𝙵𝙻𝙴𝚂𝙷 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙱𝙾𝙽𝙴 | 𝚃. 𝙾𝚃𝚃𝙾 𐂃

Chapter 29

The procedure itself wasn't any different from what Cristine read or practiced. The steps for the actual surgery was similar. It was just that the birth plan due to Kathy's emergency circumstances required that the birth plan deviated from its original one; Cristine needed to get this done much, much faster. Cristine calculated and she had 30 minutes give or take to perform the surgery. It wouldn't take the anesthesia Kathy wanted to stay half awake long enough to use, so in the end Cristine told Alicia to administer the general anesthesia. It knocked Kathy out when the mask was over the woman's mouth. The area they rebuild as a surgery room was covered with curtains and sheets and surrounded her and Alicia. Hailey was on the other side taking Jack's blood for a transfusion.

"Ready?" A small sigh of anxiety escapes Cristine's mouth in regards to the question. Tersely, her eyes flicker at Alicia, mouth covered with the same turquoise colored disposable mask. Cristine's body was on autopilot so she didn't realize she nodded until Alicia pushed one of the tools inside her gloved hands. During a regular procedure this would be more measured; but that alone would typically take up to 10 to 15 minutes. That was time neither Kathy or the baby could spare. Cristine her eyes zoomed in on the smooth uncut skin near Kathy's bikini line and pressed the tip along the skin with a quick, but steady grip. Her mind emptied and thoughts were nonexistent to anything else but the task at hand. With Kathy's abdomen opened, Cristine's made another side-to-side incision through the location of the uterus.

Everything went well enough and Cristine and Alicia were both hopeful at least this would be a light during these frantic times. Kept hope that the militia did their part and kept them safe and the dead away, while they did theirs and deliver a child into this cruel and ruthlessness world. And that mercilessness manifested itself in the heat of the operation, just as Cristine parted Kathy's stomach with bloody covered hands and went for the protective sack where the baby was located.

"JACK!" Hailey's yell was loud and piercing

"AAARGHHHH!" Jack's guttural yell startled the two, but Alicia quickly made sure to keep Cristine's hold firm lest she make a fatal slip up. Wide, dark eyes anxiously dart back and forth between the bloody mess on the operating table and the curtains covering the other side of what sounded like an attack.

"Hailey? Hailey!!" Cristine still called out fearfully for her sister when she hears a thwack of what sounded like a weapon and... struggling.

"Cristine! You can't! You need to focus!" Alicia yelled back and kept the taller woman in her place when she felt her move out of reflex. "I got it. But you need to keep going no matter what. Say that you'll keep going." Alicia saw Cristine's unwillingness dampen just the slightest bit even during the smacking noise on the other side.

"I'll keep going. Just- just make sure Hailey-"

"I got it." Alicia feverishly nodded and when she was positive that Cristine was with her back turned, extracting the baby from the womb, swung the white sheets aside. Blue eyes widened a fraction, registering for a moment that the red that coated the dirt wasn't from the batches for Kathy's blood transfusion. Her face blanched at the messy and unexpected scene and Alicia got reached for her knife on instinct.

-

CRASH!

The sound echoed and Troy lumbered down the stairs in as quickly as he could. The noise was similar to glass shattering, but after that the silence filled his home again. Still, Troy was wary and he held his gun in his hand and carefully walked around the stairs towards the room where the crash originated from; his father's working room. The light source of the office lamp created a soft, light yellowish glow in the expanse of the room. Troy raised his weapon up to his chest with both his hands wrapped around the cold steel. As he turned the corner, Troy's eyes flicked to the desk in instinct, expecting his father to sit there, but it was vacant. He didn't have to search for Big Otto. He saw him crouched on the floor, focused with picking shards of glass. Troy's brow tensed and he opened his mouth to ask if his father was alright only to press his lips together quickly when the reflection of the bottle on his desk caught his eye. He felt the acid smell on his skin from when he was younger. The hard stench of liquor in his nose when his mother or father were in a drunken rage. Troy even felt that faint burn down his throat when he was talked- no yelled at for no reason. Words that made his soul bleed as a kid, creating scars that never healed, even when he himself believed they did. He wasn't that weak little kid who cried about bullshit anymore.