Image by Thái Văn Trà from Pixabay

Nila laid on the bed, her heart pounding. Caden had been late. It seemed Tallys was going to be a week early. “We’ve given you some medicine to speed up the process. You should feel something very soon, Your Imperial Highness,” the doctor told her, pulling the hypo spray away from her wrist.

Ilithyia stood beside Nila’s bed. “Y-you’ll b-be f-fine. C-caden c-came out all r-right, d-didn’t he?” she asked, holding her wife’s hand.

“Yes, and I had to be induced last time too.” Nila took a deep breath. “It doesn’t mean I’m not scared something is going to go wrong, though.”

Ilithyia kissed her cold fingers and rubbed them to bring some warmth to them. The doctors had been concerned with the rise in Nila’s blood pressure. It wasn’t dangerous yet, they’d told her, but it could get that way fast so they wanted to go ahead and have her have the baby now. That had frightened Nila, as she remembered how sick Adralys had been when Magnus was born. But she took some solace in the fact that both her sister-in-law and her nephew were doing well now.

Within about fifteen minutes, the first of the contractions hit and Nila’s water broke simultaneously. She gasped and Ilithyia called the doctor back over. The doctor nodded. “We’ll monitor you for now. Once they get a little closer together we’ll give you something for the pain.”

Nila nodded, and wiped the tears from her eyes. That had hurt, worse than the first one from Caden had. “I don’t remember the first ones from Caden hurting this much,” she told the doctor.

“I’m sure they were,” the doctor reassured her. He checked something on the scanner, frowned, and ran another scan. He grabbed a hypo spray and shot her with something else before leaving.

“Maybe not as sure as he was,” Nila muttered.

Over the next several hours the pain got sharper and more frequent. Finally, they gave her something for it. The pressure remained and it was more intense than it had been the last time as well. She expressed her concerns once more. A different doctor heard her this time and ran a few scans.

“Your daughter isn’t in a good position, Your Imperial Highness,” he said, glaring at the other doctor. “She’s breech. We can’t do a natural birth or it could kill both of you. We’ll have to do an emergency c-section.”

“Just save my baby,” Nila pleaded.

They got Nila prepped for surgery and knocked her out. A few hours later, she woke up to find Ilithyia holding their daughter. “Ilithyia?” Nila asked softly.

“Sh-she’s f-fine, n-no lasting h-harm,” Ilithyia assured her. “Y-you’ll b-be able t-o h-hold her t-tomorrow.”

“One day to recover from the surgery, Your Imperial Highness,” the second doctor told her. “Then you’ll be fine to hold her, though you’ll still be on light duty.” He frowned. “What I want to know is why your doctor didn’t see her position during your checkups. He could have turned her weeks ago.”

“I have no idea. It was the same idiot who induced me, so that should give you some idea,” Nila told him.

The man scowled. “I’ll bring this up to our department head. The man could have killed you through neglect. I won’t tolerate that.” He patted her leg and left the two princesses to admire their daughter.