Response for the February story prompt over at The Delphic Expanse. I strongly suspect that Aquarius didn't expect the prompt to take this particular turn.

Pregnant

Stuart Reed sat in the captain's cabin aboard his ship, HMS Victorious, and tried to pull himself together. He found it necessary to call upon all his years of training as a Royal Navy officer and his lifelong experience of being a Reed to get his emotions under some semblance of control. He had been like this since his communications officer had informed him that a message was coming in from his wife, Mary. Mary Reed was not an excitable type. She didn't contact him outside their agreed upon communication time unless something terrible had happened at home. In the last 5 years, that something terrible had always involved his son, and only child, Malcolm.

Some 5 years earlier on September 2, Mary had been involved in a low-speed accident at Paddington station. There had been a glitch in the automatic train control system such that one train bumped another. She'd been thrown out of her seat and landed heavily on the floor. She'd checked out fine at the nearest casualty ward and had gone on about her business as if nothing had happened only to go into premature labor later that evening. Malcolm had been born much too early.

At that time, he'd been newly assigned as captain of the Victorious and had been on convoy duty in the strait of Hormuz shepherding the last of the Middle Eastern oil past the current lot of stateless pirates. United Earth or not, the Middle East was trouble. Always had been. Always would be. There was always one group or another that refused to get with the program and men like him who'd have to leave home and family to deal with them. So there he'd been on the deck of his ship where it was 49° in the shade when the message had come and his blood had turned to ice. God, what if he lost them both? Would he turn to drink like the morose Captain Fletcher, his old CO on the Invincible?

Stop it, bucko, he warned himself. Best not to keep her waiting. Best to get it over with. He took a deep breath, then pressed the button. "Comm, put her through."

"Aye, sir."

The image of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the emblem for his ship, disappeared from the screen to be replaced by the smiling face of his wife.

"What's wrong with Malcolm this time?" he blurted out. Damn, he hadn't meant to say that, but he'd always been a no-nonsense sort of bloke and Mary knew that.

"Wrong with Malcolm? There's nothing's wrong with Malcolm. Why would you . . ." Her eyes widened as her smile abruptly turned to shock.

It was about this time that whichever side of his brain was supposed to notice these things kicked in and informed him that Mary had been smiling and was in his office at home. Neither of those things would have been true if Malcolm were seriously ill yet again.

"Stuart, dear, I'm so sorry! I should have realized that would be your first thought. Malcolm's right as rain. I got some wonderful news Monday last. I tried to wait until Friday to tell you, but I just couldn't. I didn't mean to worry you."

Thank God, Malcolm was fine! He closed his eyes for a moment, took another deep breath and pasted a shaky smile on his face. "No worries, love. Now what's this good news that couldn't wait?"

"I went to see Dr. V."

Doctor V? He ran through the contact list in his head, all the pediatric consultants - neonatologists, pulmonologists, allergists, pediatricians and the rest of the lot who had treated Malcolm over the years - but came up empty. Then he remembered, Dr. V, short for Veeramachaneni, was Mary's obstetrician. Bloody hell! It couldn't be!

"You're going to be a father again. I'm about 2 months along. All the scans are fine."

She was smiling again. That had to be a pretty good indication that he hadn't actually said aloud what he'd been thinking. Damn and blast! I can't go through that again!

It wasn't just that the requests for compassionate leave were having a seriously negative effect on his career. The road to admiralty was not a daddy track. No, it was what he'd seen, what he'd felt, when he'd made it to the Princess of Wales Hospital for Sick Children in London and had been introduced to his son for the first time. He still wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn't the tiny, wizened creature, orange as a pumpkin and entangled in a mass of lines, leads, sensors and tubes that would have confused even his chief engineer, that he saw in the isolette under the special lights. He shook his head slightly, trying to forget the unholy symphony of beeps, chirps, bongs and buzzes that the myriad of monitors had made.

"No, really, darling. Dr. V says everything looks good. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to carry the baby to term. Last time was an accident. Lightening won't strike twice."

He managed a small nod while wondering how it was that a woman as intelligent as Mary had never heard of Murphy's law - anything that can go wrong will in the worst possible way at the worst possible time - or his executive officer's favorite corollary - Murphy was an optimist.

What was he going to say? He had the sense to stay out of the minefield of asking if she was sure she was pregnant and was she sure it was his. Dr. V and the scans couldn't be wrong. As for the last, Mary was a devoted wife and mother. All that she'd dealt with with Malcolm in the last few years, mostly alone and largely without complaint, was undeniable proof of that. He'd won the sweepstakes when she'd consented to marry him. Unlike some of his colleagues, he never worried about his wife cheating while he was deployed. As for himself, whether in port in Sydney, Murmansk, Chicago or who the hell knows where, he never considered straying, either.

He also knew that he couldn't tell her the truth. He'd been terrified the entire time he'd been in London. He'd been afraid to touch his own son, afraid that his touch could be lethal. He'd found the tubes, bags, catheters and lines not only frightening, but also disgusting. Worse, that reaction hadn't changed, hadn't gotten better over the years. There was no way he could admit that to Mary. No way he could explain that he was happy to go back to sea where he knew what the hell he was doing, whether it was fighting off pirates in the Persian Gulf, chasing smugglers off Cornwall or sailing, as he was now, through the remnants of the worst Atlantic hurricane on record. He'd been happy to leave Malcolm and all his troubles to her, and he was ashamed for feeling that way.

Finally, he thought of something logical and, he hoped, safe to say. "So what are we having, then, love?"

"Dr. V says we're having a girl. Won't that be nice? We'll have one of each then, a matched set. I was thinking we could name her Madeleine. You don't mind, do you?"

Was that a note of worry in her otherwise happy recital? He wasn't sure because he was too busy thinking that he really wasn't very pleased about any of it. Not that there was anything he could do about it at this point. Would he have preferred another, more healthy son, one more likely to carry on the family name and to follow in his footsteps? As long as she were healthy, would it be easier to deal with a daughter? Healthy was the key.

"That sounds good, dear."

"Mummy, who are you talking to?"

"Malcolm, what are you doing up at this hour?" As Mary turned to address her son, the little boy saw his father's face on the screen.

"Daddy! Daddy! I miss you!" Malcolm called out as he rushed into the room.

Stuart couldn't help but smile. There stood Malcolm with tousled dark hair, sleep having fled from shining blue-gray eyes. Clutched tightly in his small hands was an oversized, brightly colored, plastic water rifle. The wet spots on his son's pajamas were a dead giveaway that the toy was "locked and loaded." He couldn't condone the behavior, however, so he sternly advised, "Answer your mother, Malcolm. It's well past your bedtime. What are you doing up?"

Malcolm drew himself up to his full height of around 115 cm and earnestly began to explain himself. "Daddy, when you went to sea, you told me I had to be the man of the house while you were gone. That means I have to watch out for Mummy. And Baby Maddie who is in her tummy, too. I heard her talking and thought a bad man had broken in, so I got my rifle to scare him away."

"Mummy's safe - and Maddie, too - so say goodnight and go back to bed, Malcolm."

"You don't want to fall asleep on duty tomorrow because you didn't get enough sleep tonight, lad. That would be a very bad thing."

"Yes, sir. Good night, Daddy. I love you!"

"Good night, Malcolm. I love you, too." There was something he couldn't read in his son's eyes as the little boy favored him with a small, hesitant smile, turned and trudged back toward his room.

"I'd best go tuck our little SAS commando in," Mary sighed. "Good night, love." She blew Stuart a kiss as she cut the connection.

And just for a moment before the screen went black, Stuart had the impression that perhaps Mary herself thought that two children might turn out to be one too many as well.