BACK UPON ITSELF
A Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic
by Daniel J. Drazen
PAUSE FOR BOURGEOIS LEGALITIES: This fanfic is copyright 1999 by
the author. All of the characters (with the exception of Higgins,
Charlotte, and Etta) are the property of Sega Incorporated, DiC
Productions and/or Archie Comic Publications; the plot is the
responsibility of the author. Distribution of this fanfic is
rabidly encouraged so long as you: A) Don't try to pass it off as
your own work, and B) Don't try to make a buck off of it. Doing so
will put you in violation of Title 17 of the U. S. Code concerning
copyright restrictions, and nobody wants that. "Isolette" is a
registered trademark of Vickers Medical.
CONTINUITY: This story utilizes the current Archie Comics
continuity (as of March 21, 1999) if only because SOMEBODY has to
show those people how to do it right.
Mobitropolis: 3219
"Doctor, I think she's unconscious!"
"Take it easy, Rosie," Dr. Horatio Quack replied as he turned
to his obstetrics nurse, Charlotte. "Shar, what do her vitals look
like?"
The spider, covered almost completely in surgical dress, had
her six hands full monitoring the vital signs of the patient.
"Vital signs holding steady, doctor. That last contraction was
pretty intense."
"Right. Higgins," he said as he turned to the black-and-white
lop-eared rabbit working as nurse anesthetist, "make sure she's
getting enough oxygen."
"We've got plenty," he replied.
Just then the patient, Queen Alicia of Mobius, moaned softly
and turned her head, her auburn head fur matted and glistening with
perspiration. Charlotte wiped her patient's brow for what felt
like the hundreth time.
"You're doing fine, Your Majesty," Dr. Quack said. He'd have
preferred to call his patient by her given name, but royal protocol
demanded that so long as anyone else was in the room he had to
address members of the Royal Family in the formal manner. In any
event, he was glad that the two hulking guards assigned to
safeguard the Queen's person had been convinced that they could
discharge their duty just as efficiently waiting OUTSIDE the
delivery room. He hated sightseers.
"Just one more contraction, I think."
"Contraction's starting, doctor!" Charlotte called out.
"All right, Your Majesty, push! Etta," he called over his
shoulder to the bosomy hen who worked as chief nurse in the
Neonatal and Pediatrics Unit at Mobitropolis General Hospital, "get
ready to take over."
With the efficiency of experience, the staff in the delivery
room went to work. Etta positioned herself to take the infant from
the doctor and clean it up as soon as it was born. Rosie, a
woodchuck designated to be the child's nursemaid and nanny, stood
by as well. Dr. Quack gently pressed on the Queen's abdomen as she
pushed with what little strength she had left.
"OK," Dr. Quack said, "here's the head that's next to wear the
crown. The shoulders are in position, and..." He paused as the
birthing process was completed, letting Nature take its course.
"And...Your Majesty, you have a prince!"
Etta took the infant from Dr. Quack and deftly drained any
remaining fluid from the baby's airway. Then even before she began
to clean him up she held him aloft for Queen Alicia to see. The
hardy-looking infant, his eyes still closed tight, coughed once
then began crying lustily. As exhausted as she was, Queen Alicia
broke into a broad and beautiful smile.
"Doctor!" Charlotte called out urgently.
"Something wrong?"
"I...I'm still getting a fetal heartbeat!"
For two seconds there was no movement in the delivery room,
and no sound other than the crying of the newborn prince. Dr.
Quack quickly looked at the instrument panel to Charlote's side,
then put on his stethoscope and placed it on the Queen's abdomen.
"Somebody tell me this is some kind of joke," Dr. Quack said
half out loud. "Shar, let me have an ultrascan."
Charlotte pressed several buttons, and a grainy gray image
appeared on a nearby monitor.
"How does it look?" Queen Alicia managed to whisper.
"Not good. Etta!" he called out, "get that baby into the
nursery, then call down to Neonatal Intensive Care and tell them we
need an isolette warmed up and in here stat! Everybody else, back
to your places. It's a whole new ball game! Shar, let me see the
previous ultrascan."
Charlotte brought up another image. "I can't even SEE the
other baby!"
"I know. The prince was one big baby; he took up almost the
whole image."
"Didn't you know that the Queen was carrying twins?"
"How could I?" he said with more than a hint of exasperation.
"I was only able to examine the Queen twice when she was pregnant,
and even then I had to make house calls to the palace; all I had
with me were the instruments in my bag! I didn't have the
equipment that would have spotted it."
"Whose idea was that?" Higgins asked.
"I don't know, some bureaucrat in the War Ministry. Somebody
was afraid that if I was seen coming and going from the castle too
many times that the Overlanders might get wind of it and use it for
propaganda purposes. So I was never able to give the Queen the
kind of prenatal care that would have caught this. 'Security
considerations,' my feathered...."
"Another contraction starting, doctor!"
"Sorry, Your Majesty, we're not done yet. Give us one more
push."
Confused and frightened, the Queen used the last ounce of her
strength to deliver her second child. She lay back on the bed,
exhausted. Almost immediately, though, her eyes opened wide.
"I...I don't hear anything. There's no crying! Why isn't there
any crying?"
Dr. Quack seemed not to hear as he worked to clean up the
infant girl the Queen had just delivered. He had hoped against
hope that the ultrascan was wrong but it had been painfully
accurate. Unlike Queen Alicia's firstborn, this child's arms and
legs were uncomfortably thin. Her entire body, in fact, looked as
if it could never support the weight of her head. And instead of
a cry, the only sound she made was a series of rapid high-pitched
grunts as she struggled for breath.
"She's too weak to cry," Dr. Quack said half-aloud before
yelling at the top of his voice "WHERE'S THAT ISOLETTE?"
At once, the door to the delivery room banged open as Etta
wheeled a large cart into the room. On the top beneath a clear
dome was a blanket that gave off an even warmth. Dr. Quack gently
placed the baby girl on the blanket before lowering the dome.
"Etta, help me get her to the elevator, then call down to
NICU, tell them we're bringing down an LBW with possible RDS.
We'll need to get a line in to monitor her blood gases, and she'll
have to be put on a CPAP. Shar, take over here." He and Etta then
began to wheel the cart out of the delivery room. Dr. Quack,
however, paused at the door and turned to look at the Queen, whose
eyes were beginning to fill with tears.
"I'm sorry, Alicia," he said as gently as he could.
Let someone else worry about protocol.
* * *
An hour later Dr. Quack's was ushered into the "royal suite"
on the top floor of the hospital. The entire floor had been cleared
to accommodate the King and Queen for what should have been a
routine delivery. In the room Queen Alicia sat up in bed, looking
to her left where her firstborn, Prince Elias, lay sound asleep in
a hospital crib after having been cleaned and dressed and nursed by
his mother. It was all part of the bonding process, Dr. Quack
knew, but from the look on Alicia's face he knew that her thoughts
were also with her other child.
The doctor bowed as protocol demanded, then the King dismissed
his guards and Rosie and they left the room.
"Don't leave anything out, old friend," King Max said as
calmly as he could.
"All right. The princess..."
"Sally," Queen Alicia spoke up.
"Princess Sally was born with low birth weight."
"You mean she's premature?"
"No, low birth weight can happen even in full-term infants.
Max tells me you've been taking care of yourself, so my guess is
that she was...well...crowded out by her twin brother while she was
in the womb. Basically she was what they used to refer to as the
'runt of the litter'."
"Is there...was there anything you could have done?" the King
asked.
"Had I known the Queen was carrying twins earlier, I could
have monitored the situation more closely. But thanks to those
boneheads in the War Ministry..."
"That's enough, Horatio," the King said with a touch of
sternness. No use compounding a bad situation with talk that
technically qualified as treason. "What's her condition?"
"She has RDS, respiratory distress syndrome. It's common in
low birth weight infants and premature babies. Her lungs weren't
quite ready to start working on their own, so now she's fighting
for every breath she takes."
"What are you doing for her?" the Queen asked.
"We've fitted her with a CPAP. That's a continuous positive
airway pressure device to make breathing easier. We're also
monitoring the amount of oxygen in her blood and supplementing it
as needed, and watching her so that she doesn't go into shock."
"What are her chances?"
"RDS is what we call self-limiting, which means that the best
that we can do is cooperate with Nature in letting the condition
resolve itself. That usually happens within three to five days."
"And what if it doesn't 'resolve' itself, whatever that
means?" the King asked testily. "What kind of a life will she have
then?"
"Max, if the condition doesn't resolve itself by Day Five,
there won't be a Day Six."
He had said it. He had spoken of that which had been weighing
heavily on the hearts of the royal couple but about which they had
dared not speak. He approached the Queen's bed and took her by the
hand.
"We're doing all we can for her, Alicia. But there's only so
much we can do. The fact is, this is Sally's fight now."
* * *
The vehicle made its way through the blacked-out streets of
Mobitropolis in the pre-dawn stillness. Its passenger, Dr. Quack,
rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
After having spoken to the King and Queen about the condition
of their daughter, Sally, he had been told that he should go home
and get some sleep. Yet it was no more than two hours later that
he received a call from Rosie to return to the hospital. He
dressed quickly and arrived in a matter of minutes. He found Rosie
pacing in the deserted front lobby of the hospital.
"Where's the King?" he asked. He spoke softly, but his voice
still echoed across the tile and marble foyer.
"Probably in his room and I don't care if I never see him
again!"
"What happened?"
"Earlier this evening, I accompanied him to the Intensive Care
to look at his daughter. We saw the poor little thing lying there
fighting for her life, and you know what he said? 'She's no bigger
than a bean!' Then he turns and walks away! Can you believe the
heartless...!"
"I wouldn't be too hard on him, Rosie," he replied as he
rubbed his face with his hand. "Most new parents, unless they've
spent a lot of time around babies, only have a vague notion of what
a newborn looks like. And usually they err on the side of
cuteness. Unless they're prepared for it, the sight of a preemie
or an LBW can be a real shock, like looking at something from
another planet! I'm sure Max was just stunned and said the first
thing that came into his head, no matter how stupid it was."
"Well, I do hope you're right, Doctor. But it's the Queen I
called you about."
"How long has she been there?"
"Going on two hours now. And nobody can persuade her to move;
she just won't budge."
"OK. I'll talk to her."
Dr. Quack walked the silent corridors until he reached the
hallway just outside the NICU. There was a large window to permit
people to see inside. And before that window stood Queen Alicia.
She wore a floor-length blue robe, belted at the waist. Yet
she also clutched at the collar with her left hand, not so much to
stay warm but just to have something, anything, to hold on to. Her
other hand rested on the glass as if she could somehow communicate
with the one on the other side if she just left it there long
enough.
In an incubator unit under a heating lamp lay Princess Sally.
Frail and naked, her chest rose and fell once every second. A knit
cap was pulled down over her eyes to block out the light above her.
A tube that seemed to be bigger around than her arm was connected
to a gigantic-looking needle plunged beneath the skin of one
forearm. A clear plastic mask was held in place over her nose and
mouth by an elastic strap. Too weak even to nurse, she was being
fed by an IV tube attached by another needle to her ankle.
"Your Majesty?" he said gently. She seemed not to have heard
him. Then she turned to him, and he could see clearly the streaks
on her face where she'd been crying quietly.
"I just...I don't want her to die!"
"Let's go," Dr. Quack said gently as he placed a hand on her
shoulder, "there's nothing you can do anyway." And with that, he
gently guided her away from the NICU and toward the elevator.
* * *
Mobitropolis: 3235
The vehicle made its way through the empty streets of
Mobitropolis in the pre-dawn stillness. Its passenger, Dr. Quack,
rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
The past few days had been an emotional nightmare. At first
all anyone could talk of was the fact that Prince Elias, long
thought to have been a casualty of the Great War, was rumored to be
alive. His return to Mobitropolis, so recently liberated from the
iron rule of Ivo Robotnik, was seen as the best possible news of
all.
But that euphoria was tempered all too quickly by the news
that Queen Alicia had also survived the crash of their vehicle, but
just barely. For over fifteen years she had been kept in a stasis
chamber by...well, nobody knew exactly WHO had saved the Queen's
life. Not even Prince Elias, who seemed not to hear any questions
asked him about how he had survived.
Dr. Quack smiled wryly. Prince Elias was only a baby when he
and Queen Alicia had been evacuated from the city. "For all the
good THAT did them," he thought. Still, it was a demonstration of
just how the universe orders things that it had been decided that
Princess Sally, who managed to survive the crisis of her first few
days of life, was too frail to make the journey.
So it was that Sally stayed with her father, whose nickname
for her of "Bean" actually became a sign of his deep affection for
her. As she grew older she preferred to dress in outfits with
billowy sleeves, the better to disguise her too-thin arms and legs.
She was turning into a fine young girl, with perhaps a little too
serious of an outlook about life at court for someone her age.
But all that changed when War Minister Julian had betrayed
king and kingdom by becoming Dr. Robotnik.
And yet the same Sally (who had escaped from Robotnik with a
handful of other children) had become just what Dr. Quack had seen
her to be as she lay in her isolette. She had become a fighter,
and she and the children she had grown up with, particularly a
brash young hedgehog named Sonic, had gotten the best of Robotnik
against all odds.
But that was past now. Max was back on the throne, and the
royal family had been reunited under less-than-ideal circumstances.
The stasis chamber containing the Queen's dormant form was placed
in one of the cold rooms below the main level of the palace, while
Dr. Quack prepared to run diagnostic tests on the Queen. He wasn't
hopeful.
After having spoken to the King, Sally and Elias about the
condition of the Queen, he had been told that he could go home and
get some sleep. Yet it was no more than two hours later that he
received a call from Rosie to return to the palace. He dressed
quickly and arrived in a matter of minutes. He found Rosie pacing
in the deserted front hallway.
"How long has she been there?" he asked Rosie.
"Going on two hours now. And nobody can persuade her to move;
she just won't budge."
"OK. I'll talk to her."
Dr. Quack walked the silent corridors until he reached the
stairway leading to the lower level. Outside the cold room was a
changing room where he slipped into winter clothing. Then he went
inside.
Only a few lights were turned on in the chamber, making it
seem larger and more eerie than it was even when fully lit. On a
platform in the center of the room rested the stasis unit. It was
little more than a glass tube filled with liquid in which Queen
Alicia floated fetus-like, with no sign that she was conscious of
her surroundings.
Dr. Quack didn't like stasis medicine. Of course, he was
grateful for the technology that afforded patients a bit more life
and bought their physicians a bit more time. Still, he couldn't
help but remember the comment a professor of his at the Mobian
Academy of Medical Arts had made about stasis chambers: "It's a
nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." Stasis
medicine wasn't healing; it was, at best, a stop-gap measure.
Next to the tube stood Princess Sally. She was all of sixteen
years old now, on the verge of womanhood. It never ceased to amaze
Dr. Quack how much of Alicia he saw in Sally, especially her auburn
hair and her clear blue eyes. She wore the same winter clothing as
he had on, zipped to her chin. Yet she clutched at the collar with
her left hand, not so much to stay warm but just to have something,
anything, to hold on to. Her other hand rested on the glass as if
she could somehow communicate with the one on the other side if she
just left it there long enough.
"Your Majesty?" he said gently. She seemed not to have heard
him. Then she turned to him, and he could see clearly the streaks
on her face where she'd been crying quietly.
"I just...I don't want her to die!"
"Let's go," Dr. Quack said gently as he placed a hand on her
shoulder, "there's nothing you can do anyway." And with that, he
gently guided her away from the stasis chamber and back toward the
changing room.
In the overhead light he caught a glint of something: Sally's
signet ring. On its blue stone was etched in gold the Cosmic
Serpent. It was the symbol of life as well as of Mobius, of its
eternal endurance. Yet it also symbolized the unpredictable,
quirky nature of life which refused to form a neat and rational
circle, just as the Serpent formed a figure that twisted back upon
itself.
THE END
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