AN: I'm back for another update! You know, it makes me feel a little better to be able to update this story…though, I know the updates are still infrequent. I'm trying to get that all worked out and stuff. Anywho, please continue to read and review this little adventure from my idle mind. I really do appreciate every review I get and they make it worth while to continue typing out this story! All of you rock like a box of socks in my humble opinion!
Disclaimer: I own nothing except a handful or two of made up characters. All of this wonderful stuff belongs to the geniuses at Marvel Comics. I'm just playing in their world. I'm broke and in college. All I own are my Pointe shoes.
Angie felt like a drowning swimmer…able to see the surface but not able to break it. Her limbs were like lead, unable to propel her in any direction except downward. Try as she might- and the young woman knew she was putting up an effort and a half- all she kept doing was thrashing about and using up what precious little of her strength remained.
She almost fell into the blackness, into the briny deep of the ocean. It was impossible for her to continue on fighting, battling what she now figured was inevitable. The surface was too far away and she was too tired. She'd gone blissfully numb, now, prepared to meet her fate as best she could.
That was, until a hand caught one of hers and pulled her back into the world above.
"Good evening," said a familiar voice but one that Angie couldn't place at the moment.
She was more concerned with trying to force her gummy eyelids opened so she could get a better glimpse of the world around her. Try as she might, though, her eyelids could not be forced open and she found her hands unwilling to aid her in her task.
Though it seemed like it was taking more than a small effort, Angie managed to force her eyelids opened. The lights above, she found, were far too bright for her to deal with at the moment. Instead, she settled for a slight squint. That way she could see everything but still be protected from that blasted bright light.
"Where am I?" she asked, in a coarse voice.
The young woman winced, her throat dry and painful. There was something very wrong with the situation but her addled brain wasn't working fast enough to comprehend that. It was elusive and fleeting and all together annoying to Angie.
"The medical bay," the same voice, gentler now, answered.
That simple phrase set a shot of hot adrenalin through Angie. Something bad must have happened if she'd wound up in the medical bay. Given her…previous condition….she took her location to be a bad sign. After all, she'd been feeling somewhat terrible for the past few days but she figured it would pass. Like every other ache, pain, and complaint she had before did.
"What happened?" Angie croaked, using the natural hormone to try to force herself to sit up and open her eyes further.
"Angie, my friend, lie still. You don't want to cause your stables to tear your abdominal wall further, do you?" another voice, different from the first, chided.
That was an order Angie didn't need to be given twice. Tearing any muscles, especially the abdominal ones now, was not something she was interested in doing. Still, she hadn't a clue why she had staples in her abdomen in the first place. They, most certainly, didn't belong there now. Maybe in a few months from now but not now….never now.
Rather than her moving, physically, Angie felt the bed movie underneath her. Suddenly, she was in a better position to see the faces of those around her. The lights not being so bright in her eyes anymore, the young woman could make out the very familiar face of Charles Xavier. It was most likely he who had pulled her from the murky depths of her own mind. His was the hand that had pulled her from the ocean.
"What happened?" she asked, again, her words being accompanied by a cough and a strange numb feeling around her midsection.
Into one of her hands ran an IV line that was open to its maximum, draining a fluid into her body. Leads ran off her chest, heading towards the silent bank of machines that made a strange sort of halo around her head. She was the epicenter, the single organic component in a bevy of metallic items.
Angie allowed her mind to wander backwards, replaying what she remembered of the day that had past. She'd woken up with a dull ache in the lower right hand quadrant of her abdomen, a steady ache that she'd been ignoring along with a vague sort of nausea. That had to be normal, right, considering she was expecting a baby. Ignoring those feelings, along with the fact she was considerably warmer than she'd been the night before, Angie had gone about her normal routine. She talked with Matt, her husband, tried to force down something to eat, and gone on her merry way.
The last thing she clearly remembered was taking attendance in the biology class she was assisting until she earned her teaching license. After that everything was very dark.
"You collapsed while you were working, Angie. Two of your students- Chester and Max- brought you down here," Xavier answered, in an almost comforting tone.
"Oh…..staples?" she questioned, wanting to lift the scratchy cover to check out where the staples were and if a good job had been done putting them in.
Given her current company, though, Angie decided against that. Maybe later though when she wasn't under suck close super vision….
"It seems that your abdominal pain and nausea was not a result of the pregnancy as we first suspected, Angie," the second voice, from her left and appearing to be Beast, answered, "It appears you were suffering from acute appendicitis. Since you and I both disregarded the symptoms as being trite and part of your pregnancy, the infection worsened. As far as Dr. Gray and I can tell, your appendix burst. The staples are from the appendectomy and the c-section we were forced to perform."
"What?" was all Angie could blurt as the full weight of what she'd learned crashed onto her already saggy shoulders.
The hand without the IV line moved, seemingly on its own, to find the familiar bulge that was her daughter gone and that area numb. She couldn't even feel the motion of her hand across her stomach as she sought what was not there.
"I'm sorry Angie," Beast continued, "but you were suffering from peritonitis and the infection was rapidly spreading through your blood. There was no other option for either of you. The antibiotics we have you on would have done more harm to her than good."
Someplace in her mind, Angie recognized what Beast was talking about. Peritonitis was inflammation of the membrane surrounding the internal organs caused by bacterial infection. In her case, caused by her burst appendix.
"And…" she prompted, trying not to let sheer terror or panic come over her.
Beast looked to Xavier, who gave the blue furred man the smallest of nods. It was better she learn everything at once. Hold no secrets from her.
"Your daughter's alive but she's fighting a case of bacteremia. She's not breathing on her own yet so we have her hooked up to a vent. We're doing the best we can, Angie. She's on the same meds you are," Beast answered.
Bacteremia….bacteria in the bloodstream…probably put there even as her body tried to provide nutrients for her daughter. If something like that were to happen, then the bacteria must have been something powerful.
"Can…can I see her?" Angie, cautiously, asked.
Part of her was eager to see the newborn. The one she'd thought about so often for the past few months. The other part of her was not so eager. That part of her was afraid, deathly afraid. Afraid of what she was about to see, afraid to become attached to something that might not be alive for very long.
"Of course," Beast replied, leaving the room in a tense and painful silence.
He returned moments later with the portable incubator, along with Jean and Matt. The former was watching another small bank of monitors while the latter appeared to be lugging the temporary power source with him.
"Thank goodness, you're awake. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I lost you too," Matt blurted, rushing over to his now awake wife and hugging her tightly.
"Is this?" Angie started, breaking off when she saw her husband nod.
She took it all in- from the tiny, frail baby, to the brutal, cruel looking machines that were keeping her alive- and the full knowledge of what had transpired. To see its after effects hit home like no home run every could.
"I'm so sorry….so very sorry," she mumbled, sending her words in thought form to the baby as tears sprung to her eyes.
Angie was a short range psychic with advanced knowledge in just the life sciences and math. Her husband had a huge set of bat wings that sprung from his back whenever he felt the slightest bit of stress. His wings produced paralytic, poisonous, or soporific powders on command.
"It's not your fault, Angie. Things happen," Matt, lamely offered.
"It's still not fair….she shouldn't be like this," she protested.
"You know," Rose piped up, trying to lighten the somber mood as she entered the room with Nick in tow, "it's going to be difficult for her to go though life as 'she.' Do you two have a name for this little bundle?"
Angie looked to Matt and he looked right back at her. They hadn't thought of a name yet. Sure, they'd narrowed it down but a final decision hadn't been made. The two of them had decided to see what name suited the baby at birth.
"Hope," Angie, finally, announced, using a name she and Matt hadn't discussed, "because I hope she gets well and, when she does, I hope the world will be a different place for her when she gets older."
Matt gave her a quizzical look but tested the name out, "Hope? You know, I like it. Hope D'Amichi."
'You two do realize that her name is going to translate into 'hope of friends,' right?" Nick pointed out with a smirk.
"And your last name means 'player,'" Rose challenged, "so shut your face."
Still the mood was painfully somber but Nick's ill timed comment was enough to lighten it for just a moment, giving everyone the excuse to laugh. All the while, Angie tried to figure out what the strange tickling sensation in the back of her mind was.