Chapter Seven: The Little Orphans that Could
Dr. Steele was compelled to eventually leave the hospital, get back home to the little woman and blonde-haired, blue-eyed progeny, but Talia was never out of the spongy memory center of his brain, her unconscious face was burrowed into his white matter, permeated his grey matter, spent equal time in each of his brain's hemispheres.
He walked at a clipped pace through the hospital to the doctor's parking lot, preparing to slip into the role of devoted husband and doting father, crossing directly in front of Detective Blake's nondescript sedan.
Blake narrowed his eyes as Doctor Steele threw him a little hand to heart salute as he continued his deliberate steps towards his luxury car, somewhere in the distance, a goose honked three times.
Blake shifted on the seat, dropping a hand to brush against the front of his pants, his fingertips casually coming to a rest on the bountifully padded codpiece.
He'd grown fond of the extra weight between his legs, taken to wearing a codpiece daily, each shaped to bolster his cock, emphasize and warmly cradle his scrotum sack.
Upstairs in the medical center, occurring between rounds, in the space between blood pressure recordings and temperature checks, amidst Bane and Talia's bodies being moved, massaged and manipulated, Talia unconscious brain dreamt.
She had felt Dr. Steele's near touch against her skin, inside her nostrils, the air molecules spilled from his exhale were detected by the slick tissue of her olfactory epithelium, if she hadn't been so deeply sedated, Talia would've wrinkled her nose in disgust and be compelled to repel backwards from his repugnance.
Before Roderick had come to her bedside, Talia had been attempting to climb free of The Pit, seeking the light, ascending towards hope.
Each time she fell.
Every attempt made at the rocky ledge was a failure.
Before Dr. Steele had whispered to her, Talia's fingernails had caught on the ledge, bent backwards, the nail beds ripped, left wet and pulpy.
In her dream, Talia screamed loudly, lustily, as she fell, remaining conscious until her body hit the ground, her belly bursting open like a fleshy melon upon impact, spilling hot, wet viscera instead of slippery seeds.
Landlocked inside her unconsciousness, the eyes of Talia's broken body opened, and she was once again whole, standing, staring up at the circle of light at the top of The Pit.
Once again, she began her ascent, only to nearly miss the ledge, breaking a finger this time before crashing to the uneven ground of The Pit, landing headfirst, her skull cracking open like an exquisite, delicate Easter egg.
The traumatic dreams had begun to have an effect on her. Her blood pressure began to rise quickly, ascending faster than she had from The Pit, rising to the point that it reached a dangerous spike, the cardiac precipice made a piercing alarm sound from one of the multiple monitors in Talia's room.
Down the hall at the nurses station, a bright green light lit up on the patient manifest screen, a nurse wearing red glitter clogs ran down the hall, leaving scuffs on the floor, running as if someone might just drop a goddamn crash cart on her head.
In the employee lounge, Theresa had lingered, waited until she'd actually seen Dr. Steele leave the hospital, feeling a spike of nauseating confusion in her gut at what she couldn't understand, not knowing what she had seen.
When she heard the alarm sounding from the nurse's station, without thinking she dropped her bags and went towards the noise.
Theresa found nurse Gail and the evening physician hovering over Talia, her eyes flicked to the monitor, widening at the high blood pressure values, a set of numbers one doesn't want to see in clinical flashing on the screen.
She pulled on a pair of gloves and joined the working team at the bedside.
Theresa watched as the physician pushed medication in an attempt to bring Talia's blood pressure down, the pharmacy was contacted as well as a call put out to Dr. Steele who had just started his car when his phone rang.
He ran across the parking lot, pumping his arms and pulling air deep into his lungs as he urged himself to take the stairs two at a time, not wanting to wait for the elevator and people that moved as slow as molasses.
Dr. Steele found Talia's room bustling with people and the lady herself in physical distress, her body in turmoil from within.
He dismissed gloves as he wiped the pad of his thumb along Talia's lash line, finding the skin coming way stained with blood.
For a few critical seconds, Dr. Steele was captivated by the tears running down his savior's beautiful face, Talia's tears were tinged with blood.
Talia wept as Dr. Steele bent his head and got to work saving her life, his mind worrying over how she could have sustained haemolacria.
Crystalline teardrops clouded with blood.
Theresa was very much involved in Talia's care but found herself casting frequent glances towards Dr. Steele as his hands moved over Talia, heightened scrutiny towards every word and movement he directed at her.
As Dr. Roderick Steele tried to rein in Talia's blood pressure, he shouted orders to the physician, nurse and Theresa as they orbited him, obeying his medical directions.
He began asking Theresa questions about the test results and recent blood values from Talia's chart as he began to make the smallest bit of progress with bringing Talia out of the most dangerous of the cardiac minefield.
Theresa answered each question, reading off percentages and the values of the most recent chemical panels.
Dr. Steele looked over at Theresa when she began reading off the glucose reading from earlier that morning, he launched a barrage of questions about Talia's admission notes from that three-digit number that Theresa read off the paper.
"Was she given a pregnancy test upon admission?" Dr Steele asked.
Theresa narrowed her eyes at him and flipped back towards the front of the chart, nodding, "yes, it was negative doctor."
Dr. Steele looked back down at Talia, his eyes moving to rest on her lower belly and what might've been a swell. "Test her again now," he stated.
Talia hadn't been tested again due to her negative test upon admission.
It might've been an oversight due to human error and the hyper focus on her severe injuries, but Talia hadn't received a follow-up pregnancy test.
It hadn't been a concern because it wasn't assumed that the unconscious patients were being fucked by family, friends and the staff when visiting hours were over.
Theresa nodded, and after noting a host of other orders, left in the direction towards the pharmacy and the storeroom to place his medication change orders and obtain an urgent pregnancy test.
Blake hadn't made it out of the hospital parking lot either, he'd become distracted staring down at the zippered front of his pants, how the codpiece gravitated the weight of attention from people as he strutted the streets of Gotham, fighting crime, nearly turning into Narcissus and drowning in his own reflection from the surface of the Gotham River.
Blake looked up from his lap when Dr. Steele sprinted past, aggravated at being interrupted from admiring his bulge, he cut the car's ignition and followed the good doctor back inside the medical center.
He followed at a close pace, watching as Dr. Steele disappeared into Talia's room, creeping closer down the hall, straining his ears for discernible words over the beeping and blaring of medical alarms.
Blake clearly heard Dr. Steele say, "pregnancy test," in the time the alarms took a second to catch their electronic breaths before chiming again.
Blake began following Theresa as she jogged towards the Staff-Only utility elevator, hopping on the cart with her just before the double doors closed.
Theresa was caught off guard when Blake was suddenly in the enclosed, descending cart with her, shiny badge out, wasting no time in speaking, identifying himself, asking, demanding what she was doing.
She pressed her lips together, not normally one who would violate patient privacy and risk her licensure and future in any kind of medical field.
"The city is suffering, people are scared that those two are still alive, tell me something that I can use to get assurance to the right people, the proper voices to soothe, please," Blake pleaded.
Theresa looked away from Blake's eyes when his passion became too much to take.
She accidentally dropped the memorized list of Dr. Steele's requests, Blake would be able to gather plenty of information to feed Gordon's campaign, a flurry of gossip to feed the tabloids as well, anything to keep Gordon on top of the news cycle, portraying him slaying the almighty unmasked dragon and the woman clothed with the sun.
"Thank you," Blake murmured as his eyes scanned the list of tests and shopping list from the storeroom, "call me," he added as he slipped his GCPD card into Theresa's pocket.
Theresa avoided his seeking gaze and jogged with greater urgency to the pharmacy, rushed to fill out Dr. Steele's requests before snagging a pregnancy test from the basement level storeroom.
Dr. Steele felt Theresa had been gone too long but had gotten Talia's blood pressure to a closer to normal range in her absence.
He watched Theresa pull on gloves and empty urine into a specimen container from the end of her urinary catheter. She dipped the absorbent end of the test for five seconds before replacing the cap on the urine-soaked end.
One would never run a sterile test using urine from a catheter, but aseptic technique would not affect hCG hormones being detected.
"Three minutes," she murmured as she set the test flat on a metal tray.
While waiting for the test to reveal the hidden potential in Talia's urine, across the hall, Bane remained with some neural activity existing dangerously close to consciousness.
Dr. Steele had administered the drugs too rapidly in his anxious haste to see Talia, he hadn't fully emptied the contents of the vial and Bane was slower to descend, a body not weighted down by rocks, some buoyancy remaining.
Amidst all the sounds coming from Talia's room, one single sound had risen above all the others, a voice lifted that Bane had heard.
A small groan of anguish had slipped from between Talia's unconscious lips.
Bane heard that sound.
During Bane's blip of near consciousness, he registered the sterility, detected the clinical, knew he was being housed in some sort of medical unit.
In that small moment, he knew it was civilian, not military, but smelled the oil that the myriad of officers used on their department-issued firearms.
Bane knew much as he slipped back into the void, took hope with him.
He knew Talia lived but not in what kind of state.
He knew they were under surveillance and that armed eyes surrounded them.
Bane took with him a bounty back into the darkness.
"Impossible," Dr. Steele said as he watched a bright pink cross appear on the pregnancy test.
Theresa shook her head, shocked as well that the cells had continued to divide and grow within Talia's uterus, that the embryo had clung to viability as Talia's body was nearly broken.
The other physician was astonished that the fetus had continued to form, that her body hadn't spontaneously purged the uterus of its contents, that Talia's body hadn't spit out the baby the night by the fire with Bruce Wayne had produced.
Despite Talia's body threatening to fold in the crashing Tumbler, the fetus had clung to life, made the ascent to hope much in the same vein as Talia clinging to the wall of The Pit.
Dr. Steele's brain exploded with activity at the knowledge his perceived goddess was carrying the progeny of another.
He felt a wave of disgust that she had opened her thighs for a lesser cock, that she'd allowed lust to lead her actions.
He found solace that her pregnancy wouldn't have to change much, he could work around that until a time in which he found out the identity of the biological father, if the answer displeased him, a specific administered medical cocktail could make her uterus empty without a whisper of medical malice.
Theresa didn't end up getting out of the medical center until a while later, too late to attend practice with The Matching Carpet Riders.
She'd later attribute her actions to missing practice and wanting to make a difference to be the reason she told Blake about the positive pregnancy test, why she fed him other details that should've made her ashamed to work in the medical field, a complete evisceration of morals and ethics.
Blake's anonymous tips were called in from a burner phone.
His words traveled fast and soon made their way to print, pixels and screens around Gotham City.
Bruce was back at Tom's Diner waiting for a piece of pie that he planned on eating when the Breaking News music of Lemon's Drops began playing.
He didn't take any notice until he heard Dawn Lemon's opening question to the viewing and listening audience.
"Who is the father of Talia al Ghul's baby?"
Bruce turned to look at the television screen as Dawn continued.
"Is this child a result of coupling with the unmasked mongoloid?"
Bruce didn't even register when the waitress Sue Vega set his pie down in front of him.
"The criminal pair that tried to destroy our city are expecting parents?"
He knew it was his child from their night together on his living room floor, he hadn't bothered with wrapping his shaft and didn't care to ask if he could fill her with his sticky come.
Blake had contacted the OWL News Network first with his juicy gossip and not too long after Dawn's segment aired, a multitude of television and radio voices began to echo the same story through their own carefully biased filters, distorting the basic facts to fit their individual narratives.
On multiple radios around Gotham City, those who were tuned to Goth Net, listened to Captain Chaos rush to the airwaves with the news of the pregnant political prisoner.
He heralded himself the champion of the child that would be born to those that were persecuted, assuming like many that Bane was the father.
"This child will be born in the hospital that will become their prison. How are doctors condoning this?"
"What of their oaths?" he asked after a few moments of silence.
Captain Chaos continued to shout into the microphone, spit flying from between his thin lips while outside the medical center, Sam Jones dabbed a clear gloss on his lips before the Breaking News musical introduction began before his special segment of Full Circle.
"You've all heard, the woman who was instrumental in trying to decimate the city is pregnant, whose child is she carrying, did she consort with the masked man?"
Bruce's eyes were glued to the screen as Sam Jones recounted the rumors of the men that Talia dealt with while she'd been masquerading as the benevolent, philanthropic Miranda Tate.
"More and more is being revealed about Talia al Ghul's identity before she was known as Miranda Tate, more is being revealed about the man who once wore the mask and now lies in a hospital bed, maybe living or perhaps long gone."
Sam Jones's broadcast and every subsequent report after, only gave birth to more questions, Gothamites heard volumes and received even less answers.
At Tom's Diner, Bruce once again didn't eat his pie, could only stare down at the flaky crust as his thoughts all went to Talia and the unborn child she was carrying.
That which would be his only begotten child.
