John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Well, I’ve made up my mind,” Faith said. “Sex, maybe. Babies, never.”

“One does tend to follow from the other, Faith,” Fontana pointed out.

“Every time we do a sweep, I’ve been picking up birth control pills and stashing them,” Faith said. “So there.”

“I wouldn’t place my…trust in birth control pills that are probably out of date and for sure have been overheated,” Fontana said. He managed to get a punch through that rocked her back on her heels.

“Better than the alternative,” Faith said, dropping back. “I’m considering losing my virginity. You up?”

She attacked like lightning as he froze for a second and managed to get in a hard blow on his head that stunned him for a brief moment. One roundhouse kick and he was down.

“Hah,” Faith said, holding up her hands in victory. “Treachery wins again! And, sorry, I wasn’t actually serious. I’m looking for somebody a bit closer to my own age.” She held out her hand to help him up.

“Well, just be careful, okay?” Fontana said, rubbing his jaw. “You realize if you do get pregnant I’m probably going to end up looking at your twat and that would just ruin our relationship. Now prepare to have your ass kicked…”

Thomas Fontana entered the curtained alcove and picked up the chart.

“How’s it going, Tina?” he asked.

“Fine, Lieutenant,” Tina replied, moving the ultrasound wand around.

They were still in the process of stripping both base hospitals. High on the list was anything obstetrical related.

“Hi, Missy,” Fontana said, looking at the chart and the ultrasound. “How’ve you been feeling?”

“Ready to get done,” the girl said. She was nineteen and had been on a cruise with her parents when the plague hit and the captain ordered abandon ship. The inevitable had occurred on the lifeboat which, fortunately, had also managed to contain no infected.

“How’s the morning sickness?” Fontana asked, pulling out a stethoscope.

“Morning, noon and night,” Missy said, dimpling. “But at least I’m not throwing up sushi all the time. It tastes better going down.”

“Lemme listen in on junior,” he added, putting his stethoscope in his ears. He straightened up after a moment. “Nobody, including the doctors in the CDC, have any clue if there’s going to be effects from things like being castaway, okay?”

“Okay,” Missy said unhappily. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard it before.

“That being said, looking at the ultrasound, listening to the heart, this appears to be a nice normal, healthy, active baby,” Fontana said, sort of smiling. His face wasn’t really made for it.

“I hope so,” Missy said. “I just want him…her to be okay, you know?”

“I know,” Fontana said, scribbling in the chart. “We all do. We are so few. Keep up the prenatal vitamins, try to keep them down for that matter, but it’s all looking good…”

“Lieutenant,” one of the nurses said, sticking her head in the cubicle. “We need you in exam six.”

“It’s going to be fine,” Thomas said, smiling and waving as he walked out.

“What’s up?” he asked the nurse.

“Patient is presenting with abdominal pain,” the girl said carefully. She was obviously trying to remember the lingo since “nurse” was a stretch. “She has a fever of one oh one and her BP is lower than her last visit.”

“Okay,” Thomas said, taking the chart and entering the cabin. “Hello…Cathy.”

“I’m sorry to take up your time, Lieutenant,” the woman said unhappily. “I wasn’t supposed to be in until next week. But I think something’s wrong.”

The woman’s pregnancy hadn’t been as easy as Missy’s. She’d had bouts of high blood pressure and the fetus had never been terribly robust. He would have put her on daily checks if he had the time and people.

“Let me do a quick check,” Thomas said, pulling out his stethoscope. He listened for a moment, then said: “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped out into the hallway and down to the nurse’s station.

“Start prepping the OR,” he said.

“Problem?” Lieutenant Fallon said.

“Pretty sure that fetus is dead. Please tell me we have some Keflex left. ’Cause I’m also pretty sure it’s necrotic.”

“You guys look like you could use a drink,” Steve said, waving his tray at the table. “Mind if I?”

“Please,” Walker said.

They’d eventually set up an “officers” area in the dining room. Walker, as one of the “doctors” was automatically included. Steve didn’t always use it; he preferred to strike up conversations with random people to get a feel for what was going on. But tonight it looked as if it was the right place to be.

“Bad day?” Steve asked, taking a bite of fish.

“Two premature deliveries,” Fontana said. “In the U.S., pre-Plague, they’d be in intensive neonatal care. As it is, I just wrote ‘stillborn.’ Which they weren’t, exactly, but they didn’t last long. And one that died in the womb.”

“Ouch,” Steve said.

“I’m not going to ruin your dinner describing taking it out,” Walker said. “We’re now pumping the mother full of some of our precious remaining antibiotics and we’re not sure it’s going to work.”

“I just gave orders to have the ablebodied, by our estimation, among the sick, lame and lazy start clearing the bodies on the base,” Steve said, continuing to eat. He’d told himself at the beginning that he had to eat regular meals no matter what. “At gunpoint if necessary. When I hear things like this, those decisions come easier.”

“The instructors in Q Course stressed over and over again, ‘You are not an MD,’” Fontana said. “I mean, I’ve got no real clue about toxicology, histology, rheumatology…”

“So if I recall correctly,” Steve said to fill in the pause, “we’re anticipating three to four hundred serious complications?”

“When we actually started doing exams and crunching the number, we got it to three hundred forty,” Fontana said. “Probably. Statistically. We’re getting up to about forty that have lost them one way or another. Three late-term abortions based on serious complications. Four if you count today. We don’t have the original studies so we don’t know if early to mid-term miscarriages count. Anyway, at this rate only three hundred to go. Yay.”

“The way things are going, if we could materially and socially, I’d say pull the babies on at least two hundred of the mothers,” Walker said, munching placidly on a tuna roll. “Which we can’t because there’s not enough trained hands and there’s no way you can get them all to agree. Not to mention it would be horrible for morale.”

“Losing all two hundred mothers is going to be just as bad,” Fontana said.

“Are we going to?” Steve asked quietly.

“Yes,” Walker replied. “We are. Not necessarily the two hundred I’d pick but we are going to lose two hundred or so to pregnancy related complications. We’ve already lost ten. Lot more to go. Possibly less if we have enough equipment or find some MDs or anyone with enough surgical training to emergency C-section.”

“On the other hand, that means sixteen hundred new children,” Steve said.

“More,” Fontana said. “We have an unusually high number of multiples. Should be two percent, it’s more like five percent. No clue why. Admittedly, more of those mothers are in the ‘at risk’ group. But we’ll have more than one child per mother on average.”