Challenge #04375-K357: Medically Approved Distraction

in #fiction19 hours ago

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The poor havenworlder was eggbound. And the humans were only working with the most basic of medical as that was all that was available in this emergency. They were asked... please sing? It helped the pain of a difficult delivery. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Knowing a little about what to do for eggbound birds, the usual solution is to very carefully break the egg]

It should have been easy. It should have been an hour or two of relatively difficult work, and then she'd have an egg to nurse until it hatched. It was not, in fact, that easy. Her egg was stuck, partially emerged from her cloaca.

"It's going to be all right" insisted her Companion Human. "Just breathe, okay? Anything that helps with the pain."

"I can't... I can't," panted Vie. "It hurts..."

Human Quill glanced to the Ship's Medik, and instantly improvised. "All right. Uh. The old songs of your history. The mothering melody. You know that one right? How's it go?" Quill immediately started getting it wrong.

Vie took a deep breath and began on the corrections. Moving into the rhythm and melody of the ancient song. It weirdly worked to keep her distracted from what Medik Kal was doing at the other end. She barely noticed the sharp pinch of an anaesthetic needle into a specific nerve. She did notice the growing numbness in the centre of her pain.

"Right, right," said Quill, a little desperately. "And the third verse?"

Vie sang on, able to ignore a small pressure at the edge of her cloaca. Followed by the lack of pressure from the egg. By the time Vie finished the third verse, the small cut made to her cloaca had been expertly stitched shut and coated against further infection.

And she had an egg to nestle under her nursing patch. It had a visible shelf marking the place where it got stuck, but it was whole and it was hers.

"Next one?" said Quill, "If you do a next one? We should monitor that thing and induce if it's getting too big for you. Okay?"

Vie panted, "Okay." She'd worry about that later. After a good, long rest.

[Photo by blackieshoot on Unsplash]

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We've had eggbound birds before. There was a bantam that got badly eggbound with a larger than normal egg. Fortunately, we were able to help her pass it without breaking it. She had been extremely broody so we were trying to let her keep it. The usual procedure is to break it, this is true, but sometimes massaging it out of the cloaca will help by using a very thin paintbrush with Vaseline.