Staying Human

The jumper was the first thing Leah had to take away. It was yellow, knitted in a loose rib, with three wooden buttons that seemed disproportionately large on the baby's chest. His father had dressed him in it while the nurses were preparing the transport cot, and was now watching her fingers as she eased one button through its hole. “Does it have to come off?” he asked. “I'm afraid so. The cot keeps him warm, and I need access to his monitors.” Leah laid the jumper across the end of the bed and left it there while she worked. “It's a lovely thing, though.” “My mother made it. She started when Inez was about four months along. We had to tell her to stop making things or we'd need a bigger house.” He was trying to smile. Leah had seen that expression often enough to recognise the effort, though she resisted the urge to reward it with reassurance. The baby was asleep, his mouth hanging a little open, one hand resting against the side of his face. He had been born at thirty-five weeks and five days, earlier than expected but not extraordinarily early. He needed help with feeding and careful observation until he could manage his blood sugar and temperature reliably. Varden could deliver babies and look after their mothers. It no longer kept babies who needed several days of specialist neonatal care. His father had already explained that he understood this. He had explained it to Leah, to the receiving coordinator, and, apparently, twice to the midwife who had been looking after them since the birth. Understanding had done very little for him. “Has Inez eaten?” Leah asked. “She had some toast. Then they took her blood pressure again. She says she doesn't want anything else.” “That's all right. Somebody will check on her before her journey. Has she decided if she wants to speak to the Lowen team now or once Jun's there?” “Now, I think. She's worried they'll do things without telling us.” He hesitated. “Not you. I don't mean you.” “I'd be worried too.” Leah drew the soft sleeve of the baby's vest up his arm and checked the sensor pad beneath it. “You can ask them as many questions as you need.” At the cot's head, Hanne, the senior retrieval nurse, looked up from the transfer observations. She had worked on the regional team long enough to know which problems required immediate attention and which benefited from another minute of a parent understanding what was happening. She lifted two fingers to indicate that they had time. The transport vehicle was ready on the roof, but the weather and route systems had reported no constraints, and Lowen was expecting them within the hour. Jun's mother was in the room next door. Inez had slept for perhaps ninety minutes since the delivery. She sat propped against the pillows with a cup of water tucked between her knees, wearing a faded blue shirt she'd brought from home, and looked much younger than she had over the first video call. Her dark hair had escaped its braid. When Leah entered with the father she stopped trying to make the bed sheet lie flat over her legs. “He's all right?” she asked before either of them spoke. “He is. Hanne's doing the final checks. Would you like to see the travel cot?” “I'd like him not to need one.” “Fair enough.” Inez glanced at her partner. “Emil, did you put the jumper on him?” “I did.” “You weren't supposed to. I told you it was for when we took him home.” “It's what was in the bag.” “The bag had other clothes.” “I know.” Emil moved the strap of the overnight bag from one shoulder to the other. “They've taken it off.” Inez pressed her lips together and then laughed, suddenly enough to surprise herself. She stopped with a hand against her abdomen, but was still smiling when Leah refilled her water and put the cup where she could reach it without sitting up. The midwife had already talked through the mother's care arrangements, but the sequence was sufficiently awkward that Leah went through it once more. Jun would travel to Lowen now with Emil, provided the final clinical check was satisfactory. Inez would remain at Varden for her own routine postnatal observations. If all remained well, a booked assisted passenger transfer would take her to Lowen later that afternoon. The hospitals would communicate directly; she did not have to organise any of it herself. “Why can't they keep him here until I'm allowed to leave?” Inez asked. “The specialist nursery isn't staffed overnight now. Jun's doing well, but he still needs more monitoring than they can safely offer here. Lowen can give him that through the next few days.” “They used to keep babies like him here.” “Yes.” “My sister was born early. Not as early as Jun, but early. She was here for a week.” Leah had heard about Varden's old nursery from staff who remembered it as a very small place with a great deal of personality. The cots had been moved to Lowen five years earlier. The space was now used for short-stay recovery; the wall pictures had survived the conversion, although the incubators hadn't. On the previous visit she had noticed a sticker of a green dinosaur half hidden behind a storage cupboard. “Your sister's how old?” Leah asked. “Thirty-one.” “Then it would have been a different unit, yes.” Inez stroked the seam of the pillowcase with her thumb. “Everyone keeps saying it's better. I suppose it is, if he's got someone looking after him properly. It's just strange that the hospital's here and we have to send our baby somewhere else.” Emil put the bag down on the chair and asked where her charger was. Inez told him, with some irritation, that it was already in the side pocket. Leah checked the time of their call to Lowen while Emil rummaged through the bag, eventually producing the charger, a pair of slippers and the yellow jumper in the wrong order. The room had the muddled look of an ordinary postnatal morning. A half-finished drink sat beside a folded towel, a pair of shoes had been kicked beneath the bed, and someone had left a commemorative birth card on the table next to the clinical screen. The card showed Jun's name and date of birth beneath a photograph taken minutes after delivery. Leah noticed that the photograph had been printed slightly crooked, so the edge of the blanket vanished beneath the date. She arranged the call to Lowen. A clinician there introduced herself, confirmed Jun's care plan, explained how often Emil would be able to sit with him and where Inez could stay once she arrived. Inez interrupted several times. Her questions had little to do with the information on the screen: whether Jun could wear his own clothes, if there was a chair beside the cot, whether they'd know that he liked to be held with his face turned to the right. The clinician answered patiently, and in the background Leah could hear someone asking which refrigerator contained the prepared feeds. When they returned to the nursery, Hanne had Jun secured in the transport cot. The infant made a protesting movement as Leah tucked a sheet beside him, then went back to sleep. Emil leaned over the clear wall to kiss his forehead. One of the nurses raised the cot to a comfortable height for him and left the room, pretending she had something to do at the desk. “He hasn't really seen outside yet,” Emil said. “He won't get much of a view through the cot,” Leah told him. “But he can complain about that when he's older.” Emil took this more seriously than she'd expected. “Will he remember any of it?” “No. And the transport will be boring, which is generally what we want.” He touched Jun's foot through the access opening. “Right. Good.” The route from Varden's birth unit to the roof was familiar to Leah. There was a long corridor with the doors spaced oddly far apart, a legacy of the building's former role as a full district hospital, and a lift large enough for two intensive-care beds that now usually travelled empty. Today a hospital porter carrying a plant in a chipped container was waiting beside the lift. He moved aside with an apology and held it steady while they wheeled the cot in. “Is that one of yours?” Leah asked, nodding at the plant. “Used to be in the reception,” he said. “They've changed the arrangement again.” The leaves were long and heavy, and one had snapped neatly at its base. Emil kept his eyes on the incubator while the lift rose. Leah confirmed the receiving nursery's warmed-feed supply with Hanne and checked the arrival time on her panel, although the figures were already there. The porter had to turn his plant sideways to stop its longest leaf brushing the cot. The transport vehicle was a narrow medical shuttle with a cot bay, two facing seats and more equipment concealed behind smooth panels than could have fitted in the neonatal unit where Leah had trained. Its systems completed the safety check while Hanne secured the incubator. The technology rarely caused trouble; it was the distribution of people who could use it that made the regional service complicated. There was excellent equipment at Varden, excellent equipment at Lowen, and insufficient reason, according to the service plans, to keep the same specialists waiting in both places for a handful of births each year. Leah checked the cot restraints herself, then repeated the readings to Hanne. Emil sat down and tightened his belt before the panel had told him to. His knee moved steadily beneath the hand he'd planted on it. “Have you travelled with a baby before?” he asked. “A few.” “How many?” “More than I could count without looking it up.” “That's good, then.” Hanne spoke from the other side of the cot. “Jun's measurements are exactly where we'd expect at this stage. I'll monitor him throughout. If there's anything I need to do, I'll explain it.” Emil thanked her. It was a calmer, more formal kind of gratitude than the one he'd offered Leah, and she wondered whether it helped him that Hanne was plainly old enough to have children his age. Leah was twenty-two, younger than he was by several years, and families sometimes checked her badge twice before deciding whether to trust her. She didn't blame them. There were days when she was surprised to find she could answer the questions herself. The shuttle moved without the violent lift she'd always imagined transport would involve when she was little. Varden slid away beneath them, its old hospital wing joined by covered corridors to newer, smaller blocks. Beyond it were neighbourhoods of low houses among broad planting beds, a few compact residential towers, and squares laid out with more space than seemed necessary for the people crossing them. From above, the town looked well kept. It always did. The abandoned floors and the gaps between service rosters were invisible. Emil watched for perhaps three minutes before closing the shade beside his seat. He hadn't looked at Jun since they left the ground. “Is this normal?” he asked. Leah followed his attention to the baby's monitor. His heart rate had shifted slightly, and the display had adjusted its scale. “Yes. Hanne has the detailed readings. Jun's doing fine.” “He looked different earlier.” “They do. Especially in the first day.” Emil moved his chair a little nearer. “I'm sorry. I'm going to be one of those fathers.” “Which kind?” “The kind you all complain about when we're gone.” “We've got plenty to complain about without the fathers.” He gave her a doubtful look. “You do?” “The printer at Varden hasn't worked properly in three years.” That made him smile, finally, and from there conversation came in fits and starts. He worked with agricultural systems in the terraces outside Varden and had met Inez when she came to repair a control module he'd insisted wasn't faulty. She'd been right, which still annoyed him because he had spent half an afternoon explaining to her how the module was supposed to work. They had planned to wait until their next leave period before deciding on a name, then spent most of the evening after the birth arguing over the three they'd shortlisted. Jun was the only one both had said without making a face. “When we got his report,” Emil said, “they went through everything. The medical stuff, the archive stuff, whether we wanted additional screening. I've never signed so many things.” “You can change your mind about most of the optional services later.” “I know. We asked for what was needed. Inez said she was having a baby, not applying to run a factory.” He shifted in his seat. “People have been very nice, actually. It's odd. I thought some of them would be more—well.” Leah waited, but he couldn't seem to find the word. She could have offered several. Births remained unusual enough to interest strangers, and unusual things attracted opinions. Most biological people had neither children nor any intention of having them. Some considered it unkind to bring a new person into a body that could become ill or old when other forms of human life were available. Others asked if the pregnancy had been planned, then heard their own question and tried to recover from it. “People at home have been all right?” she asked. “Yeah. Everyone's been great. My aunt's sent about a hundred messages. She's digital now, but she's already ordered more baby clothes than we can store.” He reached into the bag on the empty seat and showed Leah a photo of a basket full of little shirts, all arranged by colour. “I don't know where she thinks he goes during the day.” Jun opened his eyes for an instant and moved his mouth. Hanne leaned over to examine his breathing and the position of the feeding tube, then settled him again without changing her tone or announcing anything. Emil watched every movement. After a while he took out his phone and began drafting a message to Inez, deleted it, and sent a photograph instead. At Lowen the transfer took less time than Emil expected. The receiving nursery was bright without being glaring. It had six specialist cots, only two of them occupied, and a little alcove with comfortable chairs facing a window over a courtyard. The clinical team were ready. Hanne delivered the handover in a low, precise voice, and Leah checked the transfer records against the receiving nurse's screen. Jun was weighed, assessed and settled. He slept through nearly all of it. Leah showed Emil the visitor facilities, the small room assigned to Inez and the direct call panel beside Jun's cot. She also confirmed that Inez's journey had been booked and that the originating maternity team would not release her until she had completed her observations. It was a detail Emil had asked about four times, so she showed him the booking confirmation. “Can I stay here until she gets in?” he asked. “Of course. You can go out for food if you want, too. They'll call you if anything changes.” He sat in the chair beside the cot and rested his palm against its transparent wall. The yellow jumper lay folded in the bag at his feet. Leah was about to leave when he said, “Do you think Inez should have come with him? I mean, instead of staying there.” “She needs her own care as well.” “I know she does. It's just that all the plans we made had the three of us going home together. She was going to sit in the back with him. We'd had this argument about the seat, because I said you could buy one that was too complicated to use, and she said I'd manage to make any seat complicated.” Leah pulled a second chair alongside his. “You can still have the argument about the seat.” “Yeah. She'll be here this afternoon.” “And she'll probably want the jumper put away until you take him home.” Emil leaned towards Jun, who had woken enough to curl his fingers around the edge of his blanket. “I'll put it away,” he said. He folded the jumper again, carefully this time, and tucked it into the bag beneath his spare shirt. Back at the staff station Leah completed the receiving checklist and sent Varden a message for Inez. The transport record required two clinical signatures, an arrival time and an update on family accommodation; Hanne took care of the first two while Leah dealt with the last. An automated service offered her a neat summary of the journey, with a suggested reassurance note for the parents. Leah deleted the note and wrote in the time of Inez's expected arrival, followed by the direct number for Jun's nursery. She checked that the message had gone through before closing the record. Hanne found her standing over the terminal. “You eaten?” “I had breakfast.” “It's two.” “That wasn't the question.” “It was exactly the question. Come on. We're collecting a discharge back towards Varden, and I'd like to be sure you're not living off that dreadful tea.” The cafeteria still had soup, though the bread had gone. Leah took a bowl to a table by the window and found a message from Tariq asking whether she wanted him to cook that evening. She replied that he could, provided he didn't interpret the offer as permission to reorganise her cupboards again. His answer arrived before she'd finished her first mouthful: I HAVE NO MEMORY OF ANY SUCH INCIDENT. She sent back a photograph of the soup with the caption THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON'T LABEL THINGS PROPERLY, and put the phone away when Hanne appeared with two cups of tea. The Lowen nursery was visible through the courtyard glass, not the cots themselves but the people crossing behind the long windows. Someone carrying a stack of clean blankets stopped to speak to another nurse. A small service vehicle pulled up outside the patient entrance and disgorged a family with a stroller and an enormous striped bag. Leah watched them attempt to unfold the stroller's handle while the vehicle waited politely, then turned back to her lunch. Hanne had already started telling her about a scheduling error on tomorrow's roster, and there was still a journey home to make.