I would just like to mention that English is not my first language.
Chapter 2: The Oaks
It was a dark, stormy autumn night in Pallet Town, near the southern coast of the Kanto region. For what was probably the last time of the year before snowfall began, the sky unleashed ferocious winds and pouring rain on the small village. Thunder exploded across the countryside and white lightning bolts tore through the darkness, illuminating it for a split second just as well as the sun would have.
Inside of a small clinic, the only medical establishment in the remote settlement, a sweat drenched woman lay in a white bed. Her long strawberry blonde hair stuck to her burning forehead as she felt her insides contract painfully once again. Her trembling body had been trying for the last fourteen hours to push out the other living thing from inside her. Her husband, standing dutifully next to her, holding her hand, ushered encouragement in her ear, supporting her upper back with his other hand. A nurse, all dressed in white, stood at the edge of the bed, keeping a professionnal eye on the progress of the complex miracle that was waiting to take place.
"Breathe..." the man attempted to encourage her. "You can do it. Just breathe and then push!"
The woman nodded and took a long inspiration. When her lungs became filled with air, she gave the strongest push yet, since the beginning of her contractions, letting out a harsh scream.
"I can see the head," the nurse announced. "You have to push again, ma'am. It's almost there!"
The nurse reajusted her latex gloves and picked up a clean blanket from the pile that was waiting on a nearby table.
The exhausted woman breathed in forcefully, closing her eyes, feeling her husband giving her hand a squeeze. She concentrated, feeling another incoming contraction. When the pain hit its peak, she pushed harder than she ever had, screaming on top of her lungs, giving every ounce of strength she had left. She thought it didn't work for a second but then she felt it. She felt her newborn infant's head pass through, closely followed by its small, fragile body.
The nurse immediately picked up the precious little bundle and cut the umbilical chord with a skilled, experienced hand. She wrapped the small baby in the sterile blanket.
"It's a boy."
The woman and her husband exchanged relieved, happy looks and shared a chaste kiss to celebrate the birth of their son. The couple had decided to keep their incoming baby's gender a surprise, just as their did with their first child. They had spent the entire nine months of the pregnancy coming up with boys and girls names they could give the baby once it was born. Their first child had been a beautiful little girl. Now, they were both happy to welcome a boy into their life. Their joy was short-lived, however, when they both realized at the same time how eerily silent the room was.
The nurse had obviously noticed something was wrong, too. In her arms, the baby was unmoving. He didn't cry.
The woman started to panick, looking helpessly up to her husband, begging him to do something. The man was at loss for words. The nurse carried the baby in her arms and gently put him on the nearby table, unwrapping him from the blanket. With a calm only years of experience could have brought her, the nurse started pressing gently on the baby's chest repeatedly.
The couple looked on at the nurse's back, which blocked their view from the reanimation attempt, powerless and frightened beyong measure. She had finally did it. Their wait was over. The dream couldn't turn into a nightmare this fast... could it?
Two minutes went by. Two long minutes that felt like hours of deafening silence. Nothing could be heard except the relentless tick tock of the clock. The woman felt tears form at the edges of her eyes. He couldn't be dead. Not after the twelve long hours of contractions. Not after nine months of anticipation and meticulously chosen meals and exercices to ensure the birth of a healthy, lively baby. The woman ushered a silent prayer to whatever deity was out there, begging for it to give a chance to her son to experience the whole wide world around him...
Then suddenly, a loud wail erupted from the table and the woman felt her heart skip a beat. The nurse picked the little boy up in her arms, allowing herself to smile reassuringly to the parents. The baby made up for it's two minutes of silence by crying loudly and uninterrumptedly, flailing his tiny arms around.
"He's okay, now," said the nurse, handing the little boy to his mother who cradled it against her chest, her tears of fear turning into tears of relief.
The husband held his wife and newborn son in his protective embrace, overjoyed at the two miracles that just took place right in front of his eyes.
"What do you think, Sarah? What should we call him?"
Sarah lightly brushed her fingers on the tiny baby's forehead, mentally listing up all the names they had thought of for him. She looked down at her son... her son who had survived despite not breathing for two minutes. She wished he could open his eyes so she could see if he had inherited her hazel eyes or his father's azure orbs. A short, simple name that was not too common so as to represent him and him alone. It took her a moment to make her choice but when she did, she whispered it intimately in her baby's ears so he could be the first one to ever hear it.
The little boy continued to cry loudly as if displeased to have been disturbed from his comfortable rest in his mother's womb. He already sported a disinguishable light orange thuft of hair on top of his tiny head, just like his mother's. His eyes were still closed, though.
The woman kissed her son's forehead and offered him her breast, which he latched on immediately, avidly feeding himself and stopping his wailing in the process. She then told the chosen name to her husband.
"I'll got get Daisy," he said, exiting the room with a contented smile.
A minute later, the husband came back in, closely followed by an older man holding a young chesnut haired girl by the hand. The husband went and positioned himself next to his wife and looked on at the pair, beaming with pride.
"Dad, Daisy, allow me to introduce you to Blue!"
The six year old little girl approached the bed hesitantly, her eyes curiously fixated on the bundle her mother was holding close to her heart, which was her new little brother, apparently. Her mother smiled tiredly at her, beckoning her over with her eyes.
"Come on, Daisy. Come meet your new little brother," her mother said.
Daisy hopped on the bed, her pigtails boucing lightly and looked curiously over at the white blanket. She saw a tiny little being, barely the size of her favorite doll, jealously gripping her mom's chest and suckling on her breast without a care in the world, completely ignoring everyone else. Her new little brother. Blue Oak.
Nearby, the husband hugged his father, emotion constricting his throat as he discreetly told the older man about the incident that immediately followed the birth of his second child. Samuel Oak smiled calmly at his agitated son and reassured him with his well known calm and even temper. The elder Oak then went up to see his grandson for the first time, sharing another gentle smile with his daughter-in-law. His dark eyes found the little baby who was completely absorbed by his first meal. The sound of thunder could be heard from outside, somewhere in the distance.
"He scared us for two minutes. We thought he wasn't gonna make it. But he's a fighter. One day, he's gonna show everybody..."
The pokémon professor smiled proudly. The Oak dinasty was alive and well and would continue on for many years still.
A few days later, the Oak family, complete with its new addition, was able to return home. For the moment being, Blue didn't do much besides sleeping, crying and eating (not necessarely in that order) but Allan and his wife already had a daughter, so they weren't caught off guard with the amount of work the tiny human being represented.
Blue's mother was eager to introduce her son to everyone in the small town of Pallet, especially to the Papenbrooks next door, who had a son of their own just a few months prior. Sarah happily chatted with Margaret, holding a peacefully sleeping Blue, while Margaret held her own, quite agitated Red who was sucking on his pacifer and grabbing at his mother's ponytail. The two women exchanged anecdotes, laughs and special parenting tricks while their husbands conversed in the front yard.
The two close knit families often partook in activities together since they both had kids of the same age and lived right next door to eachother. Sometimes, but rarely, Samuel Oak would take a break from his busy job to hang out with them and play with his grandson and Red. Before long, a year had passed and Red and Blue became big enough to actually play with eachother without needing their mothers to hold on to them. The boys grew up quite a lot. Red shared a lot of his father's features, what with his shiny brown eyes and wild brown hair. His timid, yet brave nature was definetly his mother's, though. Blue, on the other hand, got his already thick mane of stawberry blonde hair from his mom as well as her hazel eyes. Red had even recently begun to stand up on his own. Blue, slightly younger, wasn't quite there yet but damned if he didn't try to mimic his neighboor's boldness and repeatedly attempted to stand up on his two short stubby legs.
One bright sunny day, the Papenbrooks and the Oaks had a picnic in the grassy fields on the edge of town and after they'd both been fed (and subsequently cleaned) their mothers sat them down on the grass in front of eachother. The kids greeted eachother the way they usually did, by swatting at eachother with their tiny hands. Red eventually got bored and got up on all four, then stood up on his two wobbly legs and started walking away without so much as second glance to Blue, to chase after a caterpie that happened to crawl around, still under the watchful eyes of his parents. All by himself, Blue quickly got bored too and started to whine, looking up at his mother as if to ask her to bring Red back. When he saw that his mother paid no mind to his krookodile tears, Blue took the matter in his own hands and started hoisting himself up on his hands and feet. He waited a bit, struggling to steady himself.
"Sarah, look!" Margaret exclaimed, interrupting her conversation with her friend, pointing towards her toddler.
The two mothers looked over at Blue who had stood up on his own two legs all by himself and was taking his first few uneasy steps to reunite with his friend, who was completely oblivious to anything around him while he was poking the big green caterpie.
And this was the one time Red was actually one step ahead of Blue!
This was a fun short little chapter that set the base of Red and Blue's friendship. On a side note, Blue's parents are never once mentionned (as far as I know) so I had to make up names for them. Also, Red never had a last name and I didn't want to use Ketchum because that's for Ash, not Red. The name Papenbrook is not as random as it might seem. It's actually the last name of Red's voice actor in Pokémon Origins. The more you know.
I must be off to work on the next chapter. Smell ya later!
