Title: I Want a Baby
Style: Oneshot
Characters: Ino, Kiba, Akamaru, and some OCs
Pairings: Kiba/Ino
Light but rushed footfalls reverberated through the sanitised halls of Konoha's hospital. A nurse was rushing to find a certain doctor to perform the task at hand. She pushed through steel doors and turned a corner to the maternity ward.
"Yamanaka-sensei!" she exclaimed as she slid open the door to a patient's room, quickly excusing herself for the abrupt appearance, then firing off, "please! We need you in delivery room four! Immediately!"
Ino tried to hide the shock that itched to show up on her face. As calm as she could, she slid the clipboard onto the handle on the bed, and excused herself from her patient and followed the nurse out into the halls.
She had never delivered a baby before. She had trained for it, countless times, but having it done for real was making her nervous. She walked slowly to the area where she would have to quarantine herself before going through the procedure. Ino clipped away her fringe and tied on a bonnet. Washed her hands, slipped on medical scrubs, and gloves.
You can do this, Ino.
"What's the woman's name?" Ino spoke in a small voice.
"Matsui-san," the nurse replied as she snapped on her gloves.
"Has she been given an epidural?"
"No sensei. She came in too late, her cervix was already at eight centimetres."
Ino gave a brisk nod then followed the nurse as she pushed open the doors to the delivery room. Ino was welcomed with a shrill scream of pain and desperation. Without lingering in the wake of the doorway, Ino quickly took her place at the foot of the bed and faced the woman, concentration lining her face.
"I need you to give me a good push, okay?" Ino shouted over the lady's frustrated groans.
Matsui strained as she pushed, the cranium of the baby peeked and Ino pressed her palm on it for support.
"Push!"
"Argh!" the woman pushed.
Ino felt the child slide outward until the head was completely outside the mother's womb. Holding onto the head, Ino eased in her fingers to grab a firm but gentle hold on of the shoulders on the baby.
"One more push!"
Again the lady screamed as she pushed and Ino tugged lightly on the baby as it slid out, it's little feet coming free at last. Ino motioned with her head for the nurse to assist her, and immediately the nurse was at her side taking hold of the baby. Ino quickly grabbed the umbilical chord and snipped it off, then clipped it at the baby's abdomen. Finally a sharp smack sounded in the room, soon followed by screams that emanated from the child. Ino ordered the nurse to clean the baby up, as she turned back to stitch up the woman's womb.
Ino sat back in her chair when she finished, releasing a slow breath she didn't know she was holding. She blinked twice as the nurse covered up the lady's legs with a cloth. Ino stood and went over to the basin, took off her gloves and threw them in the biohazardous waste bin. She washed her hands thoroughly, then squeezed on some antiseptic gel. When it dried off, she paced to the cleanly washed baby, and took the little boy in her arms. She pressed on the baby's soles, and he gave her a grimace. Reflexes were working fine. Next, she gave the baby a once over. His body was a blueish hue indicating a slight lack of oxygen; the nurse went to find her quite late. Otherwise he looked fine. His screams were loud. The whole test assured her that the baby was in good health.
She took a blanket and wrapped the baby, gently handling the snipped umbilical cord and made her way to the side of the mother.
"Here you go Matsui-san. A beautiful baby boy."
Her husband who had been shocked to a stand still finally smiled, then just as quickly fainted. Ino's eyes widened at this, and the nurses rushed over to him to give him a few light smacks on his face. He eventually came to, and stood again rather shakily. Ino turned to the mother and her features were contorted in a way that Ino couldn't decipher. Love? Most probably.
"Congratulations," Ino said in a small voice, as she handed the woman her baby and walked out of the delivery room.
Ino didn't know how she reached the bathroom, but she was there. She held herself up with the sink, after splashing her face with cold water. She was so concentrated in the delivery room that her brain didn't allow what she was feeling to emerge. Her knees felt weak, and quickly she paced over to the wall. She turned and slammed her back against it, as her knees finally gave way and she slid down the wall. Her body was shaking.
Tears gathered in pools at the side of her eyes, and when she blinked the tears spilled out in torrents. She meekly held up her hands and she looked at them.
She was overwhelmed. She had never appreciated life like she had just now. A miracle had just happened, and she helped make that miracle happen.
x
An hour had passed when she finally stood from the bathroom floor, and gathered her bearings. Her legs had grown numb. She shook them to get the feeling back, took a few painful steps, then was up and at it. She went over to the nursery and recognised the baby she had delivered earlier. She went over to his cot covered in blue blankets and sat next to it. She saw the name marked. His name was Hiro. Little Hiro.
Time was lost as she sat there staring at the newborn. His cheeks had turned to a glowing pink, his lips small and red. His nose tiny, curved. He had little tufts of brownish hair on his head. His lips were contorted in a little purse, and occasionally he suckled lightly. A few nurses had moved about in the ward, but their noises were not registered by Ino. She had drifted into a quiet world where only herself and the baby were its inhabitants.
She laid her hand on the baby, and stroked his cheek lightly, the skin was so soft, unlike anything she had ever felt. When she continued stroking his little cheek, his eyebrows furrowed, and then his eyes fluttered open. She paused, her finger in mid air, and for the time being her mind went blank.
She knew that babies at this stage couldn't see anything. In fact their vision was so terrible that they were legally blind. But some how, some way, the baby's sparkling grey eyes had fixed to her blue ones. He didn't utter a single sound, he layed, propped on his side, staring into Ino's eyes.
Suddenly, Ino's thoughts went into overdrive and she was overwhelmed with a feeling she couldn't put her finger on. She didn't know what to explain it as. The miracle of life. Ino had seen his mother come in with her bulging belly many times. She didn't understand how one moment, this baby wasn't real, and the next he was out in the open breathing air, and living.
As the baby stared into her eyes, and Ino wondered about life, more tears pooled into her eyes. Joy. She felt inexplicable amounts of joy from the core of her heart fanning out to the very tips of her fingers. She wasn't the mother of this child, but she was in love with the angel.
x
Ino was contendedly sitting on the couch in the living room in silence. She could not get over the day's thrill and dwelled on the amazement she felt.
She heard the front door open and shut, and keys hit the porcelain bowl that was kept next to the door. Four pairs of feet came scrambling to her, and she was met with Akamaru's face as he snuggled her stomach. She smiled and petted him as she turned her attention behind her, to her advancing husband.
"Hey babe," Kiba said as he bent over the couch and laid a kiss on Ino's forehead.
"Kiba, come sit!" she said excitedly as she patted the place next to her and turned to face the empty space that was soon filled by him.
She took his left hand in hers as her eyes sparkled with mirth.
"What's gotten into you?"
"I delivered my first baby today!"
A smile broke out on her husband's face, he waited for her to go on.
"It was the most beautiful thing I've ever done. Kiba, just the feeling of having this... this newborn child in your arms, breathing. Living. I couldn't believe such a beautiful thing existed in this world. I fell in love with this baby. His name is Hiro. When I delivered him, and went to have some time to myself, I was stunned beyond belief. I sat in the bathroom floor for... God knows how long! And when I visited him in the nursery. We stared at each other. I don't know for how long. But, Kiba. It was the most overwhelming experience of my life."
Kiba could smell her emotions. It was something new to him, and he didn't recognise it but it was pleasant. He ran his hands threw his unruly brown hair and stared at a patch of carpet before turning back to his sparkly-eyed wife.
"Do you wanna start trying to get pregnant?"
Ino was stunned into silence, after a moment, she forced her voice to be heard, "a-are you serious?"
"Well, yeah... I've been thinking about it for a while and-"
"Oh Kiba!" she threw her hands around him, and threw her leg over him, sitting on his laps and laid kisses all over his face, "you're- the- best- husband- ever."
He laughed as she kissed his cheek, forehead, neck, nose, eye lids, and a badly aimed kiss to his lips that was halfway landed on his bottom lip and chin. He rested his hands on her hips as she held him around his neck and pressed his head to her chest. She then started shaking. Kiba's brows furrowed.
"You crying?"
"Tears of joy, Kiba!"
He struggled to free himself from her grasp and stared into her eyes, then gave her a weak smile as he was assured by the scent that she was in fact feeling happy. At a moment's decision, he hooked one arm around her waist, and pushed himself up with the other.
"K-Kiba! What are you doing!" she exclaimed as she almost fell but he quickly grabbed her.
"We're wasting baby-making time!"
He grinned at her, laid a kiss on her lips then made his way to the bedroom, all the whilst Ino laughed her approval.
Author's Note: I hope I got feelings down correctly. It's something I went through when my aunt recently gave birth and I sat for 5 minutes staring into the eyes of her baby daughter. It's hard to explain, and even harder to have it written down. But yeah, I felt the need to have this posted like, right now. But I'm definitely gonna come back to edit this in the next few days or so, to make it flow better and all :D Thanks for reading!
EDIT (21/09/2010): Just fixed it up a bit, stopped repeating myself, etcetera, etcetera. Oh, and to clear up any confusion, the reason why the woman was stitched up even after vaginal labour is because the area down there stretches during labour and doesn't retain it's original diameter, so... let your imagination do the math :P