[AU] Madeline

Posted on Mon Jun 22nd, 2020 @ 11:12pm by Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Kalin Brennan-Griffin PhD
Edited on on Fri Jul 10th, 2020 @ 5:03pm

Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Various (Bubbleverse)
Timeline: Nine years in the Bubble

A Mission Post by Lieutenant Cailus Griffin & Lieutenant Kalin 'Shae' Brennan-Griffin PhD
Mission: Divided We Fall
Location: Various (Bubbleverse)
Timeline: Nine years in the Bubble
Wed Aug 22nd, 2018 @ 2:16am

[WARNING] This post contains serious and mature themes. While we believe we have handled the topic of miscarriage with great thought and care, it gets dark, it gets emotional, and it gets brutal. Please proceed with caution. [/WARNING]


It had been two years since Cailus and Shae had decided to have a baby. It had taken them several tries to get it right, each time followed by a month of waiting with breath held to find out on that first check-up if they were pregnant or not, only to wait another five months for Shae’s cycle to be ready to give it another try. And finally on their third try, it happened! They were over the moon with excitement when Nurse Louis gave them the news after their check-up: they were pregnant! Since then it had been six months of watching Shae’s belly slowly change shape and grow, waiting to feel the baby’s first movements, six months of frustration as they debated over possible baby names, six months of pure joy!

Six months to turn their lives completely upside down.

The day had started like any other; Shae was taking her sweet time prying herself from the loo after a bout of post-breakfast nausea, cursing up a colorful storm like any proper Irish woman would and rueing the day that Cailus agreed to do this to her, but immediately afterwards she was feeling so much better and she was once again full of joy. Cailus stayed with her every time this happened no matter how late it made either of them for their shifts because he wanted to make sure she made it to the Bridge safely before beginning his daily patrols. All in all, everything was perfect.

Halfway through her shift, Shae started to feel off. She couldn’t really put her finger on what felt off but she paid it no mind; it wasn’t unusual for her to feel a little dizzy, especially when it was close to a meal time, and Cailus would be here soon to take a break with her, so she was sure she would feel better once she had something to eat. But Shae wouldn’t make it to lunch; when she saw Cailus enter the Bridge, she flashed him her usual sunny smile and rose from her chair, but then everything around her went fuzzy and the room started spinning, and the last thing that registered in her mind before everything went dark was that she could smell blood.

When Shae came to, all she was aware of was the stabbing pain in her belly and that Cailus was there with her holding her hand, but she couldn’t understand what was going on or where she was. She faintly heard a distant voice, not Cailus, telling her to push, but she couldn’t understand why; it couldn’t be time for that yet! Nothing made sense to her, but in the end her body gave her little choice in the matter.

After it was all over, Shae was numb, so numb she couldn’t even cry. Why had this happened? They had done everything right, so why? Maybe they would never know, not without a proper medical facility, although Nurse Louis suspected that it was her exotic genetic make-up at play, but this suspicion would do little to console her after this loss.

For Cailus, as Shae endured through it all, he could do little but be there. The nurse, for all his medical skill, could only do much the same after Shae was hurriedly moved to the captain’s ready room. They knew what was happening, had known it since Shae had fallen on the Bridge, but without a proper Sickbay, they could only wait and hope.

Cailus held Shae’s hand throughout it all, silent tears running down his cheeks, willing Shae to survive while Louis did what he had to, all as outside on the Bridge, several of the crew waited anxiously. Later, as Cailus carried Shae’s unconscious body outside to take her down to their quarters, the crowd said nothing, nor did they speak when Nurse Louis emerged, carrying a tiny thing in a closed blanket. It felt wrong to speak, to offer condolences.

It felt very much like another funeral.

Later on, back in their quarters, Cailus was still holding Shae’s hand as she slept on the bed, his blue eyes bloodshot. They were alone now. The blanket, and what lay inside, was cradled in Cailus’ other arm. He hadn’t opened the blanket. Not yet.

Shae remained unconscious for a while, and even when she started to wake she wasn’t fully lucid. She hurt in ways she couldn’t possibly explain, both in her body and in her soul, feeling emotionally flayed and raw. Wordlessly, her eyes sought out Cailus for answers, but seeing what he held cradled in his arm, she knew…

Realising that Shae was awake, Cailus met her eyes, silent for a long moment. “How do you feel?” he murmured.

At first, she couldn’t speak; it felt like she couldn’t even breathe, and she struggled to find the right words to answer him. “Tell me this is a dream,” Shae finally said ever so softly, her voice breaking as she licked at her dry lips. “Please tell me this is just some nightmare and that when I wake, everything will be back to the way it was,” she pleaded.

Listless for a moment, Cailus slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry, love,” he said quietly, “but this is...this is real. It...it happened. We don’t know why. We nearly lost you too.”

“No…” Shae replied, shaking her head, but even that small, feeble motion was causing the room to spin around her again. “No no no!” she sobbed, but lacking the tears; she was too dehydrated for tears.

“I’m sorry, Shae,” Cailus repeated, knowing that his words were useless, but he said them anyway. Clutching Shae’s hand tighter, he could do nothing but sit there besides the bed, the little object in his right arm feeling horribly heavy, Shae’s hand so horribly fragile. “Louis did everything he could, but we just couldn’t…”

“No, this can’t… can’t be happening,” Shae said as she gasped for each breath. “I heard a cry! I know I heard a cry, please tell me it wasn’t all in my head!” she continued, grasping for some kind of hope that this might have been some kind of mistake.

Clutching Shae’s hand even tighter, as if he could physically hold her together, Cailus closed his eyes briefly. “You did hear it,” he said quietly with a broken, shuddering voice. “She cried when she arrived, but she didn’t…it was too soon.”

“She? Oh my stars…” Once again, Shae sobbed; it wasn’t like either one of them had hoped for a boy or a girl, but somehow just hearing that it was a girl and that for a moment she had been alive made the situation all too real for Shae. “Can I see her?”

“Of course,” Cailus said quietly. “Let’s sit you up, alright?”

Shae nodded weakly, her body still trembling from the sudden emotional outburst, but as Cailus helped her to sit up, the room kept tilting this way and that, and when it became clear that Shae was so weak that she couldn’t hold herself upright, he settled her back down, this time on her side so he could lay the little bundle out beside her where she could see it. With his help, Shae pulled the blanket away from the lifeless form tucked tenderly within.

“She’s perfect,” Shae said when she laid eyes on their child; well, she would have been perfect had she drawn breath… Ten fingers, ten toes, an angelic face with an adorable button nose, small vulpine ears stuck to her head and covered in such fine downy fur that it lacked any hints of color… but the child was so tiny, and so thin that her skin was almost translucent. “Why…” Shae mused aloud as she stared adoringly at that little face. “Why? We did everything right; I was eating well, we were both in good health at our last check… Why did this have to happen?”

Cailus knelt besides the bed, gazing at their poor little one. She could’ve been sleeping with her eyes closed like that, lying on the bed with her mother. “Sometimes it just happens,” he murmured, his finger tracing the little one’s tiny ears. “It was always going to be hard, mixing genetics of three different species, but when you got pregnant, I thought we’d done the hard bit.” Falling silent again, he sighed. “She’s beautiful, Shae. She needs a name. She deserves one.”

He was right, but what to name her? They had been going back and forth on a number of names, both male and female since they didn’t want to know the gender until the baby arrived, but now that she was here, Shae’s mind was suddenly blank.

“I know you were fond of using your mother’s name for a girl, but I just don’t think she’s a Megan,” Shae replied with a sad sigh. She stared at her baby’s face for a long while, silently contemplating. “Madeline,” she finally stated with a certainty that surprised her.

It surprised Cailus too, although he found himself agreeing. Madeline hadn’t been popular when they’d been discussing names what felt like a lifetime ago, but now it felt oddly right. “Madeline,” he echoed, looking down at their daughter, so innocent and pure for having never lived. “That’s your name, sweetie. You’re Madeline. We’re sorry...I’m sorry that you never got a chance to grow up or meet your sister. Your mommy and I...we loved you very much.”

With that, tears falling anew, Cailus lowered his head and kissed their daughter’s bald head so very gently, before standing back up, breathing out hard. He stroked Shae’s brow, as much for her comfort as for his. “I’ll get you some water, then you can rest,” he said as softly as he could. “I can take Madeline away while you’re sleeping.”

“No, not yet,” Shae said with a shake of her head as she pulled Madeline closer like she once often did with Aoife; having her tucked so close, Shae could feel a hint of warmth lingering in this tiny body, but not enough fool herself that Madeline could still be alive. “I know you’ll have to take her away eventually, but please not yet, I’m not ready,” she said as she started to shudder, fighting the urge to cry again.

Seeing the warning signs, Cailus hurriedly bent back down over Shae and rubbed her shoulder. “Alright, I won’t take her away until you’re ready,” he said soothingly, pressing his forehead against Shae’s before kissing her cheek. “We’re going to get through this, okay? Just like we always do. Together.”

Shae nodded hesitantly in response, then allowed herself to release the tension in her body so she could rest. “Together,” she echoed wearily.

After Shae had fallen asleep and Cailus had left to check on things and get some supplies, he had truly believed those words. Shae looked to be accepting what had happened. She was grieving. After all the heartbreak, all of the awful cruel agony of losing yet another child, Shae would get better.

But even Cailus’ ironclad certainty would be shaken.

Later that night, having quietly laid himself down to sleep next to Shae who was still dozing, he woke up in a sudden shock without even knowing why. It took Cailus’ exhausted brain a few moments to realise that Shae wasn’t in the bed any more, nor was Madeline, a fact that disturbed Cailus more than it should’ve. A cursory look around their small one-room quarters confirmed that Shae wasn’t there, and another quick peek showed that she wasn’t in the bathroom. Thus, with an uneasy feeling in his gut, Cailus got dressed and left to begin his search.

Shae wasn’t on the Bridge or in any of the corridors or any of the common areas, nor was she in the turbolift shaft. She wasn’t with any of her friends, nor had Nurse Louis seen her. Growing increasingly worried, and running out of possible places to look, Cailus took to knocking on doors, drawing bleary-eyed residents out of their beds to confirm that they hadn’t seen her. He even took to knocking on the doors of the former splinter group, only to get the same response. Everyone was polite and kind, even Krysia as she coped with a hyperactive Aurora at 4am, as everyone understood.

But even so, nobody had seen Shae.

The worry in Cailus’ gut growing into an acidic fear, he spent a nerve-wracking half hour checking each part of the hull that was exposed to the nothingness outside, running tricorder scans everywhere, hoping and praying that he wouldn’t find something outside the hull. After that was done, Cailus even ran diagnostics on the power systems, confirming that none of the forcefields had failed or been dropped. Becoming increasingly petrified after investigating every conceivable possibility, Cailus resorted to burying his pride and asking for help.

Despite the early hour, several people were more than sympathetic enough to help with the search, which was led by the small Asian woman known only as Takada. After several hours, Takada approached the frenzied Cailus.

“Excuse me?” Takada said politely. “We think we may have found something, a trail of blood in one of the Jefferies tubes,” she informed him, her gentle voice laced with grave concern. “Our people are searching the tunnels now, I’ve advised them to proceed with caution and to report back directly to you if they find anything.”

“Which tube?” Cailus demanded forcefully, standing in a corridor having just searched the garden for the fourth time. Damn it, he’d searched the tubes, but there were so damned many, too many for him to fully canvas on his own. “Where? Where did they find the blood?”

“Stay calm, Lieutenant, we’ll find her,” Takada replied respectfully, trying to calm him as she led him to the junction where they had found the blood. It was just trace amounts at this location, but there was a definite trail leading into the tunnel, and considering how much she had hemorrhaged earlier, Shae didn’t have a lot left to lose!

“Stay here,” Cailus ordered hoarsely, examining the blood carefully in the Jefferies tube floor. It was hard to think clearly, to consider the situation with an investigator’s analytical eye when Cailus kept imagining Shae bleeding out in a corner somewhere, crying...the miscarriage had compromised her health, dammit, she couldn’t be here, she shouldn’t…

But, after crawling further through the tubes, making turns more by instinct than judgement, and with the help of the other searchers clearing other tubes, Cailus finally found her.

Shae lay huddled in an alcove of a Jefferies intersection junction, having made a nest of sorts out of a couple of blankets, and in her arms was baby Madeline, still lovingly swaddled in her little blanket. As she heard movement approaching from one of the tubes, she raised her head slightly, but she barely had the energy to raise it any further. Although she did growl in warning to whoever was approaching.

“Shae, it’s me,” Cailus rasped, too overwhelmed by relief and fatigue to give a damn about Shae’s growl. Even so, a part of him utterly broke at seeing Shae like this, so far gone. He moved up into Shae’s nest, sitting beside her with a half-dead look in his eyes. “Shae, dammit, you scared the hell out of me.”

At first, Shae didn’t recognize him, her eyes simply would not focus, but once he was close enough that she could breathe in his scent, her growl ceased and instead she sounded off with a familiar chirp that was her ‘mate’ call. It wasn’t until after she finally recognized him that she realized that he had been speaking, but for the life of her she couldn’t focus on his words enough to understand him. Then with a whimper she nuzzled against the swaddled form in her arms as though encouraging the baby to move, like she didn't understand that the baby was dead. And now that he was close enough, he could see the blood stains on her pajama pants and a stain growing on the blankets beneath her.

“Lieutenant!” came a call from further back whence Cailus had come, plainly the voice of young former Ensign Takada. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’ve found her,” Cailus called back hoarsely. He had been carrying a small bag with him with some medical supplies, and so he pulled out a medical tricorder, reading the small display carefully, especially as he passed it over Shae’s empty womb. The tricorder was unequivocal: Shae was dehydrated and horribly weak, with more problems to boot, but her life wasn’t in danger. “She’s going to be alright,” Cailus called to Takada. “Get the others and go back to sleep.”

Folding up the tricorder, Cailus pulled a water bottle out of the bag, trying hard not to see Madeline in Shae’s arms. As much as he sympathised with Shae’s grief, as much as he loved her, a part of him was utterly horrified, hated her for doing this with their daughter. It was just wrong, so blasted wrong...

Burying the resentment with a deep sigh, Cailus held up the water bottle to Shae’s lips. One step at a time. She needed to drink.

Shae drank hungrily, coughing on the first few sips until her mouth and throat had been properly rehydrated, but Cailus carefully made sure she drank slowly. Once he pulled the bottle away, she sighed in a brief moment of contentment and simply breathed for a moment with her eyes closed. Everything in her head was all jumbled, she was having trouble making sense of things. When she finally reopened her eyes, she again nuzzled at the swaddled bundle in her arms, like she didn’t understand; why wasn’t her baby moving? She looked up at Cailus, her empty eyes swimming with confusion; what was wrong with their baby?!

It took a while for Cailus to respond, to summon the words. He touched the blankets hesitantly, even knowing that they were cold and unmoving. “She’s gone, Shae,” he finally whispered, looking into his wife’s eyes. “I know it’s hard, love, I know, but she’s gone. She won’t wake up. She’ll never…” At that, Cailus wiped a fresh tear from his eye, the hard strain of the past 18 hours having shattered his strength. “She’ll never wake up. We have to say goodbye.”

Shae whimpered again. Gone? But their baby was right here! But when he said that she would never wake up, it finally started to sink in, and with a soft whine she began to cry. After a moment, she slowly started to release her hold on the swaddled bundle.

Gently, as carefully as he possibly could, Cailus took the bundle from Shae,
laying it beside them on the floor. He wrapped an arm around Shae, and together, they wept in the Jefferies tube mourning the loss of their little one.


The next couple of months were hell. Far from getting better, Shae got even worse, sinking into a listless, morose depression, shunning all contact. Hope had briefly shone when she timidly asked Cailus if they could try again, but his point-blank refusal only deepened Shae’s depression. His explanation that Shae had barely survived the miscarriage fell on deaf ears, and soon, she began to shun him too.

Every so often, Cailus would wake in the middle of the night, or the morning, to find himself alone in the bed. Each and every time it happened he went to the cramped intersection where Shae had built her den and talked to her, coaxing her back to their home. Even so, for all Cailus’ persistence, Shae was talking less, communicating less, starting to exclusively use the growls, whines and chirps that had been Aoife’s favoured form of communication, oh so long ago. Hygiene was quickly becoming a forgotten concept with Shae starting to smell unpleasant, her clothes becoming filthy..

Day by day, week by week, Cailus was watching Shae die, and there wasn’t anything he could do to save her.

Late into the second month Shae was becoming downright feral, snapping angrily at a passerby as she and Cailus walked down the corridor. Her excursions to her den, previously happening once or twice a week, were now happening nightly. She was now becoming even more difficult to bring back to their quarters, with Cailus being forced to spend hours on end talking to Shae in her den before she’d follow him out.

Finally Cailus awoke one morning, felt the cold, empty space beside him, and for the first time, he didn’t immediately get up to go to Shae. He simply lay there, a crippling fatigue locking him in place, as if a blanket had been wrapped around his brain. He had tried, done everything, but Shae just refused to come home to him. Keeping her there was like trying to hold onto water with his bare hands, an inevitably futile endeavour. Cailus wasn’t even sad now, or distraught, or locked in grief.

He was just tired.

After a while, he got up, but not to go to Shae. Instead Cailus silently packed a duffel bag with clothes and other necessities, then left his quarters without a backwards glance, never to sleep there again. He was resolved now, even as he despised himself for making the decision. Cailus would visit Shae every day, talk to her, be there for her, all of it...but he had to accept the inevitable.

Shae was lost.

She wasn’t coming home.