It was like getting splashed in the face with a gallon of cold lake water. In labor? Oh, God. Suddenly, crazily, a scene from "Gone With The Wind" came to him. He could just see Prissy, the little black girl, saying in her high voice, "Oh Miz Scarlett, Miz Scarlett, I don't know nothin' about birthin' babies!"
Well, he didn't know nothin' about birthin' babies either, but it seemed he was about to learn.
"Clark?" Lana asked again.
"I'm here", he said. He felt useless. What to say, what to do? "How are you doing?" There, that wasn't too bad.
Lana looked frightened. "I think I'm OK so far."
I think you were expecting a full obstetrical suite in a well-equipped hospital, with specialists standing by. Not a tiny tent up in the wilderness with a big dumb alien as your only helper. Clark thought this, but carefully didn't say it. Heck, she was probably thinking the same thing right now. God, what would he do if she had trouble?
"What can I do?" he asked, trying to keep his voice calm. He saw Lana visibly gather her courage, take charge.
"Let's start by moving out of the tent."
Clark gazed at her in surprise.
"This is going to be messy. I'd rather do it outside on the blanket, because we can wash the blanket a lot easier."
"OK, that sounds reasonable." Clark got himself up, backed out of the tent. Lana followed. As they stood at the entrance, she hunched up as another contraction came.
"Clark, if you could get things set up…" she said tightly.
"Um, OK." He slipped into superspeed. He got a whole pile of firewood, laid it near the firepit. He took the blanket out of the tent, laid it down on a level area near the fire. He gathered some pans, took them to the lake, and filled them, heating the water to boiling as he returned to the fire. He put the washcloth in one of the pans.
Clark dropped back into regular speed as he came back to Lana. "Sit down here", he said, guiding her to the blanket. She let him accompany her. They sat down, Clark keeping an arm around her shoulders. They sat in silence for a moment; there seemed to be a fair amount of time between contractions so far.
Lana leaned against him and said, "Clark?"
"Yes?"
"Um, you said you could see through things…"
"Ah, yes, I can."
"Could you please look at the baby and tell me how she's doing?"
"OK." Clark stared over her shoulders at her abdomen, then let her go, stood up, and moved around in front of her, viewing her.
"She seems to be OK", Clark reported. "Her heartbeat seems strong and steady." He moved back to Lana. "You know…"
"What?"
"She's different now than when I first came."
"What?"
Clark was a little embarrassed he'd brought this up, given her previous reaction to the news that he'd scanned her. I guess circumstances change things. "Um, when I, um, checked you out, when I first came to the lake here, I mean, she was head-up. Now she's head-down. She must have moved."
Lana looked relieved. "At least it means she's not breech." She cried out as another contraction ripped through her.
Clark felt helpless. Lana unclenched her teeth and said, "Talk to me, Clark."
"What?"
"Just start talking to me. Take my mind off this."
"Um, OK." Clark thought frantically. Now, of course, his mind was a blank and he couldn't think of a thing to say. Lana looked at him in expectation.
He grabbed at the first thing that came to mind. Sort of appropriate – a birth here; my birth – of a sort – there. "When I first found out what, who I was", Clark began, "it really freaked me out. Then I met you and talked with you, and even though you didn't know it, you sort of talked me down from the cliff."
Lana smiled a little bit.
"And for the next seven years I thought about it every day. I think about it every day now. I really don't belong in this world. And I almost got this feeling, like I had to do something to justify my presence here. It was like I had to pay rent or something."
Lana raised her eyebrows.
"I mean, you and everybody else, you belong here. It's your world, you all fit in. I'm the square peg in the round hole." Clark swallowed. "I thought about it a lot. Being on this world, I have abilities that other people don't have. Over time, I've come to think that it's my job to use those abilities to help people. Or my calling or something."
He glanced over at Lana. She looked bemused.
"I don't know. Maybe it's my way of getting good karma or something like that. Or paying back the good fortune that landed me here. And then it's my parents. Even though they don't have any special abilities, they're always doing stuff for other people. I mean, look at my mom – she's always donating to the food bank, and visiting shut-ins, and stuff like that. I didn't realize all this stuff till I got older myself. Now I only hope that I can live up to the standards that they set." He gestured. "So I have to do what I can."
Clark ran out of words, surprised himself at what he'd said. He realized he'd just put unformed feelings into words; he'd really never articulated all of that, even to himself before.
Lana asked challengingly, "So what have you done?"
"Well, right after I found out…about myself, I ran into a guy that was the football team's scarecrow at the time of the meteor shower. He had these weird electrical powers and he was going to electrocute everyone at the dance in revenge for having been strung up. I stopped him."
Clark felt embarrassed describing it. He'd been taught all his life to keep a low profile; also, this sounded too much like bragging for his comfort. But Lana seemed interested and it was keeping her mind off her labor, so he continued.
"How'd you stop him?" Lana asked.
"He tried to run me over with a truck, but he hit a water main and that grounded him." It sounded better that way.
Lana groaned as another contraction hit her. Then she said breathlessly, "What else?"
"Well, do you remember Coach Walt and those fires?"
"Yes."
"He was trying to burn up Chloe because she had info about the cheating scandal. I helped stop that."
"Why do I think this involved you walking through fire?" Lana said, almost teasingly.
"It wasn't like that at all!" Clark protested, inwardly thinking, It was like that.
"Tell me more", she said.
And he did. As that long night passed, as the stars above wheeled around, as her labor pains came closer and closer together, he talked about the times he'd saved her, or Chloe, or Pete, or his parents, or other people. He didn't talk about Lex; that was too close to the bone. Lana talked back when she could, when she was not overcome by a contraction. As Clark talked, he massaged her back, or walked with her, or wiped away her sweat, or just held her closely. The contractions came closer and closer together as time passed.
She stopped talking back to him; now she was just cursing Lex, cursing him, and cursing men in general. The labor pains were coming fast and furious now. Her water had broken some time before. Lana had asked him to check her dilation several times over the past two hours; trying to ignore his embarrassment and downright queasiness, he'd done so. He didn't know much about it but guesstimated (and hoped) she was dilated enough.
Clark held her hand. "I think it's time to push now, Lana", he said, trying to put an encouraging note in his voice. Her lank hair trailed down her sweat-soaked face. She squeezed his hand, hard – if he'd been human, he'd be in serious pain right now.
Lana groaned heavily and strained. Clark X-rayed the baby again – he'd been doing it on and off all night at Lana's request, giving reports. The baby still seemed OK, having a strong heartbeat, although pretty squeezed in the pelvic canal.
Lana gave another tremendous push and screamed. The baby's head crowned; Clark said, "Come on!" Lana pushed again and the head popped out. She panted for a moment, then strained and screamed again. The shoulders passed.
After that, it was downhill all the way, metaphorically speaking. The baby came out. Clark took the blood-smeared body in his arms, checking her frantically. Then he gave a huge sigh of relief as she opened her mouth and gave a loud cry. Clark, X-raying her, could see her tiny lungs inflate, her circulation change from bypassing-the-lungs-and-getting-oxygen-from-the-placenta to the normal independently-breathing-air pathway. He stared at her in wonder, amazed at her tiny perfection.
Lana gave a small groan that brought Clark's attention back to her. She sat panting on the blanket, messy with birthing fluids and blood, a fecund smell in the air. Clark put the baby in her arms. "You have a baby girl", he said unnecessarily.
Lana held the baby close. She offered a breast and the infant latched on, instinctively sucking. Clark, looking around, realized he'd forgotten to get something to tie off the umbilical cord. He was about to pull out one of his shoelaces when he got an idea. He pulled out a hair and tied the cord with that. Then he used his heat vision to sever the cord. The baby's crying was music to his ears.
"You did good", he said to Lana gently. She looked up at him, gave a weak smile.
Clark looked back at her, at a loss. What to do now? Then he checked the surroundings and her. "Let's get you and her cleaned up now", he said in a deliberately cheerful tone.
He carried her to the lakeshore, the baby still nursing. Using super-speed, he carried pan after pan of water from the lake, heating it up and pouring it over her. The effect was that of a hot shower. Clark carefully avoided pouring water on the newborn; he dropped out of super-speed and handed Lana the washcloth. Together, they cleaned the new baby, and finished Lana's bath.
He sped to the clothesline, grabbed some of her clothes, and brought them to her, holding the baby as she dressed. The baby cried, not wanting to lose Lana's milk. Clark handed the baby back to Lana, then gently picked her up and carried her back to the tent.
They both sat in the tent, looking intently at this new soul in their midst. She had a scattering of dark hair. Clark put hand gently on her head; he felt a softness. Startled, he x-rayed the baby's skull. Oh. It's an open fontanelle. The hole where the various plates of the skull met wouldn't close till later on in life. Even without X-ray vision, Clark could see bluish blood vessels under the child's translucent skin. The baby's fists pressed into Lana's breast, gently pushing to encourage milk letdown.
"What are you going to name her?" Clark asked softly.
"I've thought about that a lot", Lana replied. "I think I want to call her Laura, after my mother."
Clark nodded. It seemed right.
They sat together, not speaking as Laura nursed. It wasn't long before she got her fill and stopped suckling; Lana put the baby on her shoulder and patted her. The infant fell asleep in her mother's arms. Lana looked tired too; her eyes closed. Despite the approaching dawn, she lay down and stretched out on the sleeping bag, carefully placing the baby next to her.
"I need to sleep now, Clark", she said.
Clark could tell when she dropped off into sleep – pretty much right away. He thought about going out, getting more water, preparing a meal – then he considered that he'd been up all night too. He looked down at Laura, again amazed at her existence, marveling at her softness, her tiny fingernails on a tiny hand. He put his own hand up to Laura's, smiling at the size disparity. He stretched out next to Lana, the baby between them. Listening to the two heartbeats was different now. Laura had her own beat, separate from her mother, no longer muffled. Comforted by the dual steady rhythm, Clark slept.
He woke to a strange snuffling noise outside the tent. Lana woke up too, reflexively reaching for her child, remaining tense on the sleeping bag.
"What is it?" she whispered.
Laura awoke and began crying. The noise stopped for a moment, then moved closer. Clark and Lana looked at each other in the tent, both nervous.
"I'll go check it out", Clark said. He got up and crawled out the tent entrance. Oh sh!t. He was looking a brown bear straight in the eye.