The birth of a newborn child was normally a moment of great joy, unfortunately for Annie and Ralph Johnson, however, it was a moment of sheer terror as Ralph held his wife. The two had recently married and lived in in Milford, Delaware. Ralph had a job working construction in region running from Dover in the north to Millsboro and Laurel in the south while Annie had earned a nursing degree and had gotten a job as a nurse at the hospital in Dover and they'd looked for a very happy future together. They personally felt quite optimistic as they brought their son into the world.
However, something had clearly gone wrong. While young Jake was alive and Annie could hear his cries, something did not sound or feel right and it made her heart ache. She struggled with both Ralph and one of the other nurses there in the Dover General Hospital Maternity ward as she was determined to find out what was wrong, regardless of how weak she felt after giving birth.
"What is wrong with my baby!?!" Annie hollered at the doctor as his nurses and Ralph held her back against the bed, "YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY BABY!"
Annie was on the verge of tears, as she could hear the infant's cries but could do nothing to ease them. The doctor turned to her and had a heavy frown with his grey eyebrows raised in the middle. He was clearly nervous and that didn't make Annie or Ralph feel better.
"At the moment, I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty," the doctor said nervously, "but he was born with some major spasms... there is the very real potential he has an active case of multiple sclerosis."
Annie's eyes went wide and her skin went pale. Her role as a nurse was in pediatrics and while she'd only just started before her pregnancy, she'd seen a few occasional cases of multiple sclerosis in children. And that was frightening to her. There was no cure and treatments could only treat symptoms and hopefully prevent attacks. It didn't stop the disease, and the thought of her baby living with that scared her beyond belief.
"I..." Annie gasped and nearly collapsed into Ralph's arms.
"We may need to do some tests," the doctor spoke to Ralph, "on both Jake and you and Annie. Just to see if he does have MS and whether or not you two might be carriers or at risk of having adult onset MS..."
Ralph slowly nodded.
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A few days later, confirmation came. Annie and Ralph were again at Dover General Hospital and were with the doctor that Annie had recently started working for. He gave Annie a very sad look, which didn't make her feel any better.
"I really don't know how to say this... but the doctor that handled your delivery was correct," the doctor spoke and pushed spectacles up, "Young Jake has multiple sclerosis and it would seem that both you and Ralph are at LEAST carriers..."
"Both of us..." Annie said slowly and looked to young Jack, "we did this to him...?"
"I'm sure it wasn't deliberate, Annie, and these things can be hard to predict," the pediatrician spoke.
"How can I be a good mother when the first thing I do to my baby is give him a disease...?" Annie said weakly, her eyes red with tears.
"Is there anything we can do for Jake?" Ralph asked as he put a hand on Annie's shoulder, which she took and soon squeezed with her hand.
"There isn't much..." the doctor sighed, "as young as Jake is... most of the treatments for the symptoms could be just as problematic as the symptoms themselves... At present though, there is an option... though it IS radical."
Ralph raised an eyebrow. The doctor kept a straight face as he then continued.
"Animalia and Horizon's Project Phoenix," the doctor spoke, "Horizon's scientists and the medical professionals there have posted plenty of papers on how the things that the Animalia Virus has done there for those ill and injured is nothing short of extraordinary with regards to healing..."
"If one gives up their humanity," Ralph said slowly and with a rather negative tone to it.
"If it cures Jake, does it matter what he is? What we are?" Annie spoke looking up.
"Annie..." Ralph said slowly.
"I don't want our son to be tied to medicine that will only lessen his pain all his life... I don't want him to have some spasm and die as a result of it," Annie spoke, her worry for her son's health evident in her tone and her word choices. "A good parent will always put what is best for their child... And things aren't good for Jake now, are they?"
"No..." Ralph said slowly.
"So... if this project... err," Annie began snapping her fingers trying to come up with the name.
"Project Phoenix," the pediatrician told her.
"If Project Phoenix can cure his multiple sclerosis, I say go for it," Annie spoke, "and if Jake then needs special milk... I'll become that Animalian to give it to him. I will be a good mother."
"Okay," was all Ralph said.
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And in the end, Annie chose the Maiasaura and Project Dinotopia as well. While many Animals were often noted for being good mothers, she'd come across the Hadrosaur while doing some research on the mothering habits of animals. One of the top results was Maiasaura, and she soon couldn't help but go with that choice. After all, it's name meant "Good Mother Lizard." They flew out to Lyre and journeyed to Horizon where the whole family went through the process, though that went one at a time. Ralph stood by quietly. He was just as nervous as Annie was, but he wanted to appear strong for her and thus remained quiet.
"It'll be ok, Jake," Annie said to her son as he was placed on his back and as Doctor Stein prepared single dose with the Maiasaura Peeblesorum strain of the Animalia Virus. "Mommy is here and soon you won't have any pain and will be very healthy..."
"He may feel some pain and discomfort during the transformation," Doctor Stein warned, "largely as his bones and organs alter and change with him. From what has been described to me... it isn't complete agony, but can be a bit uncomfortable."
"But it'll cure his MS?" Annie asked. She then let the doctor go ahead when he nodded and Doctor Stein then proceeded.
Jake cried at the injection and continued to do so as Annie watched. His feet were kicked in the air as Annie could hear bones break, reform, and lengthen. His big toe remained, but the next two toes began to merge together as did the outer two. When it was finished Jake was kicking two three toed feet with each toe tipped with a rather bluntly looking claw. A similar change went through his hands, though they remained fairly delicate as well.
"It'll be okay, Jake," Annie said to her son, as his cries began to sound more inhuman. It was a strange call that Annie couldn't quite describe. It sounded sort of like the calls that would expect from baby birds or baby crocodiles in a way... or like it was a mix between the two. Then watched as Jake's body became a sort of sage brown in color. It was very light, though Annie soon noted a mottled series of stripes on his back and going around his body, almost like a tiger's stripes... but not quite.
It was then that Jake looked up to Annie. She could see that his ears had shrunk down to openings on the side of his head, but she noted that his eyes looked bigger and that his lips were pushing forward into a short and rather duck-like beak. It grew out a little, but not to the same length as she'd seen in the reconstruction images of a Maiasaura. At the same time there was some nervousness as Jake hadn't grown any bigger. That was a bit worrisome as the dinosaur she'd picked, while it wasn't the largest Hadrosaur, it wasn't exactly a small animal either.
"Shouldn't the muzzle be a bit... longer?" Annie wondered, "and shouldn't he be bigger?"
"We only gave him one dose," Doctor Stein spoke, "in that, he'll stay at his present age developmentally... And in that, it's likely that he's going to look as though he'd only recently hatched and that it will take time as part of the process of growing up... Hopefully in with a loving family with him."
Annie was about so say something when Jake gave a sort of "honk" as his diaper gave way to his growing tail. With that, he twisted and rolled and to Annie's surprise managed to shakily get up onto all fours before looking to her.
"That's fairly normal," Doctor Stein assured her, "our hospital here in Lyre in their maternity and pediatrics ward have noticed that with many Animalian children that certain physical traits, such as standing... at least in a quadrupedal stance... to come earlier in Animalian offspring. They will grow at largely the same sort of rate as human children and their mental development is about the same... but things like standing comes quickly. Our guess is that it is something that carries over from before the Animal's life before it was uplifted... or used in a human conversion."
Jake gave another "honk" and kept his focus on his mother and father.
"He looks rather happy," Ralph commented.
"Because he's healthy," Annie said with tears of joy, "he's not in pain... and now all he needs is his parents."
Ralph nodded. Jake's young age would mean he'd still need to nurse, but because they'd went with Project Dinotopia, it'd be likely that while dinosaurs didn't naturally give milk, the fact that Animalians that were based off of non-mammalian creatures had gained features that were very mammalian, and all had specific nutritional needs, it would be likely that Jake would need a "Maisaura's" milk. In that it was agreed that they would be a family of Good Mother Lizards together, though, Ralph would have preferred it that he be considered a "good daddy lizard," but that was probably just him.