Hospital Island. The apprentices hop to.

Greater Teleport. 

The last time she did this, she'd been in a mud house in Mut, surrounded by women with no particular training other than having helped deliver babies in the past. She hadn't been particularly worried about death then, either. They had Saira with them, so there was no real chance of her bleeding out, only a chance that she'd get sick and die of fever in the weeks to come. It wasn't that dangerous, not the way it had been a hundred years ago, when the village was smaller and had no cleric near enough to come to every childbirth. Mostly it was painful, and kind of embarrassing.

This time she has a room in her hospital, trained nurses and medical clerics, and her husband. It will be even less dangerous this time. It will probably be exactly as painful. She kind of expects it to be even more embarrassing. For the moment, though, it's going to be kind of boring; the baby will come when it comes, and for once in her life she's not really part of the flurry of activity around her.

It's - not a very dignified process. If I haven't mentioned that yet.

I'm the oldest of five and we were all born at home. You're not going to scare me off.

Now, can anyone take him to his wife? Like, say, that cleric over there, on the order of now?

She's a middle-aged Pharasmin, and she doesn't seem to be in any terrible hurry. "Sure. But first, are you sick? Cough, fever, nausea?"

"I have not exhibited any symptoms since the last time I had a Remove Disease, which was this morning. Look, do you know where they take the women who are about to give birth – " 

"Yes, sir. You won't want the main entrance, that's women-only." She flags down a younger woman, this one not a cleric. "Rabiah, this is Naima's husband. Please take him to the west entrance of the birthing ward, we don't want him surprising anyone."

"Of course." And she can take him around and find the right room.

Naima's room has both a plain little bed and a decorated birthing stool, covered in the symbols of Pharasma and Sarenrae. She's not using either right now. She's traded her ornate clothing for a hospital gown, propped herself up against the wall with one arm, and seems to be mostly focusing on breathing. 

Would it be helpful if he rubs circles on her back?

Yeah, that's nice.

It's going to be a while, yet.

He's so glad they have the telepathic bond, because he can make vague comforting noises with his mouth, and at the same time say – 

How long did it take for Rahim?

All day. People say it takes longer the first time you do it, though. She breathes, and tenses again, and then relaxes a bit. This isn't even really active labor yet, we probably didn't actually need to come in this early. Not that the worrying isn't adorable.

What if our child gets impatient? How would they feel if they came into the world and their father wasn't there to meet them?

She gives him an awkward half-hug. I'm sure they'll adore you. It really is going to be hours from now, though.

Then I suppose we wait. I'm sure it will go quickly, though. Can you imagine that a child of ours won't be in a tearing hurry to see what's outside?

I suppose not. They had better wait until there's a door large enough to fit their head through, though.

...right. This isn't just a matter of wanting to meet their baby sooner. 

Please – if there's anything at all, anything in the world I can do to make this easier for you, tell me. 

You're terribly sweet. Just be here.

Two hours and many contractions later, Naima remembers how she feels about waiting: it sucks. She hates it. The entire concept of sitting somewhere doing nothing is deeply upsetting. The nurses have brought her food and water, which is something, but it's hardly enough to keep her occupied.

"Hate waiting," she murmurs, leaning against her husband. "I keep wondering if I could wander the hospital tapping people for the next hour, and then remembering that I made the rule against sick people interacting with women in labor for perfectly good reasons, and also that I'd screw up all of our data, which seems like an incredibly heartless reason not to heal people, and it usually doesn't even come up, right, because tapping people on hospital island is fundamentally less efficient than tapping people in my designated tapping areas, but - "

She hisses, tensing up again. Hate waiting. I'm against it.

"Do you want to help me with my work? You know that crafting spell I'm working on, I want to use weaving as a test case, and I need you to help me understand how it works." 

I know, I know – I could round up some sick people in the city and bring them here, if you wanted, they could come in through the back entrance like I did. As long as you think it's safe. 

No, no, I really did make the rule for a reason. I could probably weave intermittently.

I'm not sure we could get the loom in here. Just – here, he can make an illusory one. Show me where that bit goes – 

She can show him where the bits go. That's about the right level of challenge right now. She forms, but decides to ignore, the question of whether this is actually useful work, or whether he's just humoring her. If ever there were a time to just humor her, this would probably be it.

She gets a rhythm down, for a few hours - a few minutes at a time of working through the lighter pain, then a minute or so of enduring as calmly as possible as the pain flares up, then a few more minutes of work. Occasionally she instead stops to pee, or paces the room aimlessly. The nurses check on her every now and then, different ones as the sun dips below the horizon and then the stars come out. She wishes she'd finished out the day - she thinks perhaps she could have, and keeps having to try not to calculate the number of people missed - but it's far too late for that now. And it really is sweet, that Élie is trying so hard to get this right. Maybe next time they'll both be calmer.

At some point she gives up on weaving; she isn't entirely sure when. Labor carries on into the night, well past midnight. She's exhausted, and the pain is getting much worse. She'd vaguely planned to use the stool, but instead she finds herself kneeling on the floor as she did last time, artlessly prodding Élie to keep touching her and saying the same meaningless things over and over.

He can do that. 

(If he was a better husband, he wouldn't have to. He'd have already invented a spell to remove pain, not just delay it – it's not like he didn't know childbirth hurt – he'll have it in time for the next one – but that doesn't help Naima now). 

He's so sweet. Honestly it's probably good that I'm experiencing it this way - this is how everyone else experiences it, it's really the best possible way of testing how the hospital works for this, how the hospital feels, on levels that the numbers we have can't capture, whether we help people feel good about having children or they feel weak and scared and sad.

It seems so much worse here, actually, on an emotional level. It might be safer - than other places in the city, anyway, I'm not actually sure that we're outperforming places out in the country, and in that case maybe we should actually be encouraging people to go give birth outside the city if they can - but it's so depressing? It's lonely and it's boring and it's nerve-wracking not to know anyone - of course I suppose if people left the city to give birth in the country they wouldn't know anyone where they were going, either, so I guess it's not as if the villages are outperforming on that front for city residents. I just keep thinking about how last time there were lots of women everywhere, women I knew, and I didn't even like most of them most of the time, and they didn't really like me either, but somehow it was good to have them there anyway, I guess because childbirth isn't really an emotionally complicated thing between women, it's really pretty simple in terms of how it goes and what you're there for and it doesn't give you that many opportunities to do things that people can get ticked off with you about, or maybe it does but everyone just gives you a pass for the day? Anyway, there are women everywhere, and now it's just you, and you're great and I love you and you shouldn't leave, but it's honestly also kind of awkward? Although maybe it isn't objectively awkward, if there's such a thing, maybe it's just that I absorbed that the way this is supposed to work is that all the women see each other when they're being ridiculous and vulnerable like this, and the men don't, they just kind of hang out outside and worry, I guess, and then later on you can just present them with a baby, and with you still being alive, hopefully, and they get to be so proud of you, without having to have any feelings about seeing you when you were in pain and probably scared and being kind of ridiculous and doing the endless babbling thing, not that everyone does that, I think that's just me, and I'm aware that it's absurd to be worried about the social side of things while I'm in the middle of having a baby, I'm honestly sort of wondering whether there's some sort of conservation of worrying thing where if you don't have to worry about yourself and the baby surviving you have to latch onto some other much more ridiculous thing to worry about, but the feelings I actually notice are kind of wishing that I were around all of my sisters and mother who already know that I'm ridiculous, but instead you're here, and I don't actually want you to think that I'm ridiculous, particularly, I mostly want you to think that I'm really cool for having created a little person, even if the process of getting the person out is really one of the least dignified things that people do.