x-ray. Danny could identify the ribs, and right underneath them a couple of white shapes that looked like metal "safety" clips.
"Who lets their kid eat safety clips?" Danny growled.
"Accidents happen… but our job is to remove them, and that's where you come in."
"I have to help with the surgery…" Danny thumped his back against the wall.
"Danny, it's alright. What's concerning you?"
"I don't want to see someone cut open." Danny shivered.
"We probably won't have to if you help us," Spurgeon said, putting an arm over Danny's shoulder and bringing him to a couple of chairs. "You see, you could make the safety-clips intangible and just lift them out of the patient. It will be very simple, and we'll pay you $100."
One hundred dollars was very good pay. Danny became excited as he put on surgical scrubs, a lead vest, and disposable surgical apron, a mask, and forced his hair under that blue cap. After scrubbing his hands through about twenty rounds of singing "Happy Birthday" with the surgical technician, Surgeon Spurgeon decided that Danny had washed his hands long enough, and that Danny's singing was unlikely to improve. Then they walked into the room as techs pulled brown surgical gloves over their hands. After that a nurse told him, "DON'T touch anything!"
And then Danny saw the patient. It was a three-year old boy. He lay limply on the table, his stomach uncovered. An I.V. ran into his arm. A tube ran into his mouth and Danny was scared to look at his unconscious face.
"That's the ventilator," a woman near the boy's head said. "He's unconscious so he won't feel the surgery or move during it."
Danny nodded, taking a deep breath. Another person came and took more x-rays, Spurgeon showed Danny how the clips were oriented.
"Now Danny, this is a slow and careful process. What I'll have you do is turn these tongs intangible and slowly put it in the patient's stomach, then we will take an x-ray to see where the tongs are in relation to the safety-clips."
"You can x-ray the tongs while they are intangible?"
"Well, your mom thinks it's possible, we'll find out."
Danny turned to Phantom and began to put the intangible tongs into the boy's stomach, then he waited for the x-ray; the problem with the tongs being intangible was that he couldn't feel if they were bumping against anything.
"Okay, hold it there." The x-ray technician said and took an x-ray.
Everyone sighed, no one could see Danny's tongs.
"I appreciate that you tried," Spurgeon began. "We should've known x-raying something intangible wouldn't work."
"Wait…" Danny said, he took his other hand and used it to make the flesh over the boy's stomach invisible. The surgeon and staff stared in awe. Now that Danny could see what he was doing, he safely gripped the clips by their blunt ends, turned them intangible, and lifted them out and onto the surgical tray. Keeping the flesh invisible, everyone could see there had only been a little bleeding from where the sharp ends had dug into the boy's stomach.
Surgeon Spurgeon turned to congratulate Danny, but Danny had collapsed on the floor, the sight of seeing the inside of the boy's stomach finally getting to him.
"Well," said the surgeon, "We'll have to give the patient an h2 blocker and he should be fine. You did good work, Danny."
Danny nodded weakly, a nurse helping him into a chair.
The surgeon decided that Danny looked fairly exhausted for the day and told him he could go home and that they'd call him again if he could help.
Every few days Danny got a call, and he got to do some very interesting things – even stopping internal hemorrhaging in the E.R. one day after he finished another surgery with Dr. Spurgeon. He was glad he could help, but it was very scary, not knowing what everything the staff was doing was for: he didn't feel cut out for this kind of work. It was also strange; some of the staff loved him, and tried to talk to him in the hallways, and others were jealous that they were being out-shone with a boy with super-powers when it was they who had the medical experience. But Danny felt he could trust Dr. Spurgeon.
One night, Danny was called to the hospital in the middle of the night. He flew to the hospital and groggily stepped into the Surgical Wing.
Doctor Hodgkins greeted him, "Hello, Danny Fenton."
"Hi, where's Doctor Spurgeon?"
"He's not at work. Actually, another doctor wants your help." He turned to the secretary, "Take master Fenton to Dr. Rhogam in LD."
"Come on," she said, hurrying him down a maze of hallways. They were going clear to the other side of the hospital. Then they went up an elevator, across a hallway that ran over a road, and down a staircase. Danny was officially lost, but the sign at the floor they stopped at was very descriptive. "LABOR AND DELIVERY."
"Eeep!" Danny turned.
"Oh, no you don't!" The secretary pulled him along by the collar of his shirt.
When they ran into the nurses' station, one of the nurses grabbed him and said, "Get in there!"
Pushing him into a room, they quickly forced him to wash his hands and put on a large apron.
"Danny," Dr. Rhogam said to him as the nurses and husband surrounded the laboring woman. "The baby is breech position and can't be born the natural way; normally we would do a C-section, but Mrs. Roan won't sign the consent. You have to help us."
Danny nodded; he reached down through the mother's belly, making the top invisible to see the baby. The baby was sitting legs crossed, sucking its thumb.
"AUGH! A ghost!" A man by the window screamed and ran out of the room. The laboring woman jerked at his voice, just as Danny was about to grab the baby.
"It's okay," the husband said, "It's just your idiot brother."
"He's scared of everything." The mother-in-law said from the corner.
"No, he isn't!" The mother of the laboring woman hollered from the other side of the room.
"Mrs. Roan," a nurse said, "I need you to stay still for a few seconds."
Danny tried again: soon he had turned the baby intangible and he lifted it straight up, out of the mother's stomach.
"No, the other way! The other way!" Yelled the husband. "What're you tryin' to do, give my wife a second belly-button!"
"Sorry." Danny moved the baby over, the umbilical cord then following the natural course. He felt like dissolving through the floor and he was unsure if he blushed red or glowed green.
"You did it!" The mother-in-law hugged him and Danny was glad to be in ghost form because it kept his ribs from cracking. "We ain't afraid of no ghosts unlike my daughter-in-law's brother!" Danny tried to scoot away from her to see what the nurses were doing with the baby and to avoid being caught up in a family feud.
The mother of the new mother took the opportunity to rush past the mother-in-law to the baby, "It's a girl!" She squealed.
"I'm never doing that again!" Danny said, hands in his hair, at the nurses' station.
"But you did so well!" The nurse smiled. "We need you."
"You could get someone else."
"We can't get Vlad, he's creepy."
"Yeah… that would be… Ew," Danny said.
"And he's gone, right?"
"As far as I know," Danny replied.
"See, so we do need you."
"Not me."
Two days later Danny and Sam were eating popsicles, backs against a tree in the park.
"So you saved the mother and the baby!" Sam said, "I love you so much." She gave him a big hug, not even noticing she'd got her popsicle in his hair.
"Well, I'm never doing that again!" Danny said. "It's so embarrassing."
"No, it's amazing," Sam said. "Women all over the world will want you to deliver their babies!"
"Well, then it's a good thing I don't have to," Danny said, "They've hired my clone instead. See? I'll never have to go through that again."
Sam quit hugging him, leaving her popsicle dangling from the back of his head, and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"Yep, clueless."
"What?"
"I'll let you figure it out."
He's still wondering.