Chapter Two – Expectations
Her forty-eight hours medical leave was up and Christine was anxious to get back to duty. She had ordered it for retuning landing party members many times before but this was the first time she had to endure the wait herself.
Christine entered sick bay to find several women waiting to see the doctor.
"Must be something going around, Chris," he said as he followed the first patient into the exam room. Christine joined him and assisted in the exam. The primary symptom was nausea and vomiting. It didn't take Dr. McCoy long to determine his patient was expecting.
"What!" she screamed, "How can that be? My contraceptive routine is current. I just can't be. Maybe your instruments need calibration. Please let that be it!" Star Fleet regulations required pregnant crewman to be put ashore as soon as possible. There were no facilities for families and no place for children on a star ship. It meant this crewman's career in space was over. Dr. McCoy double checked his results which were the same the second time. He gave her information and Christine made another appointment for her the following week.
The next patient also complained of nausea and vomiting and received the same diagnosis and a follow-up appointment.
"Dr. McCoy, what are the odds of two women on a star ship becoming pregnant at the same time?" asked Christine.
"I'm sure Spock will tell us later. After this last patient I want you to sort patient files for batch numbers on the contraceptive doses. Let's see if we got a bad batch, God forbid. This could be very bad!"
Bones called in the last patient. Nausea and vomiting! Diagnosis: Pregnancy! The Enterprise had an epidemic on its hands.
Three women pregnant at the same time! Christine spent the rest of the day sorting through medical files. The women on the ship had received contraceptives from six different batches. These had been stocked when they left base and had been used over the past fourteen months. The three women had received three different batches of the medication. Could it all have been contaminated? Dr. McCoy informed the captain of the incidents and placed a communication to the Surgeon General of the Federation. He needed information from the manufacturer. Had other batches been contaminated? What about the rest of their supply? Would they have to test their whole stock? There were so many questions.
By the next day several more women had been to see the doctor. There were six pregnant women on the Enterprise and Star Fleet was growing concerned. The manufacturer had assured them that none of the batches assigned to the Enterprise was contaminated. Perhaps something happened in transit or aboard ship. Headquarters was questioning Dr. McCoy's record keeping and his competency.
By the third day seven more women had come in for treatment. By the end of the week the Enterprise was incubating twenty-three babies! Everyone in medical had met with the captain, had video conferenced with headquarters and spoken with the surgeon general.
Science and medical teams worked together to discover just what had happened and when. It occurred to Spock that perhaps the anti-matter plasma they had encountered had something to do with this. Some of the pregnant women had indeed come to sick bay with multiple symptoms at that time. In the end everyone agreed that was the only logical explanation for the total system failure of the enterprise contraceptives.
The only question was why had some women become pregnant and others had not? Of course someone had to interview every woman on the ship to determine her sexual habits and more. Christine discovered that those who had become pregnant had participated in sexual relations and those that had not become pregnant had simply not had sexual relations within the same time frame. She charted the dates and ran the analysis.
Dr. McCoy popped in for the results of the analysis and found Christine ashen and staring at the computer screen. He looked at the results and dug for his medical scanner. A quick pass made him shoo her to the bio-bed. As Christine struggled to come to grips with being the twenty-fourth crew member caught in this plasma web baby boom Dr. McCoy gathered her medical data.
"You are pregnant," he said. "You already knew that from the data you just cataloged. I don't know why you're so much later than the others. Your eggs must have been fertilized at very literally, the last moment of viability."
She sighed, "Lucky me. Okay, give it to me, who is the father, Spock or Jim?"
"Christine, honey, there's just no easy way to say this; you're having twins, fraternal twins."
"Fraternal twins?" Her mind jumped to an unthinkable situation. "Oh, no. No, no, no! This is not happening!"
"A boy for Jim and a boy for Spock." Neither spoke for a long time.
"I think someone's going to notice one human baby that looks like Jim and one Vulcan baby. Do you have any idea what they're going to say? I can hear it now- all the comments about the three of us. Oh, Leonard, what am I going to do?"
"You can apply for termination if you want it. Star Fleet has given every pregnant crewman has that option in this case. This was hazardous duty and beyond their control. Only one crewman has requested it."
"I can't do that Leonard. This is a gift and we don't know why this has happened to all of us yet. It's just that, well, I have plans, had plans."
"There is no reason you can't continue on with those plans. You will have some kind of settlement with Star Fleet over this. They are going to want to study all the babies for a long time due to the unusual circumstances of their conception, and just the radiation dose alone. This is not for the grapevine yet, but I am telling you – Star Fleet says we are too far out to be recalled, even for twenty-three, uh, twenty-five unplanned babies. They have told us to deal with it. They want us to re-assign guest quarters to make room for babies and they want us to reassign duty rosters to accommodate the mothers and fathers. We are not due back to Earth for eighteen to twenty months. They want to take advantage of our predicament and study the possibility of permanent on-board families. Congratulations, Christine, you're about to change Star Fleet policy! Don't ask me how we are going to manage. It's not like we can make a call and get temps to help out."
"Oh, Leonard, this is going to be so embarrassing; the gossip, the whispers, the eyebrows. What happened on that planet was just between us, now it's going to be paraded all over Star Fleet. Every place we go, everybody we meet will be gossiping about me screwing the captain and the first officer. There will be hundreds of dirty jokes about us. There will be dirty jokes about the Enterprise. There will be insinuations about Jim and Spock. All our professional reputations will be in shambles! What am I going to do?"
"For now, you don't have to do anything except go and tell them they are going to be fathers. The three of you will have to decide what to tell and what to keep to yourself. It's your business and no one has to know anything you don't want to tell them. I would imagine one of them will want to marry you, maybe both. Maybe you could have a plural marriage. Those are recognized by Star Fleet."
"They are if you're from Dendron III and a follower of their prophet Kantro Artera, which we're not, Leonard."
"You could convert. Think of it – two husbands! Think of the possibilities! You will be the envy of every woman on the ship."
"You're only thinking of what it would be like with two wives. You couldn't keep up Leonard."
"Yes, but you're the girl. They have to keep up with you, he said. "Go on home and figure out what you're going to tell them. Let me know when you've done that. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag."