Chapter Text
“The hell you guys need all these recliners for anyway?” He pressed against the back of a leather chair as he crouched down to eye level with the table.
“I dunno, I think every fire station’s just like this.” He paused, letting his opponent focus as he lined up the cue on his knuckle and took his shot. Two clacks rang out as the 12-ball dropped into the corner pocket. “Same reason they let us have a pool table. Sure, fires can be pretty entertaining, but we need a way to keep ourselves occupied whenever one of those isn’t happening.”
“Lucky. All they give us during downtime is paperwork.”
The radio on his belt hissed to life.
“Well speak of the devil,” he snarked as he slipped it out of its holster.
“Come in Mike. This is Bill speaking.” Fuzzy, but understandable.
“Mike speaking. Whatcha need?”
“Bakersfield Hospital is requesting our non-emergency medical transport vehicle.”
“Gotcha. I’m in the middle of something, I’ll be down in a minute or two.”
“Whatever it is you’re doing isn’t that important.”
“Ok fair, but what do you need me for?” He started towards the stairs down to the garage. “I’m not the only EMT on call right now, you know.”
“They told me they’re transporting a monster, and you’ve got monster care training so that’s why I’m picking on you.”
“Gotcha. On my way.”
“Now don’t you complain too much, since you’re the caretaker you’re not gonna be the one stuck driving.”
“Hey if you’re downstairs, why didn’t you just come up and talk to me?”
“‘Cause this recliner here’s too comfortable.”
“Touché. Alright I’ll be right down.”
Mike sat up in the shotgun seat as Bill pulled the van into the hospital reception.
“Oh yeah forgot to mention,” Bill spoke up as he shut off the engine. “We’re gonna have to do a bit of a weird setup for this one.”
“Why’s that?” Mike inquired as he pulled open the side door.
“It’s a baby, so we’re gonna need to work with the child restraint system.”
“Will the normal one work, or do they have eight legs or something?” He popped open some latches on the legs of a rear seat, and slid it on its rails towards the back.
“They told me it’s a humanoid so the normal one should work, but they also said she’s a bit unusually shaped, whatever that means, so we’ll have to be careful with the straps.”
“Noted. Well, if they’re calling us and not one of the actual ambulances, then hopefully whatever’s going on with the baby isn’t too bad.”
“Here’s hoping.”
The front doors slid open, and out came a stretcher being carefully wheeled by a woman in teal scrubs. Picking up the other side, folding in the wheels, and lifting it into the van, Mike caught a glimpse at the lavender passenger. They looked quite undersized compared to the stretcher, but fairly comfortable and properly restrained nonetheless. Securing it in place, shutting the doors, and starting the engine, Mike crouched down to take a seat next to the infant.
“Hey, can I sit in that spot?” The nurse interjected from behind. “I’ve been with her for a few days, so I think she recognizes me now. Might make her a bit more comfortable.”
“Yep, no problem” he replied, climbing into a nearby middle seat. As they pulled away from the hospital, he turned around to get a better look at their patient.
She was large for an infant, at least for a humanoid. But at the same time, her arms seemed quite thin. Her skin was light purple with smooth skink-like scales, the first few shoots of dark hair covering the top of her head. Yellow eyes, elongated skull, seemingly some sort of reptile, he noted to himself. She looked surprisingly calm in spite of her situation, peering around her new environment curiously. For now, it seemed her worldly possessions consisted only of a tiny gray shirt, sweatpants, socks, and a pacifier held delicately at the end of her snout.
“Isn’t she adorable?” The nurse spoke up softly.
“Yeah. Wherever we’re off to is gonna be lucky to have her.”
“Right, I probably should’ve mentioned. Now that she’s been stable for a while we’re headed to the Bloomfield Children’s Hospital since the area’s monster population is a bit higher, they’ve got more specialized care for monsters so they’ll be able to keep her for longer than we can.”
Of the five seats in the van, Mike noticed two were conspicuously empty.
“It’s comforting to see her like this. She’s had...” She paused, looking for words, “quite the eventful past few days.”
“Her parents are taking their own car, I’m guessing?”
Her expression shifted. It was not a question he was prepared for a hesitant answer to.
“They are not, unfortunately.”
“...What happened?”
Before speaking, she looked at the baby for a moment, as if it could remember or understand what they were saying.
“She was found in a milk crate on the side of a remote road. We don’t know how long she’d been abandoned there, but by the time someone found her and called 911, she was... barely hanging on. It’s a miracle she survived, really.”
The baby stared at the ceiling.
“When she made it to the hospital she was severely dehydrated. She needed to be monitored twenty-four seven and we had to feed her every three hours for almost a week straight.” The nurse placed her hand on the baby’s shoulder. “Thankfully she seems to be recovering quickly, and soon she’ll be able to have higher-calorie stuff so she can start gaining some weight back.” Weakly, the baby reached over and touched her hand.
“Were... they able to find the parents?”
“Unfortunately not. Police investigation wasn’t able to turn up anything.”
“Ouch.”
“But, at least we managed to find her in time. I doubt she would have lasted much longer if she’d stayed with them.”
“Absolutely.”
Mike looked over at the baby’s lidding yellow eyes. After that whole ordeal she deserved some sleep, he thought. He decided not to speak any further, so as to not wake her up.
After getting the call, he thought he’d have to deal with a screaming, crying, drooling baby for the next three hours. But for the first half of the car ride, it seemed she’d decided to be on her best behavior. Other than the sound of tires on the highway, it had been nearly silent. Perhaps Mike was getting close to falling asleep himself.
He heard something behind him.
Craning his neck back, it seemed the nurse had picked up on it too. When the sound repeated, she leaned over to investigate. He noticed the pacifier slide sideways off her face. He noticed the nipple at the front had gone missing. He heard the sound again, and this time recognized it.
“She’s choking!”
The sound of two seatbelts flying off reverberated. He scrambled to the stretcher, taking the side opposite of the nurse. Two pairs of hands unclicked the harness, and in an instant the baby was on her belly, slung over Mike’s forearm with his hand supporting her chin. She was lighter than he thought she would be. Her shoulder blades poking too far out helped to line up the heel of his hand as he pressed down on her back. Maybe the protocol was different for monsters, but this was what he was taught for choking babies. He took a breath to calm himself, and pressed down on her back four more times.
The nurse offered her arm, and he passed the baby over to her. She was now on her back, body angled down and head supported by the nurse’s hand. He looked down into her mouth as she took two fingers and pushed down on her chest, angling toward her head. He thought he could barely see something in the back of her throat. She choked again, he winced. Another chest compression, he looked in again and saw a little more of it. Another push drew it a little further out, and with the fourth-
“It’s out!”
As the nurse turned her back over, a cloudy, transparent object covered in spit dropped out of her mouth and onto the floor of the van. Carefully setting her back down, he leaned in and listened as her little breaths slowly returned. Carefully adjusting her back into position, he was careful not to pinch her as he and the nurse re-buckled the straps of the restraints. Only when the last one had snapped into place did he notice how cold his hands had gotten. Adrenaline, he recognized. He remarked to himself how no amount of training can ever really prepare you for the real thing.
Buckling himself back into his own seat, his attention was stolen by a high-pitched wail. He looked back and saw the baby’s eyes squeezed shut, tears starting to form as the nurse hunched over her softly shushing and doing whatever she could to comfort her. He hated the sound, but he figured it would be better off if he hung back and didn’t further stress the baby out with his unfamiliar face. He noticed an object sitting nearby.
Mike reached back and picked the remains of the pacifier up off the cushion of the stretcher. All that was left of it was a front shield with the nipple chewed off. Looking a little closer, he noticed the bite marks didn’t quite look like they were left by human teeth. Looking over again, he peered into her gaping, crying mouth and noted that a row of tiny pointy teeth had just begun to peek out of her gums.
In trainings he’d always been reminded of the risks of giving things to monsters that were otherwise meant for humans, he reflected. A simple tee shirt could constrict someone with more than two arms. Something edible to humans could be deadly poisonous to a monster. Something designed to be teethed on by a human could become a choking hazard for those with the wrong type of teeth.
It was a miracle it was just a pacifier and not something worse. It was a miracle she’d survived being left out there for so long. It was a miracle she was around two medical professionals when it happened, and not her own parents. As the crying receded, he spoke up.
“So what’s gonna happen to her once we drop her off?”
“Well, first we’re gonna do another checkup to make sure she didn’t injure anything in her throat, and then if she’s able to eat she’ll start getting RUTFs for-”
“I mean, after all that. Once she’s older and, god willing, healthy again, where’s she gonna go?”
“Since we don’t know her parents, or really anyone who might be related to her, she’s gonna go into the foster care system.”
“Gotcha.” A thought came. “Wait, this is gonna sound bad but if we don’t know her family, does she even have a name?”
“Good question. Her name for the moment is just Jane Doe, but once she enters the system her actual name will be decided on. I don’t know the specifics beyond that, but for now she’s officially Jane Doe.”
“Huh.”
For the rest of the ride, he couldn’t bring himself to do much other than watch the baby from his seat. After all that, she still just seemed... oblivious. She was curiously looking around the van yet again. The nurse held her finger out, she reached up and squeezed it. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was supposed to have a nice loving family somewhere. How could someone be so heartless to just leave her on the side of the road somewhere? They didn’t even have the common decency to use the safe haven baby box outside of the fire station.
In spite of everything, she seemed barely moved. That elysian innocence still remained. With any luck, she wouldn’t even remember what happened to her. But it wouldn’t last forever, soon Little Jane would be able to fully understand the cruel world she had been born into. Outside of whatever care he could render here, he would likely never see her or be able to help her again. The van decelerated as they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital.
“Wherever she ends up, I hope they take good care of her.” The driver spoke up from the front.
“Me too, Bill. Me too.”