After a few minutes, a nurse walked over to Sarah and asked her to come with her.
Sarah Jane looked over at John, then back to the nurse. "Can my husband come with me, please?"
"In a little while, Mrs. Tinker. I promise when you're ready someone will bring him back to the examining room. Right now we just need you to come with me so we can prep you for your exam."
Sarah Jane went with her reluctantly.
A few moments later Harry walked by on the way to his office. "Hello John, do I have an appointment with you today," he smiled.
John heard his voice and jumped a little. Continuing the charade of not telling anyone at UNIT until they were certain, he still hadn't told Harry that Sarah Jane was pregnant. "Um … no, actually. It's … good to see you, though."
Harry laughed. "Well, what are you doing here then, old man?"
More music to face, John thought. "Well, you know that Sarah Jane and I have been married for a few months now."
"Yes of course, but I'm afraid I'm failing to make the connection..." he paused. "I say, is Sarah Jane ill? What's the matter with her? Who's seeing to her, I'll go assist." He started towards the nurses' station to get information.
Meanwhile, Sarah had been weighed and measured and instructed to change into an open gown, then given another to use as a robe.
A tall older man in a white lab coat opened the door and smiled kindly at her. He picked up the chart on the counter and started to look it over. "Hello, Mrs. Tinker. I'm Doctor Carlisle. I've heard a lot of nice things about you from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart." He stretched his hand out to her.
"Thank you, Doctor. It's a pleasure to meet you. I was told that my husband could be here with me. Could you please have someone go and get him?"
"Certainly, just as soon as we get the initial part of the exam done. For now, though, I'm going to have my nurse come in and assist me."
"No, no," John said, grabbing Harry's arm. "She's not ill, she's …" He took a deep breath. "We think she may be … well … having a baby."
Harry stopped and stared at John, then sat down next to him. "Having a baby! But you've only been married a few months and you are supposed to be recovering from your injuries. You're weren't supposed to be doing anything strenuous yet, you know that."
John leaned back involuntarily from the intensity of Harry's reaction, but couldn't stop smiling. "You said take it easy, you didn't say we couldn't. Besides, you've been letting me play football, haven't you?"
"First of all, in your condition, it never occurred to me that you and Sarah would! I did tell you to stay calm above all else and besides, you're the goalie, not much exercise in that the way we play is there?"
Harry was clearly flustered. Thinking back, he did remember that Sarah had asked him if she and John could have children, but she had agreed to let him recover first. While he definitely had told Sarah Jane that John was making a very good recovery and was coming along very well, he didn't think that she would assume he was recovered enough to...
He sighed as he saw the happy look on John's face. It was too late now to do anything about it, and anyway, John's last checkup has been a fairly good one. "Well, then congratulations, John old man," he said as he gave him a slap on the back. "But I don't understand why you and Sarah Jane are here instead of at an ObGyn's, especially since UNIT doesn't have any sort of maternity care available."
"Er … yes, well, I'm afraid I was being a bit … overprotective, and I asked the Brigadier for a bit of an assist. Sarah Jane thinks I'm being silly, but... well, any chance to try out some new technology, eh?"
"New technology? I'm afraid I still don't follow you, dear boy."
"Yes," John said excitedly. "There's this new technology called an ultrasound that lets you actually look inside the human body and see what's there. They've been using it in Scotland to look for tumors, but why stop there?" His eyes lit up. "We can actually see the baby in there!"
"Well, that is quite remarkable isn't it? I had no idea things had progressed to that point. Who is the old girl seeing? I'd like to have a word with him on it."
John told himself not to be nervous. Sooner or later Harry was going to find out about the baby's extra hearts, and he was the one person - besides the Brig - that was least likely to buy their story. "Well, the Brig recommended Doctor Carlisle. You see, I … I asked for his help because I was doing some calculations for the beacon - you remember that beacon that I was building for Sarah Jane to contact the Doctor? Well there's an awful lot of temporal mechanics involved there and when I was doing the math I was beginning to realize that there was some … er … well, a sort of temporal radiation that she would have … Oh, Harry, actually," he said, suddenly realizing how fast he was talking, "you'd have been exposed to it too! Well, not for as long, of course, and you're not having a baby, so there'd be nothing for you to pass down, even if your DNA did get a little scrambled."
Harry put his hand on John's shoulder. "Steady on, John, what's all this you're trying to tell me? Just what have Sarah Jane and I been exposed to, and how has it affected our DNA?"
John took a deep breath and tried to slow down. "All of my calculations for the beacon show that traveling through time would expose you to a sort of temporal radiation. It's … a kind of ambient temporal energy, like sunlight, only on a dimensional scale. It's not dangerous for a short time, or even necessarily for a long time, but there's a definite possibility that long term exposure can lead to mutations in DNA that while they aren't dangerous in and of themselves, they could be passed on to a baby, and it could lead to some … abnormalities."
Before Harry could respond a nurse appeared. "They're ready for you now. Come with me please, Mister Tinker."
Harry sat and watched as the nurse led John away. He shook his head for a moment and stood, musing as he went back to his office.
Truth be told, he was a bit miffed, and on several counts. First, he was hurt that this was how he found out about the baby. He was supposed to be John's best friend, and here was Doctor Carlisle - a perfectly good doctor, but a relative stranger as far as John and Sarah were concerned - with a leg up on him. He wouldn't even be surprised if Jack Harkness already knew as well.
Second, both Sarah Jane and John had promised him that John wouldn't engage in anything strenuous; it was the one condition on which he'd sent them home from the hospital just … He thought back. Just five weeks ago.
Not really long enough to be certain that Sarah Jane was pregnant.
Harry thought back to Sarah Jane's specific question about she and John being able to have children, and suddenly everything was clear. He'd thought John's proposal a little sudden at the time, and though he had no doubt as to how the two of them felt about each other, at the moment, he also had no doubt that their abbreviated engagement was not an accident.
He slammed the files he was carrying on his desk a little harder than he'd meant to. There were two possibilities here, and he didn't know which bothered him more.
Either John was the father, which was difficult to believe, or the Doctor was the father, which was difficult to accept.
With all of the techno-babble John had just tried to bury him in, he had a pretty good idea of which direction the wind was blowing. It all sounded reasonable, of course, but so did a lot of the things the Doctor used to say, even when Harry was certain he was making them up as he went along.
Whichever was the case, Harry just wished that they'd have let him in on it. He'd finally begun to felt like he was part of something, and now he once again felt like a third wheel, just like he had when he was traveling in the TARDIS. After all, he was still getting used to having Jack around, and not even entirely comfortable at that.
All he really wanted was to make a difference, to fit in, to do something good, and he felt thwarted at every turn.
The nurse smiled at John as she led him into the examining room. "Is this your first baby?"
John smiled back nervously. He was hoping that his demeanor would be taken for that of a typical nervous father, but of course there was more to it than that; deep down inside, he'd known from the beginning that Sarah's baby wasn't entirely human, but it hadn't really hit home until recently, and now, after talking to Harry, despite all of their joking, he was just a bit concerned about what they were going to find. "Is everything all right?"
The nurse laughed. "The Doctor has just started the exam, but I'm sure your wife and baby are fine."
John exhaled. "Right, so then … yes?" He smiled bashfully.
"Yes," she said shaking her head as they reached the examining room. She knocked on the door and then opened it for John.
Sarah looked over and smiled nervously at him. "Doctor Carlisle, this is my husband, John Tinker."
"Pleasure to meet you sir," the doctor said, holding his hand out to John.
"And you," John said, shaking his hand. "So we're going to be able to … see the baby?"
"Actually yes, I must say, you are quite an impressive boffin, Mr. Tinker. Ultrasound is a fairly new procedure to obstetrics."
"So I understand," John said, glad to be on more solid ground. "But it seems like if you can see a tumor, you can see a baby, right? I'm just … well, I'm a bit anxious to make sure the little peanut's all right. I'm sure the Brigadier explained to you that Sarah's been exposed to some … well, she's had some unusual exposures, and it could lead to some genetic abnormalities."
"Yes, I was informed of that and now that the formalities are over, let's get on with the exam shall we?" He turned to Sarah and smiled. "Since we've already done the first part of the exam and determined that you are, in fact, having a baby, why don't you lay back down on the table and the nurse will cover you with a nice warm blanket."
Once Sarah Jane was covered up and comfortable, the doctor got out a huge swab and a jar of clear jelly-like fluid. Then he gently pulled the blanket down a bit until Sarah's abdomen was exposed. "This is going to feel a little cool, Mrs. Tinker," he said as he began to smear her stomach with the swab he had dipped in the gelatinous substance. "Once we get this on you, we can begin the ultrasound."
Sarah quietly reached out for John's hand.
John took her hand and smiled. They'd been married for two months, but he still thrilled at little moments of intimacy like this one.
The nurse dragged a huge machine on wheels over to the doctor. "Thank you," he smiled at her, turned it on and started to fuss with a few dials. He turned to Sarah and John. "I'm not an ObGyn, and though I've used this type of machine before, I must admit, this is the first time I've done it to find a baby. I hope you'll be patient with me."
The doctor paused as he pulled out the transducer and then stood over Sarah Jane. "This won't hurt my dear. What I'm going to do is pass this over your abdomen until I find the baby. Once I do that, I can determine how far along you are, and you can look at the monitor and see what your little one looks like. You'll be able to hear the baby's heartbeat too. I've been told this is a very beautiful experience for parents," he smiled at them. "Any questions before I begin?"
Sarah Jane squeezed John's hand and looked at him with no expression on her face, but her eyes spoke volumes. She was terrified.
John wasn't feeling so good either, but he plastered a smile on his face and tried to be as reassuring as possible. "I suppose not," he said. "Will you be able to tell if there are any … genetic issues this way?"
The doctor thought about what the Brigadier had told him. He felt sorry for this poor man, just married and his wife was pregnant with an alien baby. Even if he knew it, it was still a noble gesture on his part. "Well, I will be able to detect any obvious outward anomalies or defects, but let's just have a look before we worry unduly, shall we?"
"Right, of course," John said. "And really, as long as the baby's healthy, it doesn't actually matter, right, sweetheart?" He looked at Sarah.
"Of course," nodded Sarah even though she didn't look very convinced.
"Right then, let's get started." The doctor placed the wand-like device on Sarah Jane's stomach and slowly started to move it around in the area where he felt the baby should be. In a few moments he saw a tiny foot on the monitor. He moved the receptor slightly. "Well, take a look, there's a perfectly formed set of legs and two small feet." He smiled confidently.
John gasped. As much as he'd been thinking about it, he hadn't really been prepared for this moment. "I see them! Feet! And … toes," he said, smiling at Sarah. "Ten perfect little toes." He felt his heart pounding with excitement.
Sarah smiled back at him and squeezed his hand. "I can see them too! That's our baby, John."
"Yes, it's our baby," he said, feeling emotion washing over him.