Chapter 29/?

Time moves at a strange pace in this place, Gata thinks. She has but to focus on the end of a corridor and she is there, as if by teleportation. According to rumor, it is a technology Krypton was on the cusp of cracking when last she heard. Another pang of labor grips her and she leans into the wall for support. Fisting her fingers, the dark gray wall crumbles into dust beneath her fingers, to her shock. What is going on?

Behind her, beyond her sight, she can hear soldiers (though they call themselves 'agents') setting up perimeters to trap her in place. At the next T-junction in the corridor, she can hear another group of agents preparing a trap at the end of the hallway, if she turns left. She chooses right instead, almost running directly into a sight that simultaneously takes her breath away and fills her with relief.

"Trel!" she gasps, reaching for him, throwing her arms around his neck. "You're alive." Tears of relief gather in her eyes and slip down her cheeks. "They tried to fool me, my love, but I saw through their schemes. I suspect they need our child healthy, or else they would simply kill us both." Gata grabs her husband's hand and pulls him in the direction of the end of the hallway, but she sees that her way is blocked by another man. He's dressed in blue with the sigil for the House of El emblazoned on his chest and stands, arms akimbo, as though he's attempting to take up the entire space of the corridor. Gata's breath catches in her chest. What is this? An illusion? Another ruse to gain her trust?

"Who are you?" she confronts the man. "And speak the truth!"

"My name is Kal-El," he replies softly, but makes no move to intercept her. "The Last Son of Krypton."

"The Last Son…?" Gata's mind races with the terrifying implication of his words. This is no attempt to gain trust, she decides, but rather a torturous mind-game meant to break her. "No!" she shakes her head, turning around to escape in the other direction, only to find that way blocked as well. This time, it's a woman in her path, dressed in a similar uniform. "No." She sinks against her husband's body, seeking to protect and to be protected.

"My name is Kara Zor-El, Gata. Like you, I was born on Krypton. I'm the only daughter of Zor-El and Alura In-Ze. My grandfather was Seg-El, the son of Ter-El and…Charys Vax-Ur."

"Charys?" Gata's ears perk up, as though clinging to one name she recognizes.

Kara moves closer to Gata. Mon-El places his arm around her and pulls her close to him. For the moment, he holds her in place, under the guise of pretending to be her husband. "Your husband tells me that I have her eyes…your eyes. She…she died before I was born."

"Died?" Gata covers her mouth with her hand. "No," she gasps, shaking her head.

"We mean you and your family no harm, Gata. The doctor decided, while you were still unconscious, that it might put you and your baby in danger if we told you the whole truth."

"But it seems like keeping secrets has put you and your baby in more danger than we could have anticipated," Mon-El adds.

Gata startles, but the man who looks like Trel holds her tight. He looks like her husband, and even smells like him. But his voice is wrong. His accent is hard, where Trel's is soft, consonants sliding where Trel's are clipped, as though he'd never had a single elocution lesson in his life, or had ignored every lesson. "Who…who are you?" she demands, attempting to pull away from him. Unexpectedly, he releases her, holding his hands up to appear unthreatening.

"I'm not your husband," he willingly confesses.

She senses no malice from him, and his truthful admission takes a little of the fear and anger out of her sails. She had expected deception and manipulation and is thrown off guard by the unforeseen honesty. "How do you look like him? Illusion? Shapeshifting?"

"I'm his clone. Created to renew the bloodline of the House of Gand. My name is Mon-El."

Of a thousand possibilities, that would never have been a notion under consideration. Krypton's cloning program was only just experiencing its first success, so if she did in fact awaken in her own future, it's possible that Daxam has gained access to those cloning technologies. It is unlikely that they discovered the secrets of cloning on their own. But if what her husband's look-alike speaks is the truth, she can only question what happened to her true mate. "Is he…dead? What have you done with him?"

"We rescued him," Kara explains. "Brought him to this planet – Earth – just as he told you in the delivery room."

"That wasn't my husband!"

"Yes," Kara insists. "He is. Even now, his heart races in fear for you and your child. He spent 130 revs in the Aether, protecting you both from the criminals that the Kryptonian Law Guild sentenced to serve punishment there. Unlike you, he wasn't safe in stasis, and the eternal hell of what we now call the Phantom Zone did not serve him well. He was injured horribly, filthy, starving and isolated when we found him. He's not the man you knew, but you and your child are still all that matter to him. You are all he lived for."

"A hundred-?" Gata gulps fearfully. "A hundred and thirty revs?" Another pain strikes and Gata reaches out instinctively, searching for support. She's surprised to find the man named Kal-El is at her side, offering his hand.

"Squeeze my hand," Kal-El encourages, wrapping his other arm around her lower back. "I can take it."

They gather around her, reminding her to breathe as the pain rolls over her in waves. Her knees surrender to the pain, but the man named El guides her gently to the floor and joins her there, holding her through the pain.

Kal-El looks up at Kara, matching forehead crinkles expressing their concern in unison. "The baby's heart rate is slowing."

Having heard the same drop in the beating lub-dub from within Gata, Kara shares her cousin's concern. They are running out of time. Hidden in her hand, is the kryptonite bracelet she located in the delivery room. It drains her of all of her powers, which is why she must keep her distance from the far more dangerous and unstable Gata, but she must get the other woman to wear the bracelet of her own free will. She must make her see the need for it.

"I know it's a lot to process. You were in the Phantom Zone for a long time; everything's changed and believe me when I say that I can imagine how confusing this is for you. One way or another, we've all been there. But you need to put that confusion aside for the moment because there's work to be done to see your child safe. I'm afraid…what I've just told you isn't the worst of it, Gata. But there are to be no more secrets between us, if you and your child are to live."

"I don't understand," she gasps, trying to catch her breath once the contraction eases off. "I can hear the scion's heartbeat. Something's gone wrong. How? How can I hear that?"

"Earth's solar system has a yellow sun, and that gives us abilities far beyond those of native Terrans: strength, speed, invulnerability, and even flight," Kal-El explains, using the voice he employs when speaking to frightened children rescued from trauma. "What you're experiencing now is your enhanced hearing…superhearing, we call it. It's a defense mechanism that, in the beginning, kicks in when you feel you're under threat. I'm sorry if you were made to feel like you or your child were ever in danger. That was never our intent."

"Gata," Kara instructs. "Focus on my heartbeat. Let everything else fall away – everything but the sound of my voice and beat of my heart." Kara observes as Gata blinks her eyes, staring at the center of the El sigil on her chest, her eyes glazing into a thousand-yard stare. "Do you have it now?"

"Yes," Gata nods, nearly hypnotized by the strong, steady beat.

"Good. Now listen to what I tell you and know from the beat my heart that it is the truth," Kara begins. "When I was child, the Science Guild discovered that we had demanded too much of Krypton's core and that we had begun an unstoppable chain reaction that would result in the inevitable destruction of our homeworld. They worked tirelessly for a solution but found none. My father, and Kal's father, who were brothers, gambled on sending us to Earth, this planet, in retrofitted pods. Though we know others tried to escape…Kal and I believe that we are all that remains of Krypton. You and me and Kal…and the criminals of the Phantom Zone."

"Daxam?"

Mon-El shakes his head. "The explosion of Krypton sent out chunks of planetary debris into the solar system and much of it found Daxam. The planet is still there, but…uninhabitable and in the throes of a nuclear winter for another two hundred revs, by best estimates."

"Gone? All of it?" Tears slip down her face.

"There are no more enemies left to fight, Gata. No more animocities remain between what's left of Krypton and Daxam. There are no more Trinitarians and there's no throne left to protect. But there is still a child inside of you that wants to be born."

"What's wrong with him?"

"We have no experience with a Kryptonian giving birth under a yellow sun," Kara answers. "We think that your strength and invulnerability are harming your child."

"Rao!" she weeps, grasping at her belly. "My own body is killing him?" Of course, she'd noticed that she'd grown stronger and stronger as she'd escaped the delivery room, or at least it had seemed that everything around her was increasingly fragile.

"It's all right, Gata," Kara soothes, "because Rao, in His wisdom, created something that would help you both."

"What?" she pleads. The woman, with eyes that mirror her own, holds up her hand, revealing the hated bracelet she had abandoned in the delivery room. It was after removing the bracelet that she'd felt what she perceived as renewed strength – strength that had thrown the doctor across the room. "The tracker," Gata shrinks away from the device.

"It's not a tracker," Kara tells her, turning it over in her hand. "Do you see the blue stone?"

"Yes."

"It's a piece of our homeworld. Keeping the stone on your person drains you of the powers that the yellow sun provides. It makes your body as normal as it was on Krypton, as normal as the other humans of Earth. Wearing it will cause the pain of labor to be stronger, but when the baby comes, and you remove it…you'll heal so quickly it will be as if you were never in pain at all. I promise."

"We swear it on the soul of our great-grandmother and your cousin, Charys Vax-Ur. We wish no harm upon you, Gata Fal-Ur. You and this child…are family," Kal-El vows.

"Family we never expected to find," Kara adds, her eyes glistening. "You don't understand yet what a gift that is."

"Family?" she echoes, a hint of hope in her voice.

"There's a lot you need to learn, Gata. But if you let us help you through this, you and Trel and your baby can have a life here, if you want. Back in the Phantom Zone, Trel was telling us how badly he wanted to have a simple life with you – no palace intrigues, no political alliances or treaty negotiations. Just a life where he can wake up to your smile everyday. Does that sound like something you might want, too?"

"I loved Trel the first moment I laid eyes on him," Gata explains, leaning her on Clark's shoulder. "I was born to lead, we both were, but in the moment, all I wanted…was him. I vowed I would not make a fool of him, cause the people of Daxam to publicly doubt his choice, but becoming his princess was the compromise I had to make to be with him. So…a simple life with him…sounds like a dream."

Kara holds out the bracelet once more. "It's a dream that can come true. All you have to do is take it. But I won't make you this time. It has to be your choice."

Gata considers her options and the people surrounding her. Though still wary, perhaps from her time in the palace spent seeing conspiracies in every suspicious action, her heart wants to believe them – believe in the goodness that they present to her. As for Krypton's shocking end and Daxam's subsequent fall, she'll have to think on the truth of that at a later date, after the hard work of birthing her struggling child is done. For now, all she knows is that her child's heartbeat should thump much faster than it is at the moment, and this woman with eyes that mirror her own offers her a solution. Ears now trained to her son's heartbeat, if she dons the bracelet, she'll know soon enough if their words are the truth.

Gata accepts the silver bracelet from Kara's hand and slips it onto her own wrist. Scared and half blind, she'd used a sharp implement to remove the bracelet in her escape attempt. But now, as she latches it into place, Gata sees that it had never been locked onto her in the first place. It had always been removeable. This telling detail gives her some small measure of relief, even as labor wracks her body with pain, leaving her breathless and unable to complain.

But beneath the white-hot sear of pain, the last thing she hears with these new abilities is the tiny heartbeat flutter faster in response to her physical change, before it fades away altogether. Gata gasps at the sudden and terrible silence.

"It's all right," Kara soothes the woman, the relief in her expression directly contrasting Gata's distress. "I can still hear him and his heart is growing stronger with each beat." She nods to Gata with a half smile. "Let's get you back to the infirmary." Kara tilts her head to look up at her own mate. "Mon-El, Alex has been trying to keep Trel corralled in the locker room. Can you calm him down and escort him to the infirmary?" She offers Gata a sweet, reassuring smile, gently stroking the laboring woman's arm. "Something tells me it won't be long now."

Despite never having experienced childbirth herself, Kara's instincts are on target. Kal slips his arm beneath Gata's knees and picks her up from the ground before speeding her back to the infirmary. Kara is less than a heartbeat behind. Eliza Danvers sits on a stool, clasping an icepack to the back of her head when they breeze into the room.

In less than a minute, the medical team is back to work taking readings settling Gata into a comfortable position as her labor progresses. Or at least comfortable-ish.

When Trel arrives, with the physic Al-Ex in tow, Gata finally sees him for who he is. Her eyesight fully restored she's shocked by his gaunt frame and his deepset eyes. But within those gray eyes, she sees the warmth and love that belied the changes wrought by 130 revs in a hellish landscape.

"I'm sorry," she weeps, reaching for him as he makes his way to her. "In my blindness…and my fear, I didn't believe it was you."

"It's all right, my love," he rushes to sooth her, wrapping her up in a gentle embrace. He promises that they'll talk about everything later, about Krypton and Daxam, about all that happened in the Phantom Zone and, most importantly, about where their life is to go from here. But first, she must focus on only one thing.

"Ten centimeters dilated, fully effaced," Dr. Danvers announces, when she finally cajoles Gata into allowing an examination. "And we're crowning."

"Crowning?" Trel asks, confused.

"I can see the head," Eliza explains. She looks up to see Kara, Mon-El and Kal watching a few steps away from the action. "You three need to leave," she tells them. "This moment should be for them…alone."

Kal and Mon-El mount no resistance to Dr. Danver's command, but when Kara is slow to move, Mon-El grabs her at the crook of her elbow and pulls her along. "Kara, come with me. I have an idea that will keep us busy," he promises, leading her away. "I think you'll like it."

"All right then," Eliza refocuses, "when you feel your next contraction take a deep breath and push…bear down.

"Squeeze my hand," Trel offers. "You won't hurt me one bit."

She knows he isn't fibbing even a little, because when the pain comes and she pushes, there's no give to his hand when she squeezes it with all of her adrenaline-enhanced might. He is her rock as the pain takes over completely, never letting up even a moment for her to rest. She must take her breaths when she can, each time bearing down as the child inside of her tears her in two.

In that moment she has a new insight into why women might have so easily given up the ability to procreate naturally.

When it finally happens it's both quick and interminably gradual, as everything around her becomes a blur, voices echoing in her ears to push and breathe and squeeze until she isn't sure what to do when. She's bathed in her own sweat, her hair slicked back with the wetness of it; but in an odd way it cleanses her, purifying her from her old life and sanctifying her in the new.

Shoulders delivered, Dr. Danvers pulls the squirming infant free of its mother and works to free the baby's mouth and nostrils of detritus. She's delivered no more than handful of babies, and yet knows what to do, her heart thumping wildly in her chest as she waits for what she hopes is to come.

Complying lustily, the newborn spits forth an angry cry, enraged at the indignity of its birth, and perhaps the difficulty it encountered as it began the trek down the birth canal.

"You have a son," she informs the anxious parents, holding the naked, screaming boy aloft before placing him on Gata's chest, who rushes to wrap his wriggling body in her arms.

In awe of the squirming creature, Gata examines his face, searching for recognizable features. She checks his flailing hands, counting each tiny finger, and then at his feet, she tallies the tiny toes. Perfect. Every inch of him is perfect. "My son," she laughs, tears of joy leaking from her eyes.

"Our beautiful boy," Trel echoes.

Smiling through unexpected tears, Alex clamps the baby's umbilical cord and hands the scissors to Trel. "Would you like to cut the cord, Dad?" she asks.

"Cut the-why – is that necessary?"

"To separate the baby from the placenta…yes," Alex chuckles. "I'll take care of it, if you want, but it's kind of a tradition in this country…for dads to cut the cord. It doesn't hurt the baby. I promise."

"Oh, I see," he nods, gulping slightly. More than once in his youth and young adulthood, his royal title demanded that he participate in a number of distasteful traditions in the name of diplomacy. Surely, this would be no worse than this. Trel takes the implement from Alex and snips the cord between the clamps, just as the Al-Ex instructed. A small amount of blood oozes forth.

"No resistance from the umbilical cord," Alex announces to her mother. "We aren't certain when, or if, the baby's abilities will kick in," she explains to the parents. We know that Kal arrived on Earth as an infant, and already had some abillity. Both his and Kara's abilities seemed to expand as they grew, mostly triggered during puberty. We're very interested to track this young man's progress, since he's of mixed genetics. As much as you'll allow, of course."

They always knew their child would require special attention. Since he didn't have the benefit of Advancement, his health could be questionable and a physic was to be assigned to track the scion's growth and milestones, ostensibly to ensure the heir's health was comparable to that of a matrix-bred child. It makes as much sense now to have their son's progress charted as it did then.

As they relish their first moments as family, Alex delivers the placenta as unintrusively as possible. She dumps the depleted organ into a sterile, steel bowl and walks it away from the trio to an examination table. It's likely there's much they can learn about Kryptonian reproduction from studying it, but first they must determine its completion to be sure none of it was left behind in the uterus.

"If I may…." Eliza Danvers interrupts the couple, quite in love with their new progeny. "To be safe, I'd like to get some baseline measurements and make certain he didn't experience any injuries from the labor process."

"Injuries?" the new mother asks, horrified. Then she remembers, if there are any injuries from labor, it's likely she unintentionally caused them. She relinquinshes her child to the doctor, her heart racing in her chest.

"I'm sure he's fine, my darling," Trel comforts her. "Just cranky about his eviction."

"In the meantime," Eliza tells him, as she carries their son over to an examination bassinet, "removing the bracelet should help with Gata's recovery."

Trel unclasps the bracelet from her wrist as a subhealer approaches and turns on a bright lamp above Gata's head. "It's a yellow-sun lamp," he explains, having already spent some time recuperating beneath one.

Just as the woman…Kara Zor-El…had promised, her body flushes instantly with strength and healing. The subhealer's eyes widen comically as Gata's extended belly, only moments before inhabited by her son, shrinks to her pre-pregnancy flatness. She informs Eliza and Alex of this development.

Eliza notes that the infant seems in perfect health; heart rate: nominal; Apgar score of 8. He even flinches and withdraws when she flicks the bottom of his foot with her middle finger, but he doesn't cry out. More importantly, the flick doesn't break or injure her finger, a risk she had to take to discern his five-minute score. "He appears to have some vulnerability to stimulus, if not pain. I'd prick the bottom of his foot with a needle to be sure, but I think it unwise at this stage of our relationship with the new parents."

"Good call," Alex agrees.

"Yes, 'good call'," Gata echoes from across the room, her superhearing momentarily restored as the sun-lamp heals her body. Now that her fears have been assuaged and her adrenaline has leveled off, she's no longer plagued quite so terribly by the echoing voices and sounds, or the strange disturbances in her her vision. But she can hear the low voices across the room as if she's standing right beside them, and she feels stronger than she's ever felt before, like she could run forever. As promised, there's no lingering pain from the trauma of labor, which might only partially have to do with the lamp above her head. She had stopped paying attention to any pain the moment she heard her son's first cry.

Startled for a moment at being caught out, Eliza recovers quickly by taking refuge in her professional demeanor. She wraps the boy in a soft blanket and carries him over to his parents. "You'll need to rigourously self-report on this matter. Your instinct will be to protect him from harm, but you must take into consideration things that should hurt him, but don't. It's likely this won't be an issue until he's ambulatory – in nine months to a year. For the moment, he's perfectly healthy by our measurements." The infant gives truth to her words by responding with a robust cry, his legs and fists pumping vigorously in the cradle of her arms. Eliza gazes down at him, smiling gently. "Yes, yes," she coos maternally, slipping her forefinger into his mouth and testing his response. He clamps down strongly, but not painfully, on the top knuckle of the digit. "Being born is hungry work, isn't it? Would you like to feed him now?" she asks Gata.

"Feed him?" she wonders, anxiety over providing for her son now that he's out of the womb replacing the euphoria of meeting him for the first time. In the darkest moments of her pregnancy, she questioned her readiness for motherhood, and now those fears and anxieties rear their ugly heads once more. In the palace, an army of caretakers were already preparing to provide for her every need and that of her son – but now those caretakers are long gone, and her son is left with only her, and his equally nervous father. She hasn't the first clue of how to ask these people, clearly so more knowledgable than she, for help, but she knows she needs it.

The newcomers both blink owlishly at up at Eliza, uncertainty playing clearly across their features. "Let me guess," she begins, jostling the baby in her arms in what she hopes will be soothing for him, "your medical practitioners didn't know anything about breast-feeding?" When she receives no response other than a further widening of their already wide eyes, she tries another tact. "Surely you must have noticed your breasts leaking in the last few weeks of your pregnancy – before you were placed in stasis?"

"My body was leaking many things," Gata blushes. "In many uncomfortable places."

"Well, the fluid from your breasts is call colostrum," Eliza explains, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her patient, "and it's meant to feed the baby. Your breast milk helps extend your already matured immune system to him until he's strong enough on his own to fight off illness and the like. Not that we expect that to be a problem for this little Kryptomite."

"Kryptomite," Trel chuckles, indicating his approval.

"At any rate, breast-feeding also strengthens the bond between mother and child." When he screams out again, she adds, "Which he seems anxious to do, sooner rather than later. Perhaps you should…." Eliza indicates the bracelet still in Trel's hand.

Gata offers her wrist willingly understanding that, for now at least, she should not hold her son without it. Wishing such a device would work for him, Trel wraps the cuff around her wrists and sets the clasp, nodding at his wife.

It's astounding the way her hearing dampens and her body returns to her normal state once the bracelet is in place. This strength and all that comes with it when exposed to the yellow sun might be more trouble than it's worth, she thinks. Though the quick healing from what should have been a fatal injury certainly could be useful when required.

She takes the baby when Dr. Danvers offers him, but then finds herself quite at a loss as to what to do next. "How do I…?" Her voiced fades off in uncertainty.

With a quiet request, Eliza clears the room, so they can have some privacy and spends the next fifteen minutes coaching Gata on how to nurse her child, quite satisfied when the newborn latches quickly and firmly onto his mother's nipple and then begins to suck. Gata gasps in response.

"You see?" Eliza smiles. "You might be feeling at sea, but he knows just what to do."

After a full feeding and instructions on burping, Eliza informs them that they'll soon be moving the young family into more appropriate quarters. "While we were awaiting your return from The Phantom Zone, Alex and I had time to put together a cozy space for you on base while you settle in and learn about this planet. I'll be around most of the time if you need me, or have any questions. And if I'm not…well," she sighs, as though picking at an old scar, "my daughter, Alex, hardly ever leaves the place. And of course, my daughter Kara is around as well."

"The daughter of Zor-El?" Gata queries, confused by this woman's relationship to her kinswoman.

Eliza nods, "She arrived on this planet when she was twelve. My husband and I raised her as our own. So…if I seem overly curious about your health or that of your son, it's because I have a vested interested in keeping every Kryptonian I know healthy and happy. And now Daxamites, too," she adds, so as to not leave out Trel. "Because my daughter loves a Daxamite."

After sending the newborn into the sleep of the well-fed and the perfectly secure, Eliza performs one more examination on Gata. As expected, she finds her patient fully healed and in perfect health. While she's subdued by the blue Kryptonite, she takes baseline measurements of her heart rate, her blood pressure and draws a vial of blood for later study.

"Now then, I don't think this hospital bed is necessary any longer, do you?"

"No," Gata replies with a laugh, as if sharing a secret with the doctor. She teeters a bit after climbing down from the bed, surprised to find her center of gravity back to where it ought to be without the need to lean slightly back to compensate for the growing weight in the front.

Without a thought, Trel is by her side in the blink of an eye to help his wife right herself. She smiles crookedly at him. "I'll hear no more excuses for tardiness from you, husband. You move in a blur."

"Now that I have the ability to be everywhere on time, there's nowhere I have to be. Except by your side, my love." Warmth in his gray eyes turn them a deep slate as he gazes into hers. "For an eternity all I prayed for was to be right where I am at this moment."

"You'll tell me everything?"

"Everything that I can bear. We have all the time we need now."

Eliza provides Gata a comfortable robe to wear over her thin gown, and a pair of slippers to keep her feet from slipping on the cold floor, and then leads them to their quarters.

Gata, ever observant, notes that the armed warriors have melted away, disappeared from sight and back to their duties. When they reach their destination, she notes with relief that the door locks, but only from the inside. Their quarters must have, at one time, been sparse and utilitarian, fit for a soldier's barracks, but they've clearly been transformed into a warm and cozy space with a large bed, a sitting area and a space with a baby's crib.

"Kara and Mon-El have been here," Eliza announces, calling attention to three of the largest gift baskets she's ever seen. They must have slipped out to do some shopping because the baskets overflow with all manner of necessities for each of them, including pajamas and undergarments, personal hygiene products, such as soap and shampoo and a variety of items that will certainly take the newcomers days to figure out. The third basket is for the baby Gand; onsies and blankets, burping cloths, tiny socks and outfits to ooh and ahh over. "Welcome to Earth," she reads from the card.

"They've been very generous," Trel announces. "I don't know how to begin to thank them for everything. For my life. For my family."

"For Kara…it's what you do for family."

"Especially when so few can hold such distinction."

"Yes," Eliza agrees.

Sensing Gata's anxiety about being left to care for her newborn, Eliza spends another hour with the new parents, going over things they'll need to know. Predictably, the baby stirs in discomfort, and she takes the opportunity to teach them about diapers, how to change them and where to dispose of them.

"Feed, sleep, change, repeat," she says. "That's all you'll need. For the first few days at least. Soon you'll be able to translate his different cries and then we can worry about the all the rest, once you've had a chance to get to know your son. All in time. I'll come by twice a day to examine him for the first two weeks, and then just once every few weeks if he's progressing normally. How does that sound?"

"Thank you, Dr. Danvers," Gata replies, uncharacteristically shy. "Now that he's here I feel quite…unsure."

"That's totally normal for a first-time mother, Gata. I'll leave you my contact information so that if there's anything you need, any questions, you can reach out." With a few final instructions, Eliza nods nods and slips out of the room, closing the door quietly behind her so as to not wake the sleeping baby.