**********
The day crawled by like molasses for Clark. His two interviews had gone quite well, netting him a lot of useful information. He felt like they were close to breaking the story wide open. It seemed like there was just one more thing tying it all together that they hadn't yet found.
Clark couldn't devote himself fully to the investigation. He was too worried about Lois to do any serious investigating. In fact, he was a nervous wreck. Whenever he had a break, he would rush off as Superman and buzz by their house watching her. He called her a few times an hour to see if she was okay, but he knew that she had tried to make herself sound healthier than she really was to soothe his nerves, which she obviously knew were racing.
The day hadn't ended quickly enough. He had torn out of work as soon as he could and had raced home to his wife. They had survived the day. Maybe Lois really had only needed a good day's rest.
He flew home as fast as he could, and burst into the house, expecting to see the house bustling with activity as it had been every afternoon that his parents had been staying with them. He expected to see his mom in the kitchen cooking dinner and Lois sitting at the table sulking about not being allowed to taste anything early. His dad was usually watching television in the living room. However, today the house was empty. That was weird. Where was everyone? He’d had this strange feeling of doom all day, and now it was getting stronger.
“Lois?” he called as he pulled his glasses down his nose, trying to find her. She couldn't have left since her car was right outside. What if she had found something for the story this afternoon?
No, she wouldn't have left if she wasn't feeling well, right?
Normally, the answer was a definite "yes, she probably had left", but now so close to their baby's arrival, he was sure she wouldn't put herself in any danger.
Regardless, he had decided that Superman was going to take the night off. He'd had a strange sense of foreboding all day and his mind wouldn't rest until he was sure that his wife was okay.
“I’m upstairs, Clark!” she exclaimed trying to make her voice more upbeat than she felt. “Would you mind getting me some ice cream? I’ll be downstairs in a minute.”
She successfully tried to stand up and then she decided to make a quick stop in the bathroom before she tried to come downstairs. The strange nagging pain that she had been feeling all day was getting worse. It was almost unbearable now that she was standing up and trying to walk. She was sure ice cream would help, though. It always helped. Ice cream, the cure for all ailments.
Clark was still overcome with the strange feeling of dread that had been plaguing him all day even though Lois sounded fine and happy. Although he was worried about her, he replied, “Okay, honey. At your service.” He obediently headed downstairs to make her a bowl of double chocolate chip ice cream. "Where are my mom and dad?" he shouted upstairs conversationally.
She hadn't looked good when he'd left in the morning, so he'd vowed to come straight home as soon as he could. He'd been watching her all day, had called every fifteen minutes, but he knew that Lois would have killed him if she knew. All day she had sounded okay. Not exactly fine, but it didn't really sound like anything was wrong. His premonition of doom had been just a scary dream. He was kidding himself. Lois was fine. The baby was fine.
Then why was he still sure that something was wrong?
When Lois made it to the bathroom, she realized that something wasn’t right. It probably hadn’t been right all day even though she had been in denial. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably, and she wasn’t sure she could stand for much longer. Then she glanced down at the ground.
“Clark!” she exclaimed out of pure fear when she saw the slightly red-tinted fluid that was pooling on the ground below her.
Her water had broken! And something was wrong! It looked like blood!
She was almost in hysterics when she realized that she was in labor, and that her water had broken, and that there looked to be blood in the fluid!
That wasn't normal.
There had to be something wrong with the baby. Where was he? Did he not hear her? How could he not hear her? He was right downstairs! And he had Superhearing! Where was he? Did she really speak or was the voice just in her mind?
“Clark! Clark! Claaaaaaaaaaaaark!”
Her head felt like it was a mile away from her body. She’d lost all sensation. Her entire body felt weak and limp like it was all one big pot of spaghetti.
The last words she said before she collapsed were, “Please . . . help . . . me!” as she unceremoniously crashed to the ground.
"Lois!" Clark exclaimed. At first he wasn't sure if she had really said something or if it had been his imagination, her voice was barely a whisper. Then he heard it again, loudly, desperately screaming his name. She was in trouble!
Crash! She had fallen. The bowl of ice cream Clark had been holding slipped from his hands. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
His heart almost stopped beating when he heard the crash of her fall. “Lois?” he called, desperately hoping she would respond telling him everything was fine.
When she said nothing in response, Clark zipped up the steps as fast as he'd ever flown. He yelled again, louder, voice filled with anxious desperation, “Lois?”
“Lois!” Clark moaned in agony at the sight of her pale form sprawled on the ground motionless.
He'd seen many people like this as Superman, however none had ever been his wife, the one person that meant the most to him in the world.
The sight of his beloved wife limply lying on the ground, skin as white as porcelain, sent all of his common sense out the window. He was frozen in place, unable to move, staring at her prone form.
When his eyes focused on the drops of blood by her feet, he underwent a metamorphosis from the confident superhero who faced disasters like this on a daily basis into the village idiot that didn’t even know his own name.
He had saved Lois's life countless times. This was different. He had never seen her as an unconscious, bleeding, ghostly shadow of the woman he loved. She had never been carrying their baby.
His world was crashing down around him. This was his beloved Lois, the woman he loved more than life itself. Every survival technique he had learned as Superman had escaped him. He wanted to do so much, but couldn't think. He couldn't even move to pick her up because he was frozen in place.
He sank down to the ground next to her and gathered her head onto his lap and stroked her dark, silky hair. “Lois,” he wailed again. Even though he knew what he was supposed to do in this situation, his mind was an absolute blank. This was not some nameless, faceless person he saw as Superman, this was Lois! And that made everything so painfully different. He couldn’t distance himself from this situation in order to think objectively. If he didn’t do the right thing, he would lose her and their baby, and he would die if that happened. She was his reason for living, sustaining him through every day.
Even though he was frozen with fear and grief, he had the presence of mind, or maybe it was an instinct, to grab Lois’s wrist and feel for a pulse. It was racing, but it was there! At least he could cling to that fact. He didn’t want to move her to check the baby because he wasn’t absolutely sure what had happened.
Actually, he didn’t want to check because he didn’t want to find out that the baby was in trouble. It was stupid, but he felt that if he didn’t see it, it couldn’t have happened.
Again, the lapse in judgment from the man whose wife was unconscious in front of him had to be excused. He couldn’t be both the hero and the husband at the same time. Right now, he was in too much shock to become the confident Superman. He was stuck being the frantic husband.
The one logical thing to do would be to gather her into his arms and fly her to the hospital. It was a thought that he never considered because he was frozen, unable to think clearly. His basic survival instincts had disappeared.
Martha and Jonathan, sitting on the back balcony, had no idea of the drama that had been unfolding inside the house. Then they heard Clark's primal scream. “Was that Clark?” Martha asked, an edge of fear in her voice.
“I don't know. It sounded like him,” Jonathan slowly agreed, feeling the same sense of dread that Martha obviously felt.
They both jumped out of their seats as fast as they could and rushed into the house to find out the source of Clark’s scream. Although neither of them wanted to put it into words, they both feared the worst. However, neither of them knew exactly what the worst could be.
“Clark!” Martha called, trying to locate her son. When he didn't respond, she told Jonathan, “Something isn’t right. It’s just not right.”
Jonathan's heart pounded in fear. Somehow he had a premonition that something had happened to Lois. She just hadn’t looked right the whole day, and he couldn't think of anything else that would make Clark so frantic. He followed Martha towards the sound of Clark's voice, with his sense of dread growing with each step. Jonathan knew he didn’t want to see whatever was awaiting, for whatever it was couldn’t be good.
Clark hadn’t noticed when Martha and Jonathan entered the bathroom. They both froze they saw Lois, the woman who had become like a daughter to them, there on the tile seemingly unconscious and surrounded by drops of her own blood.
“Lois!” Martha exclaimed. She felt her heart skip a beat at the sight; she couldn’t bear to look at the sight before her. It couldn’t be her Lois, could it? It had to be a horrific nightmare. Lois was still in her room, with her laptop, trying to do research into the mayor's office, wasn’t she? She had to be. This couldn’t be happening in real life, not to Lois.
Then she looked at her poor son, who looked as white as a ghost and had tears streaming down his pale face. He was holding Lois’s head in his lap and he was positively shaking. The boy looked almost more helpless and lost than Lois did. He was a far cry from the hero she knew him to be. Clark had lost his cool under pressure, something Martha had never known him to do. Why hadn't he taken Lois to the hospital?
Martha knew her boy needed a wake-up call. “Clark!” she said as sternly as she could. “Do something! Take her to the hospital! Help her!” She felt bad for being so harsh on her only son, the poor boy whose wife and baby were in danger, but he was the one person there that could possibly help her right now.
Jonathan moved behind Clark and tried to tap him on the shoulder. He wanted to do something to bring his son back to reality. Even if he couldn't save Lois himself, he had to be able to do something.
Clark had somehow understood what Martha had told him, and sort of responded to Jonathan's stimulus, and managed to pull his cell phone out of his pocket and dial 9-1-1 with shaking hands. He knew he could have flown her to the hospital faster than any ambulance could get there, but again he wasn't thinking clearly. Right now, he wasn't sure if he even remembered how to fly.
He wasn’t sure how he managed to dial the three numbers correctly because he couldn’t hold his hand still and couldn’t focus his eyes through his tears.
“9-1-1, what's your emergency?” the dispatcher answered.
“My wife,” Clark said without thinking, amazed that he could speak at all. Then Clark completely lost it. He was practically in hysterics and could not form a coherent sentence. “Please help me!” Clark exclaimed. “Lois! Unconscious. Bleeding. The baby!”
When Martha realized Clark wasn’t helping the dispatcher, she grabbed the phone from his ice cold hand. Even though she had always prided herself on her sense of calm, even Martha was having a hard time keeping a cool head. This was her son's wife, the woman who had become like the daughter she never had.
Martha knew she wasn’t really in any better shape mentally than Clark, but at least she knew she could give the person on the phone good directions. If Clark couldn't fly Lois himself, she would make sure the ambulance would be able to get there as fast as humanly possible.
After grabbing the phone from Clark’s trembling hand, she resolved to try to give the 9-1-1 person any help she could. “Hello? Yes, my . . . daughter . . .” Martha realized that it was the first time she’d ever called Lois her daughter, even though it was always understood although it was unspoken. “She’s nine months pregnant . . . We found her unconscious on the bathroom floor . . . yes, yes she’s bleeding, but we can’t tell where the blood is coming from . . . 348 Hyperion Avenue . . . Thank you. Please hurry,” the older woman added frantically.
When Martha hung up the phone, she wasn’t sure whom to help: Clark or Jonathan . . . or herself.
Clark stroked Lois’s hair and whispered something inaudible, sobbing like a baby. Martha had never seen her son cry; he had to be in shock.
She was surprised that he wasn’t using his powers and rudimentary medical training to do everything he physically could to help his wife, but, in a situation like this, she knew that he might not have remembered that he was blessed by so many wonderful powers. The poor boy was paralyzed with terror. No one could blame him, though. It was his wife and baby in this situation. He wouldn’t be human if the situation didn’t affect him so drastically. Even though he wasn't really human, his emotions were.
Martha knew that she seemed calm on the exterior, but she was a mess on the inside. Every time she looked at Lois and the drops of blood on the floor, she felt her heart sinking. She just wished that Clark would break out of it and become the confident man she had raised. She desperately wished he would get it together and miraculously save his the woman he loved. He had saved so many other people, why couldn't he save his wife?
Could Clark even subconsciously be blaming himself for everything that had happened? Was he worried that his alien physiology had done something to the baby that made it hurt Lois?
While all the drama was taking place at her daughter's house, Ellen Lane had been busy picking up a gift for her grandchild and preparing to bring it to Lois. She turned down their street just as an ambulance came up behind her. Without a fleeting thought, the instinctive gossip inside of her decided to follow the ambulance to see just where it was going. Her heart nearly stopped when the ambulance stopped right in front of her daughter's house. That’s what she got for chasing ambulances.
What could have happened? It had to have been Jonathan or Martha Kent. From what Lois had said, they were staying in Metropolis for a few weeks until the baby was born. Could Jonathan have had a heart attack? Could Martha have had a stroke? Ellen felt her heart sink as she realized that with Lois so close to giving birth, whoever it was would never get to see their first grandchild, but she would. It just wasn’t fair.
Ellen pulled her car to a screeching halt behind the ambulance and hopped out. While they unloaded the gurney, Ellen found herself franticly asking one of the men, “What’s wrong? My daughter lives here,” she added, so they wouldn’t think she was just some nosy person that followed ambulances.
The man turned towards her and said, “I’m not sure, ma’am. The call said that a pregnant woman is unconscious and bleeding.”
Ellen felt her jaw drop and all of the blood leave her face. “Lois?” she wondered in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. Even though she had mentally prepared herself for the worst if it was either Jonathan or Martha, she had never even dreamed that it could be Lois.
“Lois!” she exclaimed. “My baby! Now come on! Hurry up!” she scolded the paramedics.
Ellen led the group with the gurney into the house and she realized that the commotion was all happening upstairs. She fleetingly noticed the ice cream that Clark had dropped when he had heard Lois calling for him. Martha came to the steps and shouted, “Up here!”
“Martha!” Ellen exclaimed when she saw the familiar face, and horrified expression. “What happened to Lois?” She and the paramedics started to ascend the stairs.
Ellen was in a state of shock. Lois was fine. This was all a big joke. She had talked to her daughter this afternoon.
Martha shook her head when she said, “I have no idea, Ellen. And Clark’s no help,” she added when it looked like Ellen was going to comment. “He’s in there just holding her head.”
Ellen shook her head. What good was that? When they got to the top of the stairs, Ellen got her first look at the scene in the bathroom. Martha and Jonathan were waiting outside and they both looked horrible.
When she finally gathered the courage to look into the bathroom, Ellen saw the worst possible sight imaginable. Clark was sitting on the floor, his face having lost all of its color, crying and muttering something, obviously so distraught that he couldn’t do anything to help his wife whose head he cradled on his lap. And Lois . . . poor Lois . . . her little girl was as white as a ghost and obviously unconscious sprawled out on the bathroom floor. Ellen gasped when she saw the blood on the floor. “What happened?” Ellen whispered, shocked she could find any voice.
No one answered her because the paramedics had started to work on Lois taking her blood pressure and other vital signs. Martha and Jonathan peered in to the bathroom trying to see what the paramedics thought was wrong . . . and praying that her vital signs were normal for Lois and the baby. Clark was still holding her head in his lap, but his tears had stopped. Now he looked almost like a shadow of the man she knew. He stared blankly as the medics worked on his wife. It was almost like he was paralyzed with fear.
Ellen couldn’t stay in the bathroom any longer. She couldn’t look at Lois like this. It just wasn’t right. Images of Lois as a little girl floated through her mine. Lois was so young, so full of life. This couldn't be happening.
One of the medics came out of the bathroom and grabbed Ellen’s arm. She looked like the one person that would be able to give him coherent answers. The young man hadn’t been any help and neither had the older man and woman.
“Ma’am, I was wondering if you could give me some information.”
Ellen took a deep breath. “Oh, yes, dear,” she said with a definitive nod, happy she was able to do something, however minor, to help her daughter. For once, being an overbearing mother definitely paid off. She knew the answer to every one of the medic’s questions.
Soon, the paramedics had lifted Lois’s small body onto the stretcher and were beginning to wheel her out of the bathroom. Clark still didn’t seem like he knew what was going on, but he had somehow stood up and grabbed onto Lois’s limp hand. He jogged next to the stretcher as they made their way out to the ambulance. Martha, Jonathan, and Ellen followed a short distance behind.
“Do they know what’s wrong?” Ellen said to Martha, almost frightened to know the answer.
“I don’t know,” Martha responded quickly. It was at times like this that she wished that she knew more medical jargon. “They said something . . . she’s in labor, but other than that I don’t know. It didn’t sound good.”
Martha couldn't help but wonder if something to do with Clark's alien origins had done something to the baby that had hurt Lois. The pregnancy hadn't seemed abnormal thus far, but maybe this was the end result. How could they know what Clark's genes were really like? They had all assumed, maybe incorrectly, that the fact that Clark had been able to conceive a child in the first place meant that he was compatible with Lois. What if they had been wrong? Martha couldn't help but want to smack herself for not suggesting that they explore the pregnancy further with Superman's Doctor Klein.
“Oh, my little girl,” Ellen whispered. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she knew Lois was in trouble. At this point, she realized that she and Lois hadn't exactly made peace. There was still a rift between them lasting from her childhood for which she may never get a chance to atone.
**********
Twenty minutes later, the disheveled group had finally made it to the hospital behind the ambulance.
Clark was almost still in shock. What had happened? He'd known that something had been terribly wrong before he left this morning, but he hadn't done anything. He had gone completely limp.
He had known exactly what he needed to do. He should have scooped Lois into his arms and flown her to the hospital at superspeed. Knowing he had to do it and actually forcing his body to do it were vastly different things.
At the sight of Lois's pale body sprawled out unconscious on the floor, he had lost all physical control. Even though he knew exactly what he needed to do, he hadn't been able to do it.
His mind had been working too hard. He didn't want to move her because she might have hit her head when she fell. After he determined that it wasn't the problem, he still wasn't able to move.
What an idiot.
The thought that he might have caused this overcame him and sent him into a paralyzed state. He couldn't move, couldn’t think.
What kind of hero was he if he couldn't even save the one person that meant the most to him in the world!
In the sterile emergency waiting room, he unconsciously focused his x-ray vision on the room where they were working on Lois. Of course *now* his powers worked on command.
Why hadn't they worked a few minutes ago?
His enhanced hearing locked on the voices from her room, and he heard a masked man exclaim, “I’m not sure what’s happening!"
Damned superhearing and x-ray vision. He wasn't sure which was better: complete sensory deprivation where he wasn't even conscious of what was happening or watching the worst unfold. He had never experienced the feeling of absolute powerlessness.
With all the hustle in the emergency room, and the internal torment of his mind, Clark was only able to pick up snippets of the doctors' conversation. Part of him wished he could be in the room with the doctors helping doing what he hadn't been able to do before. Lois needed him. She needed help.
He hadn't been able to help her before after she collapsed. His body had gone limp and his mind blank. Couldn't think. Couldn't move. Couldn’t help the woman that meant the most to him in the world.
What had happened to him?
He had never been paralyzed by fear before in his life.
A doctor's voice invaded his thoughts. “The baby's breech."
Was that bad? Could that have caused Lois to pass out? The frantic voices began to jumble together because they were coming so fast.
"But what's happening with the mom?"
"Placental abruption?"
"Doesn't look like it. Mother's in distress. Heart rate's falling."
Clark's breath caught in his chest. He slowly stood up, eyes fixed on Lois, and began to walk towards her trauma room.
"We need to get the baby out."
"In the ER?"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"We need to get it out as soon as possible."
"Heart rate's dropping."
Ring. Ring. Beep.
"Sir, you can't go in there!"
"She's losing a lot of blood."
"Where’s it coming from?"
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"Prep for an emergency C-section!"
"Sir, you can't go in there!"
"Ninety seconds skin to baby."
Clark closed his eyes, unable to watch the doctors cut into his wife's skin.
"Is that the father?"
"I think so."
"Someone needs to talk to him."
Clark felt a hand on his arm. As if he was moving in slow motion, Clark turned his head to look at the person interrupting his vision and hearing.
The masked woman began, "Sir, the baby seems fine. It’s a girl."
Clark smiled slightly at the sight of his baby, but he couldn’t be joyful. Of course he was ecstatic that his baby was healthy and that he even had a baby at all, but he couldn’t react properly when his world was still crashing down around him.
"And Lois?" he asked frantically. He almost didn't want to hear the answer.
The doctors were still working on her. She was still bleeding. The baby was crying.
There was one bright spot in his haze. Their baby, their beautiful little girl, seemed . . . okay. She had even cried a little weak whimper initially, and now she was crying full-force.
"We don't know yet. She's lost a lot of blood. . ."
"What happened?" Clark knew what happened when someone lost large quantities of blood. If they didn't stop the bleeding soon. . . he didn't want to imagine the consequences.
"We aren't sure yet."
"You aren't sure yet?" How couldn't they know for sure? Why couldn't they stop the bleeding?
"We're trying everything we can, sir. Do you want to see your daughter?"
Clark nodded immediately.
He had a hard time prying his eyes from Lois, but he needed to see the baby. Lois would have wanted him to check on her.
It was a girl! They had a daughter. It seemed almost surreal. Even this morning, they had been so excited about their new baby. Now he couldn't believe everything that had happened.
They had a baby girl.
But he wasn't sure if Lois would ever get to see her.
As Clark watched the doctors and nurses work on Lois and their baby, all of the emergency experience that had escaped him previously flooded his brain at once. He instantly remembered a book he had read about possible complications associated emergency cesarean sections to both mother and baby.
Lois had lost a lot blood, and that was never good. Even worse, it seemed like she was still bleeding. But the baby seemed fine, perfect, wonderful, amazing.
They needed to stop the bleeding. Could he cauterize whereever she was bleeding from with his heat vision? Would that work?
It was at times like this that he wished he'd had formal medical training. There was only so much he could learn from text books.
Their baby seemed like she was doing well, the best that could be expected under the circumstances. She was so small, so beautiful. Clark had to fight back tears when he looked at her. Their baby. She was theirs. He and Lois had made her.
Surreal.
This was not how he'd imagined the birth of their baby. He'd never imagined not sharing this beautiful moment with Lois. She deserved to be the first person to hold her baby.
It was looking good for their little girl. She was crying now. Plus, she started to pink up with the oxygen they were giving her. Even though Clark didn’t have much experience with babies, he knew that their baby looked healthy. His sense of optimism assured him that she was going to make it.
She had to make it!
Clark kept switching his attention from the baby to Lois. While their daughter seemed to be doing well, the same could not be said for Lois. The team of doctors was trying everything they knew of to stop the bleeding and to get the uterus to contract back. They had tried a uterine massage and had administered as much pitocin as they could. However, they were not meeting any success. She was losing the blood as quickly as they could transfuse it in.
He was absolutely frantic. As happy as he was that their baby was doing well, that happiness was all but destroyed when he realized what a thin line Lois was treading between life and death. She had lost way too much blood. And they weren’t stopping the bleeding. He wanted to do something to help her, but there wasn’t anything he could do. These doctors were professionals. They knew what they were doing. He had to trust them implicitly.
The neonatologist turned to Clark and smiled when she gave him the good news about the baby, “She’s going to be fine. Her postpartum Apgar was 8, but her ten minute Apgar is 10. She’s really responded well to the oxygen. She’s going to be fine.”
“Thank God,” Clark breathed. He didn’t take his eyes off Lois, but he felt part of the massive burden on his heart lift away. At least their baby was going to be fine. Now he only had to worry about his wife.
This had to be a horrible dream. When he opened his eyes, Lois would be lying next to him.
He closed his eyes, scrunched them tightly shut. When he opened them again, nothing had disappeared. His daughter was crying on the other side of the room, and the doctors were still working on Lois.
She wouldn't stop bleeding. They transfused new blood in as quickly as they could, but she was losing it just as fast as they could get it in.
"Sir, we've tried everything we can to stop the bleeding, but it won’t stop. The only thing left to do is a hysterectomy."
“I don’t care!” Clark exclaimed in agony, eyes fixed on Lois's pale form. “She’s bleeding out. She’s still bleeding. She’s lost too much blood. Do what you have to do . . . just save my wife!”
It seemed almost like a slow motion video as he watched the doctors remove his wife's uterus. This was her only chance to survive, and he was powerless to change anything.
He had the power to do so many things, yet he was utterly powerless to do anything to save his wife.
**********
to be continued
