Disclaimer: No own nada, pero a mi me gusta escribir. Eventually Heyla, Gella, Kem, Charvin, and Breeza will be in this story and then I will again thank Harps.



Heidi awoke with a start- her dream had been bizarre, that much she remembered. But the events of her dream had faded together and Heidi had become unsure there had been a strange dream at all. Hadn't the dream involved her Zell? Zell. Where was he? A nurse entered the small room carrying a clipboard. The nurse looked to be about twenty, and she had short dark hair framing a pixie-like face with a kind smile. None of this reassured Heidi, she was in a strange place with strange people and her baby was missing. Now that she thought of it, she didn't even have the slightest clue where she was other than the flag patch sewn onto the nurse's uniform. Heidi didn't recognize the flag, but it was dark grey square containing a light grey circle with the letter 'E' embroidered in green thread. She knew it wasn't FH's flag which made her wary- where had she been taken? And where had her Zell been taken?

"My baby. . . he was here a minute ago-" Heidi told the nurse. "The tiny one with blue eyes? And the funny hair?" The nurse asked, not expecting an answer. "He was taken to another area- there were some. . . complications," she continued. Heidi, like any parent panicked when she heard the word complications. "Complications- but no, my Zell is fine he's perfect, I don't understand. . ." she trailed off. The nurse was used to mothers' certainty of their babies' perfection. "Well, I should let the doctor talk to you, so all I'll say is that your baby, his name was Zell-? You understand that due to his prematurity we needed to perform a Caesarean- section? Zell only weights about three and a half pounds. Most full-term babies weigh twice that," The nurse explained sympathetically. Heidi wasn't sure that she quite understood. "I'll let the doctor handle the rest, if you'll wait right here Doctor Xiam will be here shortly, alright?" The nurse kindly informed her. The nurse shifted her clipboard, then left the room and once again Heidi was alone. She stared at the ceiling for awhile, trying to calculate how many dots there were on each panel. Heidi then turned her attention to the mirror on the back of the door near the foot of the bed. She was pale and her light brown hair lay flat against her head. Heidi turned her head left, turned her head right and even pulled her hair back with her hand in an attempt to look like a mother. Oh well, if she couldn't look like a parent, she could act like one. It was more than Rodney was doing.

There was a short knock, then the door opened slowly and a silver-haired man peered into the room. The man was slightly too young for the silver color to have been caused by age, so Heidi surmised that it must be his natural color. Immediately she knew where she was; the legendary Esthar so recently liberated from Adel's reign and now governed by a man named Loire. The mysterious flag clicked into place also- the only probable thing that "E" could stand for was Esthar. "Hello," the man said. "I'm Doctor Xiam, and I'm going to be dealing with you and your baby,"

Truthfully, Heidi couldn't care less who he was other than that he could fix whatever the nurse seemed to think was wrong with her Zell. There was a tinge of denial in this last thought. Heidi was determined to maintain that it was something the doctors and nurses thought was wrong as opposed to something that might actually be wrong. The man began to talk again which put an abrupt end to Heidi's thoughts. "You may know that premature babies often have problems with underdeveloped lungs. I won't worry you about that, though, because Zell's lungs are sufficiently developed. About an hour ago, we noticed that Zell was developing a yellow color to his skin. We determined that it's Jaundice," Doctor Xiam informed her. Heidi had never given birth before and she wondered what Jaundice was. "Jaundice means that the baby has a high level of bilirubin in their blood," he explained, seeing Heidi's puzzlement. "A lot of babies become Jaundiced for a multitude of reasons. Some Jaundice is normal, caused by the baby's liver still needing to develop a little more," The doctor continued. Why is he telling me there's something wrong if Jaundice is perfectly normal? Heidi wondered. "However, we suspect that Zell's condition may be caused by ABO incompatibility. ABO incompatibility is usually caused when a mother's blood type is O and a babies blood type is A, B, or AB," The doctor explained. "The mother's blood creates antibodies that cross the placenta into the fetus' blood stream and they start to destroy the blood cells there," Hearing this, Heidi immediately starting to blame herself and came to the conclusion that the Badamb fish she had accidently eaten during her fourth month was the cause of all Zell's problems. In actuality, all that the bad fish had done was give Heidi a painful stomach ache, but she desperately needed something to blame.

"Is my baby going to die?" Heidi asked, her face furrowing into a concerned frown. Doctor Xiam smiled understandingly and reassured her. "First we'll try phototherapy with bililights to see if we can get the level of bilirubin in Zell's blood to decrease. If that doesn't work, we may have to perform a blood transfusion. It could cause some minor pain to Zell, but it certainly shouldn't result in anything permanent. Brain damage is unlikely, and anemia isn't probable either," All Heidi heard were the words 'pain' 'brain damage' and 'anemia'. She was sure her baby would be damaged for life and it was all her fault.

Author's note: First of all it's fun to use the term author. Second of all, as much as I researched for this chapter I'm not positive that everything is one-hundred percent accurate, so bear with me. Just for future reference- thank Hyne it's spring break, but I know that as soon as it ends the updates will be slower. :)

~ If stories were as precious as jewels or rings, reviews would make us all rich as kings~ - I made that up :)