We knew exactly where we were supposed to go. We followed the maps etched across our goggles to the room where Baby #24 was being born. Mother’s name: Natalie Jenkins. Room #: 459.
Entering the building through a back door, we walked through empty hallways until we reached the main part of the hospital. Then we took an elevator up to the Maternity Ward on the fourth floor. When we entered the elevator, we were alone. Just as I was about to press the button labeled 4 to ascend, three nurses entered the enclosed space. One greeted us by saying, “Hello. How are you?” We just nodded our heads as we’d been instructed to do. Don’t speak unless you absolutely need to, except in regard to your pregnant woman once you get into the delivery room.
I blinked my eyes to have my pulse rate appear across the inside screen of my goggles. As it climbed, I worked to control it. Breathe, breathe. Calm yourself. Remember what the pulse rate medicine did to my body, how it felt. Try to repeat the effect.
I worried for nothing. The nurses didn’t care about us. They had more important things to discuss about their patients and their personal lives. After talking briefly about a patient who had delivered a set of twins at 4:00 AM, they discussed where to go out to dinner before going on night shift.
When the elevator stopped on the third floor, they got out.
I sighed with relief. I quickly pressed the 4 button, before anyone else had a chance to get on.
The next Ping! let us know we’d reached our destination. The doors whooshed open, and we stepped out into our biggest challenge so far.
There were a lot of doctors, nurses and visitors walking around the maternity floor and sitting behind the main desk. Thankfully, there were quite a few wearing personal protective suits. I figured we’d blend in just fine.
We found Room #459 and peeked through the glass window. There was an obstetrician dressed in less protective clothing than us, as it would be very difficult to deliver a child while wearing that cumbersome an outfit. However, there were also two nurses dressed exactly like us.
We knew from our records that the pregnant woman would have complications in about five minutes, breech birth, so the staff would become too busy to pay much attention to exactly who we were.
Waylon pushed the door open. He said, “We were sent here to assist.”
Dr. Owen Reynolds said, “Hello. We’re getting close to delivery here.” He smiled at the woman laboring in the bed, her long brown hair spread across the pillow. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead. Her hands clenched the bedrails. She was moaning and seemingly oblivious to everyone in the room. Her thoughts had turned inward, focusing on her contractions and pain and the new life she was bringing into the world.
I blinked to decrease my empathy. The pain the woman was experiencing was almost too much to bear. I had to ratchet down my mirroring response in order to protect my own health and emotional stability.
In my own time period, pain control implants in the brain are accessed as needed to control pain. But back here in this more primitive era, medication was used to manage pain. Some of the genetically modified babies were being born with insignificantly developed lungs and other problems. A medical decision had been made to avoid giving these mothers any pain medication that might affect their baby’s lung function or ability to survive the birth process. Natalie Jenkins was one of these women.
As Dr. Reynolds studied the monitor, his bushy gray eyebrows slanted downward with concern. He stood up to address the laboring woman. He said, “We’re going to push on your stomach, Natalie. Your baby is trying to turn himself around. We don’t want this to become a breech birth. Do you understand?”
Her voice was weak and shaky as she replied with one word: “Yes.”
Dr. Reynolds told the nurses: “Call Angelina. STAT.”
A nurse pressed a call button on the wall. Speaking into the intercom system, she said, “We need two more nurses in here. STAT. Possible breech.”
Almost immediately, two nurses wearing the same kind of protective gear we had on entered the room. They applied cold compresses to the woman’s forehead and held her hand while the other two nurses pressed on the woman’s stomach, trying to keep the baby from turning around and presenting his feet to the birth canal.
Waylon and I busied ourselves helping out in ways that wouldn’t change the outcome of history in this particular situation.
The woman let out a series of bloodcurdling screams every time someone pressed on her stomach.
It was odd to see what these people looked like close-up. I’d viewed photos, of course, but this was my first time seeing the actual earlier version of human beings in person. In the room, there were the four nurses covered from head to toe in personal protective gear, so they didn’t look much different than Waylon and me at that particular moment. But the laboring mother had light tan skin and the doctor had dark brown skin. Their eyes were brown. They had hair on top of their heads, the woman long brown hair and the doctor short curly gray hair. Everyone had arch-shaped hair above their eyes. The doctor had a thick growth of hair on his upper lip and shaved hair on his cheeks, chin and neck. We don’t have facial hair or any type of body hair. It isn’t necessary, so our genetics dispensed with it.
The woman screamed and moaned in agony. Despite the best efforts of the medical team, the baby continued to turn completely around until it was obvious that this was going to be a breech birth.
The obstetrician gave sharp orders for everyone to prepare for C-section. Natalie was put under anesthesia, her stomach cut open and the baby delivered.
I teared up. I hadn’t expected to feel so emotional.
I was witnessing the birth of one of the very first babies of our kind anywhere in the universe. This was the beginning of a new era.
The infant was tiny: only four pounds six ounces. He was pale green and covered in mucus and blood. The paleness is true of all newborns, as the pigment comes in later. No one knows exactly how green a child’s skin will be until later in its first year of life. The eventual shade has absolutely no connection to the strength of the photosynthetic process.
After the delivery, Waylon and I were to go to the baby nursery and peer through the window at the newborns.
It was a bit overwhelming, standing there observing the first generation of photosynthetic children. They were absolutely beautiful with their soft green skin and baby blue eyes.
All the mothers had been told their babies died in childbirth. Natalie had been told that her son died when the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and strangled him. The baby had been whisked away before she woke from anesthesia.
I wasn’t there for that part.
It seemed unusually cruel. Prejudice based on skin color was so extreme back then, scientists believed the only way to protect the first generation of green children was to raise them in total isolation on a secret island far from the rest of civilization. No one outside the scientific community, not even their birth mothers, were to know that they existed.
Chapter 12
Our first mission had been designed to show us the beginning of our kind. It was meant to show us what we were time traveling for: to protect the entire future of the human race from extinction.