"Are you sure you're okay?" Percy asked, frowning at Annabeth. She was sat cross-legged on her bed on Olympus, watching him what could only be loosely describe as 'packing' a duffle bag for her day trip down to Earth for the Winter Solstice.
"I have a headache, Percy, not a brain tumour," Annabeth said. "I'm fine, for the hundredth time. It's no big deal. I'm dealing with swollen ankles, hands so fat I've had to take my rings off and I still feel like I want to be puking my guts up half the time, so I'm pretty sure I can deal with one lousy headache."
Percy gave her one last look of concern and then returned to packing the bag, tossing in clothes and toiletries haphazardly.
"You know I'm only coming down for one night, right? You seem to be packing for an expedition to the South Pole…"
Percy looked down at the bag for a second and then tugged on the zip, trying his hardest to close it. It bulged out in all directions, refusing to budge.
"Maybe an expedition to the South Pole," Percy said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his head. "Sorry, I was trying to forget that you were coming back up here tomorrow. I wish you didn't have to. I've missed you."
"The apartment's a wreck, isn't it?" Annabeth asked, raising an eyebrow.
Percy squinted at Annabeth. "I've missed you?"
"Uh-huh." Annabeth crawled forward on the bed and began rearranging the bag, tossing stuff out she knew she had no use for until the zip stopped screaming when she tried to close it. "Come on. Let's go and see how many takeout boxes you've got balanced in the trashcan."
The answer was a veritable Leaning Tower of Pisa of takeout containers in the trashcan, all stacked into one another and towering out of the garbage in the kitchen. Annabeth rolled her eyes when she saw it, then wondered if takeout containers meant leftovers.
She could murder some egg rolls.
"Okay, don't look at the trash can," Percy said as he unlocked the door and lugged Annabeth's bag through.
"Trash can Jenga. I knew it," Annabeth said, smiling as she deeply breathed in the smell of home. You couldn't beat it, not even after so long on Olympus, where everything seemed to be designed to offer maximum sensory overload to mortals.
Percy steered Annabeth towards the couch, making her sit down before turning round to dump her bag in the bedroom. "I'm so glad you're home," Percy yelled, deriding he also needed to spend some time making the bed and generally straightening up the bedroom before Annabeth laid her eyes on it. "And don't think of it as trash can Jenga. Think of it more as a new and undiscovered type of architectural construction. I'm sure you'll appreciate the structural integrity. I've put a lot of effort in to that."
Annabeth shook her head and shuffled forwards on the couch to rearrange the magazines on the coffee table. She glanced towards the trash can, twisting her mouth as she looked at the tower of takeout containers stacked at least a foot from the rim of the bin. She wasn't a neat freak by any sense of the imagination, but there were some things that stressed her out and an overflowing trash can was one of them.
Heaving herself to her feet she made it two steps towards the kitchen before an epic head rush overtook her. She threw her arms out for balance but found nothing immediately available to grab onto. Black fuzziness encroached on the edges of her vision and her legs crumpled beneath her as she plunged to the rug out cold.
"Annabeth?" Percy called from the bedroom. "I said what's the bed like on Olympus? I always wondered what it would be like to sleep up there. Is the mattress like a cloud?" Percy frowned, not getting any answers to his questions, and stuck his head out of the door. His stomach dropped when he spotted one of Annabeth's legs splayed out on the floor beyond the coffee table. He ran to here side. "Annabeth!"
"The goggles worked?" Nico said.
"Hey, dude, you're on speaker, so a little less disbelief in your tone please," Leo said, folding his arms and scowling at the phone. "I said I'd get them working, didn't I?"
"Boys…" Rachel tried to interject with, but Nico leapt in and cut her off.
"Yes, but you also said that about your automatic breakfast machine," Nico said. "And that set fire to the cereal and melted off your eyebrows."
Leo snorted. "As if. My eyebrows are fireproof." He paused. "Jason's, however, were apparently not…"
"Well, whoever sacrificed their eyebrows to it you can't exactly hang it up in the engineering hall of fame, can you?"
"Quit it!" Rachel snapped. The Hecate campers had taken a swig of nectar and gone back to their bunks to rest up, so she'd taken over the inflatable pink sofa and was draped across it massaging the bridge of her nose. "I had a prophecy. That's what we need to focus on. is Will there?"
"Here," Will said from the other end of the phone.
"What about Annabeth and Percy?" Rachel asked.
"I'll conference them in," Leo said, picking up the phone and dialling in Percy's cell. He waited for an answer, but eventually the line rang out to Percy's voicemail. "Huh, that's weird."
"Try Annabeth," Rachel said.
Leo did with no success. "That's weird, right? Should we be worried?"
"They're probably having reunion sex," Rachel said, sitting up on the inflatable sofa with a squeak. "Maybe we should give them some time to get reconnected."
"Reunion sex?" Nico scoffed through the phone. "Annabeth is the size of a blimp. How is that even physically possible?"
The sound of Will smacking Nico upside the head echoed through the bunker. "That was mean. Maybe Rachel's right and they just need to spend some time together.
"Okay, but if we could not talk about them having sex that would be great," Nico grumbled. "I get enough nightmares as it is, thanks."
"911, what's your emergency?"
"Hi, you have to help me, please. It's my wife. She's eight months pregnant and she just collapsed. I don't know what to do."
"Okay, sir, I understand. Is she breathing?" the operator asked.
"Yes, but she's not waking up. What the hell is wrong with her? She was fine just a second ago and now she's on the floor…" Percy swallowed hard, dragging a hand backwards through his hair. His knuckles glowed white around his phone; the other hand dropped down to Annabeth, brushing hair back from her forehead.
"Sir, I'm sending an ambulance. They'll be with you as soon as possible."
Percy nodded and dropped the phone without hanging up. He crawled over to Annabeth and lifted her head into his lap, stroking her hair and repeating over and over, "Please be okay. Please be okay…"
After Olympus, even the sterile white of the hospital seemed dingy and dull. Annabeth futzed with the hospital wristband, the cannulas in the back of her hand flapping. She felt fine now; what was the big deal?
"Will you stop pacing?" Annabeth demanded, fiddling with the tube forcing oxygen up her nose. She had woken up in the back of the ambulance and had been rushed through to the maternity suite to have a sonogram. The baby was perfectly fine, but they'd put her through a battery of tests anyway and laid her up in a hospital bed. "You're freaking me out. The baby is good, right? You heard what the doctor said?"
"The baby is fine but you're not," Percy said, taking his thumbnail out of his mouth to speak. "You are most definitely not. What happened back there? What if it was something to do with Tartarus?"
"I got dizzy, Percy. I'm sure it's nothing. Don't freak out because then I freak out. If Tartarus wanted to get to me I don't think he'd be casting a dizziness spell."
Percy sighed and slumped into an uncomfortable plastic hospital chair next to the bed. "Where the hell is the doctor?"
"Probably seeing to someone who crashed their car or got shot or is in way more need than me," Annabeth said.
Percy launched himself to his feet. "I'm going to get a coffee," he said, slapping his palms on his thighs. "Do you want anything?"
"Yes, drink coffee," Annabeth said. "That's exactly what you need right now. More nervous energy. Great plan."
"You're right."
"I think you'll find I usually am," said Annabeth, a pale imitation of her usual smile washing over her face. "Relax, will you?"
The door opened and the doctor stepped in consulting a chart in her hand, flipping up the pages and scanning down them to take it all in. "Ms Chase?"
"That's me."
"I'm Dr Rose," she said. "I understand you're 36 weeks along, is that right?"
"Next Tuesday," Annabeth said.
"I see," Dr Rose said, her forehead furrowing as she went back to the chart. "You've missed some key milestone appointments and scans, Ms Chase. Which doctor have you been seen under? It would be useful to have your notes. We've got some gaps in your chart here."
Annabeth winced. "Doctor?"
"Yes, your OB/GYN hasn't been able to get in touch with you for some time. I thought you might have been receiving care out of state or…?"
"We've, uh, sort of been seeing an… alternative medical practitioner," Percy said, swallowing hard as he told the lie. Technically, it was true. Between the goddess of childbearing and the god of medicine being just up the hill, Annabeth had been under excellent care.
"Alternative medicine?" Dr Rose looked up sharply from her chart, piercing Percy with a glance over her glasses. "It's your wife's first baby. If she'd been seen by a real doctor they might have spotted these symptoms a lot sooner."
"Symptoms?" Annabeth set up straighter in the bed, curling her fingers into the sheets. "Something's wrong? I thought the sonogram was fine?"
"Yes, the sonogram is fine. However, we've run a lot of tests," said Dr Rose. "One thing that came back is your O2 sats are low. That's why we've got you on oxygen right now until they normalise. It's a strange question to ask a woman so late in her third trimester, but have you been mountaineering? Or been at any excessive altitude that might cause low levels of oxygen in your blood?"
Annabeth exchanged a glance with Percy and then shook her head. "I can't think of anything like that, no." Her heart thudded in her chest. She'd spent months up a mountain floating above New York City. It might be the longest time a mortal had ever spent on Olympus. Now she was reaping the consequences.
Percy reached over and squeezed her hand. "What's the other thing? You said one thing that came back was about her oxygen levels. What else?"
Dr Rose slotted Annabeth's chart into the holder at the end of the bed. "Unfortunately, you have a condition called pre-eclampsia," she said. "It used to be known as toxemia. It's where the mother's blood pressure rises uncontrollably during pregnancy. Symptoms include swelling of the extremities, nausea, headaches, dizziness, fainting and, at the more severe end, seizures, bleeding in the liver…"
Annabeth's mouth dried out. "But the baby…?"
"Your baby is doing just fine for now. But pre-eclampsia is dangerous for the mother and child," said Dr Rose. "It can reduce the flow of nutrients and oxygen through the placenta. At its worst it can cause the uterus and the placenta to separate, which can harm the baby. It can also cause pre-term labour."
Annabeth squeezed Percy's hand back, tears fuzzing the edges of her vision. "Oh gods…"
"There has to be a cure," Percy said. "Something you can do?"
Dr Rose smiled sadly. "I'm afraid the cure is giving birth," she said. "Blood pressure will typically return to normal thereafter. If you were a little further along I might suggest an emergency c-section, but as it stands we can try and keep your blood pressure under control with medication and bedrest until we get to around 37 weeks. Then we'll look at our options then to see how developed baby is and whether emergency delivery is more viable."
Annabeth gave a long and loud exhale. Dr Rose was still talking but it was drowned out by the growing roar in her ears. Her baby was in danger. She had put her unborn child in danger and there was practically nothing she could do to fix it except stay in bed for the next few weeks? What did that say when she was failing in her basic duty as a mother already, before the kid was even born?
Tears pricked her eyes, quivering at the edge of her vision, before she set her jaw and dashed them away with the back of her hand. She couldn't sit here and feel sorry for herself. Not now. Not when her baby needed her more than ever.