Medication, Part 7 - Female Version

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Note: This is a female version of Medication.

Summary: All her life, Tris’s mother forced her to take a daily medication, but never really told her why. After Tris goes off to college, she starts skipping doses, and finally realizes just what the medication is for. Monthly expansion. Contains: Female: belly expansion, breast expansion, and more.

Previous Chapter

-

It was a small group. Tris, Tim, and Miguel. James, one of the junior medics, had insisted on coming along as well.

Tris had a runny nose, but she was sure it was pregnancy-related. It was probably nothing.

She was growing rapidly and it was rather overwhelming, especially with spectators, and getting used to her center of gravity shifting throughout the trek when she just wanted to rest. The others looked to her as though they were not certain if she had always been so round. She looked a full six months along and it was getting harder than ever to keep the baby under wraps.

Miguel guided the small group through the forestry. Tris hung in the back, partly so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the sensation of having the others stare at her for the whole journey, and partly because she was the slowest and hadn’t much of a choice in the matter, her belly resting atop her narrow pelvis, its weight at the cusp of making her waddle.

She hated the way her breasts were being squeezed by her tightening bra, irritating her nipples into swelling and stinging, her flesh keeping up, swelling to the stimulation, thinking there was already a baby to nurse.

And she hated the way her tactical shirt was stretching worse day by day, unable to accommodate her rapidly burgeoning body. She had untucked it, allowing it to hang free of her waistband to keep it from framing her belly even more than necessary. Besides, her pants button had finally snapped apart. She knew that untucked clothes made her liable to bug bites, but she didn’t feel like she had much of a choice. Miguel was already sending her dubious looks throughout the day, sometimes doing a double-take, and Tris would awkwardly rest her hand on her gut, trying to hide the protrusion of her belly button which might as well have been a flashing neon PREGNANT sign as far as she was concerned. She felt embarrassed, ashamed, and potentially judged, and she didn’t even know why. Her bizarre medical condition was hardly her fault. She wasn’t sure how other women dealt with this. Tris sneezed.

“You okay, Tris?” James turned back.

Tris was regretful that the group’s attention shifted to her. Despite it, she took advantage of the moment to stop walking and catch her breath. She was exhausted from Miguel’s ambitious pacing. “Yeah,” she said.

“Just another four hours.”

They had been walking all day and sunlight was already beginning to wane. Tris knew it was an emergent situation, but it was tough, and she was miserable. Her back was aching, nipples stinging, belly uncomfortably tense and pressurized, with gas pains that bubbled up forcing her to disguise her burps. She was sweaty and sticky, hot and flushed. She felt uncoordinated in her fatigue, her legs numbly moving beneath her. But she needed a break. She wanted to stop desperately. Of course, that wasn’t an option.

“We need to keep moving,” said Miguel impatiently. He again eyed Tris in a dubious manner.

“Yeah,” said Tris, feeling vaguely delirious. “Yeah,” she repeated.

She found that she was constantly being forced to exert herself physically while pregnant—admittedly, she was a physical person. But this aspect of her personality didn’t coincide with secret maternity. She wondered if she shouldn’t just own up to her condition and hope for society to accept her. It would certainly be easier. Mortifying, but simple. Tris sighed. “Yeah,” she mumbled again, dragging her legs forward as the others started walking. Her hand settled on the curve beneath her belly. The pressure was getting unbearable. Only in the the past few hours, it had begun to really shift forward, pushing outward, the size becoming too much for her abdominal cavity and slowly popping outward as she reached the final “trimester” of the month-long incubation. It was day nineteen after all. She could feel gentle movements, kicks and nudges, and wished she could just sit down as her body adjusted to it all.

Just a few more hours, Tris reminded herself as she panted. They had to get the treatment. Ensure that Fiona and the others were safe. And if they stayed on track with Miguel’s pace, they might even catch their flight home.

Tris thought of the lengthy process of flying, going through immigration, transferring, clearance and exit interviews, medical checks, then the long train ride back to her college. Was the prospect of keeping her pregnancy concealed through all that really plausible? Even if they managed to catch the flight out and did perfect with time throughout the rest of the process, and she somehow made it through the health tests without her condition being noticed, by the end, she would be in the last days of pregnancy and close to dropping. She was doomed either way. Tris bit her lip.

By the time they stopped to set up camp, she was suffering a fit of coughs. They were so harsh and forceful, her stomach ached with each one. She held her gut and leaned back heavily on a tree, trying to regain her breath and get control of herself.

“Hey, are you okay?” said James, coming over.

“Fine,” Tris forced out, wanting him to back off, admittedly panicking.

“Tris, let me check you—” James abruptly stopped speaking, his face going slack. Tris stiffened in shock as James collapsed at her feet. In the back of his neck, a feathered dart protruded from his skin.

Tris slowly looked up to see the shadows of figures approaching from the edges of the clearing.

“Run!” Miguel shouted.

Everyone fled in different directions. It was a confused jumble of movement. Tris found herself running by instinct, and wasn’t sure she would have been able to were it not for adrenaline. They had accidentally stumbled upon a group of the tribespeople and not to a warm welcome.

Somewhere to her left, someone else went down, but Tris didn’t see who it was. She tore out of the clearing as fast as she could, suddenly unconscious of her heaviness, achiness, her persistent cough, and the twinges of pain in her belly. She just had to get out of there, keep herself safe—keep the babysafe. Tris continued to run, putting a good amount of distance between herself and the clearing, and just as she was sure she was a good enough distance, just when she was sure she was out of peril—

There was a stinging pain on the back of her hand, like a bug bite. Tris slowly lifted it, surveying the orange-feathered dart protruding there.

“Oh…” she said dumbly.

Everything went dark.

It was dark for a while.

-

Tris awoke to an explosion of senses. Brightness, heat, odors, and most jarringly, pain, excruciating pain squeezing her abdomen and rendering her unable to breathe.

She screamed and struggled, but hands pinned her shoulders down to the rough surface she was sprawled against. She clutched her stomach, and was startled by how large it was. Huge actually. She felt as though she was big enough to—oh.

She tensed and groaned through another contraction, hips twitching, pelvis tight and stinging, and full of that unbearably pressure. “Oh god,” she choked out, her hand trembling as it slid to her hip. It felt as though the baby was already beginning to crown. What the hell had happened? How long had she been out?

It took a while for her eyes to adjust, and she could make out strangers through the beaming sunlight. Figures, with long hair, and brown, painted faced. The tribespeople. They had captured her. She was in a tent, and several were hovering over her, with wide, staring eyes.

An elderly woman turned and murmured something, and then the tent flaps closed, shutting out a good deal of the light, so Tris’s eyes stopped stinging, and she no longer had to wince.

“What happened?” Tris croaked, her throat incredibly dry.

But there was no comprehension on any of the hovering faces.

“Thoom-bah,” the woman said, pointing at her abdomen.

Tris looked down at herself. She truly was huge. She belly was flushed and tight, sticking out from the shirt she still had on. The bottom buttons had been undone—or had broken off—so that the bare flesh heaved visibly. Her pants had been shoved down her hips, her knees drawn up, so the tribespeople could gaze down at her opening. It was humiliating.

Tris cried out as her belly contracted and she pushed by instinct. She must have been out for days to be this far along, to be—to be birthing already. A dart shouldn’t have kept her out for that long. Why had the natives even kept her alive? Why were they spectating? It was like they were—they were—

The old woman lowered a cool rag to her head, lapping at the sweat. They were helping her. Tris gave a shaky moan. The rag felt heavenly on her burning flesh. She was unbearably hot, even hot for being in labor. Her throat wasn’t just dry, she realized, but stinging badly, to the point of feeling raw. She was completely drenched in sweat, her chest heaving erratically as she shook with sobs. It was only then that she realized.

She was sick.

“Faaaa!” The elderly woman said as Tris’s belly tightened and seized. “Fhaaa!”

Tris supposed that meant push because it was all she could think to do. She kicked her pants further down, so she could spread her knees wider, make way for the head she could feel shoving against her opening. She gave a strangled cry, trying not to twist in pain, as she struggled. It took a tremendous amount of effort, and left her trembling violently, her vision blurring as the pain peaked in incredibly levels, her heart feeling like it would burst right in her chest.

She must have passed out for just a moment, because the next thing she knew, there was the squalling cry of a newborn. Tris whimpered. She felt a weight lowered against her chest, and her limp arms were lifted, mechanically wrapped about the soft body of a healthy-sized newborn baby. "Thank you,” she rasped, or she tried to. She wasn’t sure if she ever got the words out. She could feel the darkness overwhelming her again, and it scared her, but she submitted to it.

-

When she awoke again, it was just in time to throw up in the large water bowl beside her. She panted and trembled. It hurt to breathe and yet she did it relentlessly.

Her arms felt thin as they crossed against her. Her skin was still uncomfortably hot. She was feverish. Tris gingerly laid back on what were—animal skins, apparently. She gazed dizzily around the tent. It was dim, the flaps closed, but she could see how intensely the sun shone from the glowing edges. Beside the stone water bowl was a modern-looking canister—it was the medicine. The very same kind her team had delivered weeks before. It meant that the tribespeople were treating her, trying to cure of her of the rare disease she had contracted during the expedition she’d taken to do the same for them.

Tris hesitated, and slid her hand to her stomach. It encountered a gentle bump. She was pregnant again.

She winced at the beam of light as the tent flap opened. One of the natives came in, murmuring in an unfamiliar language. The woman looked at Tris’s sick in the bowl, yammered something, and removed it from the tent. She returned a few moments later with a wooden cup and tried to bring it to Tris’s lips.

“How long was I out this time?” Tris said hoarsely, her bottom lip stinging. She could taste blood where it had broken. “Where’s my baby?” she said weakly, and was mortified to feel tears running down her cheeks.

The tribeswoman just yammered admonishingly, still trying to get Tris to drink. Too weak to fight it, Tris took several gulps, and even managed to hold the cup herself. She felt nauseous. Another girl came in with a bowl of stew. It was a dark orange, and smelled like roots, and clay. Tris tried to refuse it, but the girls were persistent. Eventually Tris drank as much as she could, which only turned out being a gulp or two. The girls seemed satisfied enough, and it hadn’t been as bad as Tris had thought it would be.

They took the dishes and left Tris alone there, where she sunk back down against the animal skins, her body trembling as she tried not to sob. She felt resigned, and closed her eyes, prepared to suffer her next bout of unconsciousness, when she heard shrill, familiar wails outside of her tent.

The baby.

Tris struggled to push herself up, body shuddering as she tried to get her weak limbs to get her to her feet. She had nearly toppled herself face-first in her desperate struggle to stand, when the tent flap opened again. One of the girls had returned, a baby cradled in her arms.

The girl giggled slightly at Tris’s stunned expression, then knelt down beside Tris and nodded for Tris to lay back. Tris did so, and braced herself. The infant was lowered against her.

It was a boy. The baby looked healthy. He had not contracted the illness. Tris sighed in relief as the baby squirmed against her. But she could feel herself losing her strength fast. She had overdone things. “Than…nghhh…” she trailed off.

And again, she passed out.

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