Four Months Later
Tuchenka was a bitch. Shepard tenderly removed her body armor, letting both med-igel and blood drip onto the shiny floor of the med bay. She indulged herself in a groan of pain and handed the armor off to a waiting private to clean and service. Genophage, Reapers, Krogans, and huge-ass thresher maws were not ordinary fare, even for an N7. She wasn't the only one injured either—Garrus was limping heavily and even Liara wasn't unscathed. And Mordin…Shepard couldn't think about Mordin right now. It never got easier, losing friends, no matter how many times it happened.
A worried Alliance private hovered nearby to take the armor away for cleaning and servicing, and Dr. Michel hovered even nearer trying to see what the damage was. Beyond her, two Alliance medical techs also hovered, waiting for instructions.
"Take care of my squad first." Shepard said tetchily. She winced as the fabric of her under suit pulled away from her body with the armor, taking a large chuck of blood and meat with it. "Ugh."
"Commander, you are the most injured. I must look at this wound in your side." Dr. Michel insisted firmly.
Shepard bent down and unclasped her greaves and boots, the last pieces before her eager helper could whisk away the armor. She was down to her socks and underclothes, and finally allowed herself to sit on one of the examining tables. A tech polarized the windows for privacy and another helped sat Garrus down to look at his injured leg.
Dr. Michel waved the scanner over the reluctant commander and pressed her fingers into the meat under her ribs. A worried frown came over her face, her eyes were glued to the readouts flashing by on her omni-tool.
"You can fix me, can't you Doctor?" Shepard joked. Dr. Michel didn't smile back, but continued her examination, this time pressing her hands into the front of Shepard's stomach. She looked from her readings to Shepard's eyes and then back, and the look she wore was so serious that Shepard was momentarily frightened.
"What's wrong, Doctor?" Shepard asked sharply.
"I don't…" She looked to Liara and Garrus and the techs. "I must speak with you privately. And we must get you a blood transfusion immediately." She directed the techs to hook up a machine and get an IV started on Shepard, who was forced to lay flat on the examining table.
"Leave us please. I am sorry Garrus, Liara, but you will have to wait outside for a few minutes while I talk with the Commander. Vasquez, Gunther, please gather some equipment and pain meds and continue to triage our other patients out there." Her voice was steady and commanding, here in her kingdom, and the techs obeyed her orders as if she was an admiral. Shepard's squad mates were taken aback but concerned, and asked no questions. As soon as Shepard was hooked up to a pint of blood, everyone bustled out of the med bay, leaving Shepard alone with the doctor.
"What is this, Doctor?" Shepard asked. "Why all the secrecy? Did the shrapnel hit a vital organ or something?"
"Shepard, when was your last contraceptive shot?"
This line of questioning took Shepard like a right hook from a hanar. "What? I guess…I don't think I had one since before Chakwas was taken by the collectors. Probably a year ago." A horrible, horrible thought began to bubble to the surface of Shepard's mind.
"And your last sexual encounter?"
"Kaidan. On the citadel, before I went to Earth for my court martial. He'd just made Spectre. How is that any of your business?" The horrible thought had snowballed into a terrible, terrible fear. These questions could only possibly lead to one place, and she didn't like it at all. She looked up at Dr. Michel. "This isn't funny."
"Shepard, you are nineteen weeks pregnant."
Shepard closed her eyes. "That's fucking impossible." Her mind felt blank and white, unable to think at all, because if she thought at all she'd have to think about—.
Dr. Michel pulled up a holo on her omni-tool and held it for Shepard to see. It looked like a jumbled mess at first, but after a few manipulations, Shepard could see a head, a body, two little arms and two little legs. The head turned, and she saw a tiny profile—nose, mouth, chin. Her heart almost stopped. "This is impossible," She said, but it was weak. Nineteen weeks ago, she had sex with Kaidan without a contraceptive shot. She was fucking pregnant. Thirty-two years old, an Alliance Commander and a Spectre, leading the galaxy in a war against the worse threat they had ever faced, and she was carrying a baby. Fuck.
"Why don't I look—fat or whatever." Shepard was grasping at mirages, trying to figure a way out of this. "How could I not know?"
"You are in very good physical condition, so your abdominal muscles are tighter and harder to stretch out. They are also not weakened out by any previous pregnancy, so you do not 'show'. And nineteen weeks is not very far along. The baby is only the size of a potato right now."
Shepard sat up, the IV pinching her arm. The blankness was starting to fade, only to be replaced by a dreamlike unreality. How could this possibly happen? She couldn't have a baby. She hadn't planned for this at all, which was in itself almost unheard of since contraceptive shots were given by default to all active-duty Alliance service members. But last year, Shepard hadn't been an Alliance service member. She had been on Cerberus payroll, and doctorless for months after the collectors took her crew.
"What do I do? Can you…what are my options?"
Dr. Michel looked flustered. She gently urged the Commander to lay back on the table so that she could start repairing the gaping wound in Shepard's side. She gently began dabbing the area with ointments and coagulants. "Unplanned pregnancies are very rare, but the usual practice, if the mother is unable to or does not wish to continue carrying the child, is to transfer the child to a grow-tank and then put up for adoption. On some worlds, killing the child is also acceptable, though not in any of the System Alliance worlds."
"Don't call me a mother," Shepard said sharply. She felt lightheaded, as if her whole world was upside down, but she was expected to walk away "I'm not going to be a mother. Get me a damned grow-tank right now and get it done with."
"I'm sorry Commander, I don't have the necessary equipment, nor the surgical skills required. You'll have to go somewhere else. Any well equipped hospital should have what you need." Dr. Michel's face was visibly pained. She used a small instrument to seal up the skin over the wound, and then set to work on applying a bandage.
"Like the citadel?"
The doctor hesitated before meeting Shepard's eyes. "I can…send you a list of hospitals. You need to think about this Shepard. You must not jump into any decisions. I think that you should…alert the father. He might have an opinion on where you should place the child. Perhaps he has family who could take charge until the war is over."
Shepard wanted to get up and pace, but she was tethered to the exam table by her IV, which was slowly pumping replacement blood into her. Dr. Michel had resumed examining and repairing other more minor wounds. Kaidan. She was carrying Kaidan's baby, and had been for four months. She'd carried this baby down to Mars, Menae, Sur'Kesh, and Tuchenka. She'd been in firefights and explosions, and drank to her heart's content on several occasions. She'd dodged a Reaper and a Thresher Maw, all with a tiny innocent little piece of luggage inside her.
"How did I not know?" Shepard said. Her voice was ragged with emotion and sudden guilt. "Is the kid okay? I mean…with everything I've been through these last few months." Shepard covered her eyes with her hands, remembering every glass of wine, every booming explosion and concussive grenade she'd been near in the past months. Just because she hadn't wanted a baby didn't mean that she actively wanted to hurt a baby— but had she?
"According to my scans, the heartbeat is strong, and the brain activity looked normal. Your shields and armor probably did a lot to protect the child from any lasting damage, though the further into the pregnancy you get, the more impact something like that would have on fetal development."
"I'm not going any further. I'm going to get a damn grow-tank as soon as possible." Shepard growled.
"What about the father, Kaidan?" Dr. Michel asked gently.
"He can't know." Shepard responded instantly. She knew it was the right decision, but she couldn't exactly explain why. She just couldn't bring herself to get him involved in this right now.
"Would you like to know the gender of the child, Commander?" Dr. Michel stood back, stripping off her gloves. She was done patching Shepard up for the time being.
"No." Shepard rolled away from Dr. Michel and closed her eyes, signaling that the conversation as over. The Doctor pulled a blanket up over her, then ushered her other patients and techs back in and picked up on bandaging Garrus' leg. Liara looked worriedly at Shepard's blank face, but didn't ask what was wrong. Not that Shepard would have told anyone if they did ask. This was none of the Shadow Broker's business. It was just a little blip, a problem that she needed to take care of.
#
"Mindoir?" Joker mused from the pilot's seat. Shepard stood behind him, one arm hooked across the back of the chair. "What the hell is on Mindoir besides a lame-ass colony? I think Mindoir is actually the one colony in the galaxy that's more boring than Tiptree."
"I grew up on Mindoir," Shepard said, raising an eyebrow. "What are you implying Joker?"
"Nothing Shepard. So what, are we going to get to meet the rest of the Shepard clan or something?"
Shepard gave EDI a warning look, which the AI correctly interpreted as 'Don't say anything about my past to this buffoon right now.' Out loud, Shepard said, "No. Just take us in. I put the coordinates on the galaxy map."
"Understood Commander." For all his joking, Joker took his job on the Normandy seriously.
Shepard's next stop was the main battery, where she knew she would find Garrus lurking about, perpetually trying to increase the efficiency of the Thanix cannon.
"Shepard," He looked up and acknowledged her. "You need something?"
"Yeah. A favor."
"Anything, Commander,"
Shepard hesitated. Dr. Michell already knew about the baby, but she wasn't quite the close friend that she needed right now. Shepard wanted to tell Liara but she was afraid that the asari would try and persuade her to tell Kaidan. Chakwas would have been preferable but…Shepard pushed the thought out of her mind. What happened was in the past. She needed to get this out of the way so that she could look to the future.
"It's a personal mission. I have to go down and visit a med clinic and I need…backup. I want you to suit up, but I'm not actually expecting any trouble. I want you to pilot the shuttle, keep any nosy reporters away, and ah…anything else that comes up."
"Are you alright?" Garrus asked. She had his full attention now, the Thanix cannon in the background was suddenly just a piece of tech. She knew he was imagining all kinds of strange diseases, dying relatives, and covert intel-missions.
Shepard struggled with what to say. Embarrassment battled with honesty for a moment, but then she swallowed her pride and told him the truth.
"I'm pregnant. Alenko knocked me up a while back, before I went to Earth."
Garrus looked as surprised as if she'd suddenly told him she was going to get a sex change and marry a salarian. He rubbed the back his neck and stammered, his mandibles flexing wordlessly.
"I'm putting the baby up for adoption on Mindoir. It's the colony where I grew up."
"I…understand Commander." Garrus was finally coming back around to himself, Shepard could see.
"Alenko doesn't know. He's…sentimental. He'd want to keep it, or send it to his family on Earth. You know why neither of those is an option for me."
"The war and…the war. I get it."
Shepard paced back and forth across in front of the control panel, her thoughts and rationalizations bubbling out of her mouth before she could stop herself. "Earth is under attack—there's no way that the kid would be safe there. And with me or Kaidan—we're on the front lines. I've put the damn kid in enough danger as it is with my drinking and fighting and blowing shit up—and I'm not likely to stop any time soon. Even if it were a grow tank here on the ship…I can't go out on missions thinking about some innocent kid up on the Normandy waiting for me. You know Garrus, if it comes down to it, I will throw myself into the fire if it means ending the reapers once and for all."
Garrus shook his head and let his breath out slowly. "It better not come to that Shepard."
She paused in her pacing. "There's one more thing. After this…is all over. If I don't make it out I want you to tell Kaidan. And if he doesn't make it out…I just want you to keep an eye on things. If it looks like the situation is going south on Mindoir, you have my authorization for extraction and relocation."
Shepard locked her gaze on Garrus' sharp sapphire eyes. He nodded slowly. "You have my word Commander." That was enough for Shepard. It had to be, because it was the best she could damn well do.
