The Judgment of Solomon
By
Pat Foley
Chapter 14
When Sarek arrived home, the first thing he heard was an odd burbling sound. And giggling. Not his wife's light amused laughter, but a toddler's low chuckle, I-Chiya's heavy panting, more of the bubbling, burbling sound, and more giggling.
Sarek came around a formal planting and discovered Spock and I-Chiya next to one of the formal fountain pools. Both of them looked up as he came around the corner. Spock had a piece of reed grass in his hand and was using it to blow bubbles in the pool.
"Wants to see my baby fishes?" Spock asked. "I catched them in dis," he pointed to a strainer he had apparently absconded with from the kitchen, "and den I puts dem in a bopple."
"Where is your mother?" Sarek demanded, frowning at the distressed fish and lifting the container.
Spock looked troubled. "Mama napping. I pinched her. Den I-Chiya licked her, and then he bited her," I-Chiya whined in confirmation of all this, while Sarek turned white, "Just a little bite. But she still no wake up. So I come out here to play."
Sarek paused only to toss the fish back into the pond, ignoring his son's aborted howl of protest, cut off when he picked Spock up. "Show me where she is."
"We was in kitchen," Spock explained. "But I never got my snack."
Sarek ran, through the formal gardens, the kitchen gardens, the garden court door. He put Spock down outside the door to the kitchen. "Stay here," he warned.
His first impression of the kitchen was disorder. Spock had apparently opened every door and cabinet he could reach to find the strainer he had used to catch his fish, and the container he had put them in. Sarek paused, stretching every sense. He felt nothing through the bond. He would surely feel something. Then he heard it, a faint breath. He followed it around a set of counters and found Amanda stretched out on the floor.
"Amanda," he said, kneeling beside her. He drew her up in his arms. She did not stir.
"See? Mama sleeping," Spock said, I-Chiya at his heels. The boy tugged at her hand. "Mama, wake up!"
"I told you to stay outside," Sarek said to him with terse intensity.
Spock burst into tears. "Hungry," he wailed. "Hungry long time. Want Mama wake up."
I-Chiya leaned down to lick the distraught boy, knocking Spock down. Spock cried harder.
Sarek looked from his son to his wife, and picked up Spock. "Hold tight around my neck, Spock," he said. "Hold tight."
"Piggyback ride," Spock said in glee, forgetting his tears. He clutched Sarek with strangling intensity around his throat.
Sarek picked up his wife. It took only the work of a moment to carry her to the aircar, Spock delighting at the ride, chortling in his ear, another moment to bundle Spock into a seat, with Amanda laid out next to him. And then he took off for the Terran medical center. He simply hoped he was in time.
The medical center was small, in consequence to the fact that there were few Terrans on Vulcan. It served the Terran Enclave center, an area set aside in Shikhar where was concentrated the Terran embassy, the Federation Center, a host of trade and science groups, and all the shops, schools and services that congregated around them. Sarek knew the Medical Center from prior visits. He entered through the main Emergency doors, Amanda in his arms. Staff immediately relieved him of her, putting her on a gurney that they trundled over.
"Heatstroke?" an attendant asked Sarek laconically, apparently the standard human complaint on Vulcan. "Dehydration? Hypoxia? Her nail beds look good." He ran a scanner over her. "No sign of the usual acclimation issues."
"I am Ambassador Sarek," he replied, "I want Mark Abrams here at once to attend her. And call Sjekur and have him here. Immediately."
The orderly's eyes widened. A young Vulcan woman seeing Sarek come in had also heard, came up, inclining her head to Sarek, and said, "It will be done."
"Mama," Spock said, holding out a hand as Amanda was taken away. "Want Mama."
Sarek looked after her as well, torn. He didn't want to expose Spock to the distress of seeing his mother treated in barbaric medical conditions. But he wanted to be with Amanda, too.
The Vulcan woman came back. There were too few humans on Vulcan to fully staff the medical center, and some Vulcans did work there. She inclined her head to Sarek again. "Sjekur is on his way," she said. "If you wish, I will take your son to the childcare center. Then you can attend your wife."
"Yes," Sarek said. "Spock, you will go with -"
"T'Hara," the woman supplied her name. "Clan of Sforr. On loan from the Healer's Enclave to learn here of Terran medicine."
"You will go with T'Hara," Sarek told his son.
Spock's eyes widened as Sarek transferred him to this stranger. He kicked out and struggled with Vulcan strength and fury, though the Vulcan woman was more than equal to restraining him. "No!" he howled. "Want Mama!"
Sarek turned back to his son. "Spock, you can not have your mother now. And I have duties to attend to. You will go with T'Hara as I have instructed."
"I want Mama," Spock whispered, tears on his cheeks.
"Your mother is not here to indulge you," Sarek said, disinclined under these conditions to indulge Spock as his mother would have wished. "You will do as you are told," Sarek turned away, turning a deaf ear, his own ears burning as Spock called out for his parents in every term he knew in English and Vulcan before T'Hara bundled him out of earshot.
When Sarek reached his wife, she'd been moved to a bed. Sarek winced inwardly to see her flesh pierced with a device that infused a solution into her veins.
"I know it looks barbaric," Abrams said. "to Vulcan eyes. We don't use IV's that often, but nothing beats one if we have to get drugs into her fast." Seeing Sarek's eye on the infusion bag he added, "That's just fluids. We're keeping her stable, for now, until Sjekur-"
Sjekur chose that moment to arrive, with his colleague T'Vsa, and two Vulcan attendants with a kit in tow. He glanced at the medical board over Amanda's bed, and gave rapid fire orders. The two attendants immediately withdrew the appropriate drugs.
"Why did you not bring her to the healer's Enclave?" Sjekur asked Sarek.
"She is human," Sarek said. "It seemed the place with the best resources to treat her."
"It is the Vulcan child within her that is the source of her problem," Sjekur said.
"She is pregnant?" Sarek asked. "You are sure?"
"Indeed. With those readings nothing else is possible."
"Amanda thought she might be," Abrams said. "My tests were still inconclusive. All I could see was that her metabolism was being adversely affected by the immune suppressive drugs she was taking.
"Did she not relate that she felt at least ill?" Sjekur asked Sarek.
"She related the exact opposite." Sarek looked down at Amanda. It had all happened so suddenly. There had only been the evening that Amanda had been singing Spock to sleep, and the next morning. "She had indicated that she had felt tired yesterday evening," Sarek admitted. "She was perhaps somewhat subdued then, for her. And this morning she appeared momentarily dizzy when she rose."
"Severe fatigue will be a natural consequence of this pregnancy," Sjekur said absently, attention focused on his exam. "One of many."
Sarek held himself in control as the Healer touched his wife mentally, brushing fingers from her blond brows to her temples.
"But she will recover," Sarek said, not asking, watching the healer visibly frown as he examined Amanda.
Sjekur glanced at him. "Her physiological response to the pregnancy is certainly not what one could wish. Although not unexpected."
"She will recover," Sarek insisted.
The Vulcan healer glanced at Sarek. "We will attempt to ensure that she does. To begin, we will keep her here for a day at least."
"She will not lose the child?"
Sjekur met Shrek's eyes. "I cannot promise any definite outcome."
"But you do not believe," Sarek eyed Abrams, "that she must-"
Seeing Sarek unable to complete the sentence, Abrams cut in. "I told Sarek I believed Amanda should be relieved of the pregnancy if one had occurred. That it was too dangerous. He refused to consider it."
"Certainly he refused. That is not our way," Sjekur said. He eyed Sarek again. "For now, we will attempt to regulate her dosage to the appropriate drugs, to attempt to control this runaway immune system reaction. More than that, I cannot say. Humans have no conscious control over their physiology. As healers we can attempt some melds to impose control on her system. We have been having some recent successes with biofeedback. But much of her treatment must be done with drugs, which are necessarily crude."
"Is it possible she will lose the child?" Sarek asked striving to keep his voice even.
Sjekur's hands had moved lower, to cover Amanda's abdomen, his eyes closed. "The child, at present, is not in distress. It is not suffering the reaction that his host is."
"His?" Sarek asked.
"The fetus is a male," Sjekur said. "You have another son."
"A son," Sarek said. He drew a breath, thinking what that would mean to Spock, to have a sibling. A brother. He himself would have given much to have one. He looked down at his striken wife. "But Amanda-"
"It is too soon to predict, Sarek. This will be a difficult pregnancy. We will do what we can. What we must."
"Should we move her to the Healer's Enclave?" Abrams asked, watching the monitors as Amanda began reacting to the drugs infused into her system.
"I do not believe she should be moved at this time. Her condition is not necessarily perilous at the moment, but it is delicate. Nor is it necessary. We can care for her here. But the room should be warmer. She is not accustomed to these conditions physiologically. It is causing her and the fetus stress."
"Yes, of course," Abrams went to adjust the environmental controls.
"How long must she stay here?" Sarek asked, his eyes on his wife.
"It will take at least a day to regulate the type and amount of immune-suppressive drugs to give her," Sjekur said. "And then she will have to be very closely monitored as the fetus grows." His eyes met Sarek's. "I will not make light of the potential outcomes of this pregnancy, Sarek. You must be prepared for any eventuality."
Sarek tore his eyes from Amanda to meet those of the Healer.
"Any eventuality," Sjekur repeated. "Do not ask me to quote odds. At this point I do not have enough data. But while as a Vulcan, I do not countenance the unVulcan exigency my colleague proposes, I will not deny that in some cultures it might be considered one option given the extreme threat this pregnancy will impose on the mother's life. I trust I do not need to make myself more clear."
"Neither Amanda nor I would countenance such a measure," Sarek said.
"We shall endeavor to see your new son, and your wife, through this peril successfully," Sjekur said, the words giving Sarek unVulcan comfort. But then the healer spoiled them by adding, "Take good care of your first child, Sarek. He has become even more precious to you."
Sarek could not help giving the elder Vulcan a startled glance, but the Healer's face was unrevealing.
Abrams merely looked away, his face set.
And as Sarek took a tear-sodden Spock home, he could not help sympathizing with Amanda's desire to hug and hold her child closely.
Were he not Vulcan, he might succumb to some similar attempt at comfort. For himself as well as for Spock.
To be continued….