1.

*It's a good thing I'm a nurse.*

That was Christine's first thought, after the initial flutter of panic and shock had faded away.

*A good thing I have access to medical scanners, medical supplies, medical *knowledge*. A good thing I've been so damn dedicated to studying Vulcan biology, and Vulcan-human biology. The optimum ratio of haemoglobin to cuproglobin for oxygen absorption, the unique sound of the Vulcan-human heart…*

Her thoughts trailed off into the half panicked, half eager, confused chaos to which they kept recurring at the moment. This was a *life*. This was a tiny, defenceless spark of life taking refuge in the depths of her body. A hunted being hiding in warm, dark, blood-enriched folds, clinging on with every ounce of determination, every imperative of evolution and the natural drive of cells to multiply and continue. Could people tell that there was a minute being clinging to her for survival? That the world outside her own body was as lethal to it as the empty depths of space beyond the skins of the Enterprise were to her?

She cradled her arms around her body, hugging herself, it seemed. Hugging something that she thought she might love, even though she had never set eyes upon it. Hugging something that would destroy her life as she knew it.

'Are you cold, Christine?'

She almost jumped out of her skin.

'Oh – oh, no, Len,' she said quickly, dropping her arms to her side, turning back to the supply cupboard that she had been steadily reorganising into a wilderness of nonsense.

'Christine,' McCoy said in a softer voice, closing his hand around her wrist and moving it away from the cupboard. 'Why don't you break off your shift early, and go take a rest? Unless you want to kill a patient by mislabelling any more of these drugs? It's been a strange couple of days. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to have Spock's immortal soul jostling about in my head. I don't know how you stood it!'

'Oh – er – it was – ' she began, then shook her head. She really was living up to the image of the dumb blonde today… Was this how it would be from now on? Her thoughts constantly split between two living beings? 'I don't know. I guess it was harder for them – for the captain, and Mr Spock, and Dr Mulhall. I mean, they were marooned in – well, in *nothing*. I know Mr Spock, for one…'

She trailed off again. The one imperative she had gained from Spock on his leaving her consciousness was *don't tell*. He was private, he kept his thoughts and feelings close inside himself. The last thing he wanted was her babbling about all those things running loose in his ordered mind.

But if he knew the thoughts and feelings that had been snaking in her mind… Surely he knew? He must know what Henoch had done with her. The evidence of his body and her mind would spell it out, surely it would… And Henoch had behaved as any proper, suave, right-minded villain from literature should do. He had been given almost total freedom after an imprisonment of aeons, and he had grasped his chance. She blamed him as little as she blamed Spock.

Henoch, she recalled, had been seductive, charming. He had been dark and smooth, coming alongside her like a cat, with the warmth of a cat in a sunbeam. His voice had been a low purr in her ear. He had used every fibre of his body – of Spock's body – to entice her. The scent of him, the sight of him, the *aliveness* of every cell of his being, the soft fingers of his mind probing into hers, stroking her consciousness, drawing her in…

It had been she who had leaned forward first, her lips that had moved towards his, her hand that had slipped about the hot skin of his neck. Perhaps he had done that, using Spock's telepathic powers to bewilder her mind. Perhaps he had cast out a line, and caught her, and ever so gently reeled her in. But she had not been bucking and thrashing on the hook – she had been hauling herself towards him, hand by hand, desperate for the hunter's touch, desperate to pass his lips and become part of him.

'*Chris!*'

McCoy's voice snapped her out of the fantasy. She had been falling again… Oh, it *had* been a fantasy. It had not been Spock. It had been Spock as so many women must want him to be – emotional Spock, smiling Spock, lustful, ruthless, powerful Spock. Spock's body driven by another's mind. That body had been – exquisite. But when she thought about it, when the clouds of lust parted for a moment, sadness stabbed through. Spock's mind had been absent. *Spock* had been absent…

'*Chris!*' McCoy snapped again. His hand was cupping her elbow. His blue eyes were filled with concern. He was slipping his medical scanner back into his pocket, and trying to nudge her to walk towards the door.

She shook herself. 'I'm sorry, Doctor. I don't know what's wrong with me,' she said confusedly, trying to smile.

'*Go to bed*,' he said emphatically. 'Now, that's a medical order. Do you hear?'

'Yes, sir,' she murmured, wrapping her arms about her torso again. 'I will. Thank you. Thank you, Leonard.'

'That's it,' McCoy nodded, propelling her gently into the corridor as the door slid open. 'You get your rest.'

As the door hissed closed he took his scanner out of his pocket again, taking it to the desk and transferring the results to his medical tricorder.

'You're going to need it,' he said, running his eyes over hormone levels, blood pressure and heart rate. 'You're definitely going to need it.'

******

Christine went to her quarters feeling lighter than air, heavier than lead. She felt like a concoction of clichés, full of every mixed emotion that every woman who had ever found herself in such a situation had felt. But then, what woman had, precisely, found herself in this situation? Non-corporeal beings, mind control, having intercourse with a man's body when his soul was absent, with a man she had loved for years who wasn't even there…

No. It was an age-old story, but she couldn't imagine that anyone had ever experienced it quite as she was right now.

She sank into the antique wing-back armchair in her quarters in a dreamlike state, curling her feet up underneath her body. She had always liked this chair, from her earliest memories of crawling into it as a tiny girl and feeling the safety of the dark wings that seemed to protect her. A safe place in the dark, old-fashioned, barely used parlour, where she could sit and curl her dark hair around her fingertips and think of things beyond that room and beyond that world. No one ever thought of looking for her there, of chivvying her to the music practice and extra-curricular study that was continually pushed on her as a bright child in a good family. She slipped through the net, and she sat in the darkness, and thought… She had always imagined finding herself somewhere outside of New England tradition and safety. She had never imagined this, though…

She touched a hand to her abdomen, let it lie there softly. Hard to believe that there was another life-form growing in there. There was no difference beneath her hand. Women were supposed to be able to *tell*. She couldn't tell – not by anything but the cold, clear science of medical scanners, and by the undercurrent of fear that the results had provoked. She had only tested herself because she knew what had happened, and knew it was a scientific possibility, not because she had experienced some mystical, intuitive insight. She had formed a theory, ran the appropriate tests, and examined the results. Spock would undoubtedly approve.

Spock…

What was she to do about Spock? For now, this was *hers*. It was her secret, her problem. It had very little to do with Spock. It had everything to do with Spock…

How was she to approach the logical, unemotional, upright First Officer of the Enterprise, and tell him, 'Sir, it appears that you have gotten me pregnant. Neither of us were exactly consenting in the act. Nevertheless, I have decided to keep it.'

She could not even begin to imagine how Spock would react. That news, she knew, would pierce straight through his rigid, controlled exterior like a poisoned arrow. It would stagger him. But still, she had no idea how he would react.

In all of her fantasies about Spock, she had never imagined this…

******

Her first hint that the secret was not solely hers was when McCoy kept looking at her strangely. Then when he suggested, very casually, that vitamin supplements were a good idea for any woman of her age to consider. Then when, on seeing her coming from the storeroom with a heavy box of medicines, he practically snatched it from her arms and carried it over to the supply cupboard himself, muttering under his breath about it being crazy that nurses were expected to do the jobs of orderlies on this ship.

She stopped in her tracks then and there, folded her arms across her chest, and asked him plainly, 'Leonard, what exactly is it that you know about me that's got you stopping me from doing my job?'

He met her blue eyes with the clear gaze of his own, and said directly, 'I know that you're pregnant. And I know that *you* know that you're pregnant. And I know precisely who the father is. I'm pretty certain that *he* doesn't know, though.'

Christine exhaled swiftly. Although she had known what he was going to say, hearing him state it like that was a different thing.

'He doesn't need to know yet,' she said, shaking her head with a quick, dismissive smile. Odd that she was avoiding the direct subject of the pregnancy by talking about the one facet of it she had hardly allowed herself to face up to yet. 'It's not going to help him to know.'

'Christine, *you're carrying his child*,' McCoy said insistently. 'He has a right to know. He doesn't even know he slept with you, does he?'

'He didn't sleep with me,' she said in a low voice, her mind turning against her will to the sight of him, lustful, naked, aroused. 'Henoch slept with me. It was – all Henoch, none of Spock.'

'Christine.'

McCoy reached out, took both of her hands, squeezed them gently in his. Her first thought was how warm and reassuring his hands were. Her second was that they were not nearly as hot as Spock's hands had been…

'Christine,' McCoy repeated. 'This isn't just some one night stand. It's not like if you don't tell him he'll never know. Spock's going to be a father. He deserves to know that before it starts getting obvious.'

She looked up at him, startled dismay in her eyes. It was going to show. Of course she knew that. But to have McCoy state that obvious fact suddenly set in concrete everything that was going to happen. She was going to bear and give birth to a child. She lived on a ship of four hundred and thirty fit, athletic, young people who, day by day, wore sleek, fitting uniforms. There was no way of disguising this with baggy clothes or the excuse of weight gain. The baby would grow, and it would become obvious, and then everyone, *everyone*, would know.

'I'll tell him,' she said finally. 'I will, I promise. I just – need to find a good time.'

McCoy actually laughed at that. It was not a merry or a cruel laugh. It was just a manifestation of his reaction to the idea of finding a *good time* to tell Spock that he was going to be a father, when as far as Spock knew he had never come closer to Christine than touching her hands one time in sick bay when they were both drunk with the Psi 2000 virus.

She smiled, and then laughed too. It was, after all, a relief that someone else knew – and that the one person who did know was the single most valuable person on the ship to her in her condition.

'Come on, missy,' the doctor said gruffly, taking her by the arm and leading her towards his office. 'I've been waiting to talk to you about this. We need to discuss medical monitoring, food supplements, your work schedule. I've got a lot of medical literature to go through with you.'

She smiled again, thinking of the hours of private study she had put in after duty in her quarters recently.

'If it's about Vulcan-human pregnancies, Leonard, then I've probably read it,' she told him frankly. 'But I would be very happy to discuss it all with you.'