Thank you for all the lovely reviews, I'm sorry I haven't had the chance to reply individually. Hopefully this chapter flows ok, as all of it was typed out on my phone.

The only sound in the hospital room for the seconds following Helen's announcement was the slow, barely perceptible hiss of oxygen, as Martha felt her mind race with a thousand thoughts at once. Her initial feeling had been one of elation, to finally hear the words she'd waited for for so many years...But that had almost immediately been followed by panic at the realisation of how stupid she had been, and quick on the heels of that had been disbelief. It was disbelief that won out, and she shook her head, telling her firmly, "I can't be."

"Blood tests very rarely give us a false positve," Helen told her, her voice steady, calm, a tone that in any other circumstances would give reassurance. Martha was passed a tone lending her any feeling of comfort.

"They said it was impossible."

"Looking at your records it should have," Helen admitted. "But it's amazing how nature can find a way." Her head tilted slightly, the corner of her mouth giving the smallest of twitches, the only sign of her discomfort in her next question, "Is there anyone you would like me to contact? Given the news."

Martha gave a small shake of her head, careful to keep her voice calm, even as she replied, "No, thank you." Her eyes met Helen's as the lie tripped easily from her tongue, "I was in Metropolis for work, I went to a bar." She shrugged. "I was lonely, I only knew his first name, nothing else."

Helen gave a hurried nod. "Losing a partner young is difficult, everyone will pass their opinion on how you should grieve."

For a moment Martha felt slightly ashamed for deceiving the other woman, but she couldn't risk telling her, she was far too close to Lex. Anyway what good would it do, after all she appeared to be on borrowed time. "They do," she replied after a moment. "And I have no doubt that this would cause quite the stir."

"I have come to realise that small towns like their gossip and it doesn't even have to be something particular scandalous." She gave a small sigh before she added, " I have to ask, do you know how far along you might be?"

Martha considered the question carefully. She and Lionel had been involved for about 6 weeks and thinking back she hadn't had a period in the time they were together, something she had thought nothing of at the time. It had been stress or her age, she had briefly thought at one point, not once had she considered that she might have been pregnant. But it meant she had no idea exactly when it had happened and considering she was claiming it was the result of an out of character one night stand provided her with an another problem. "I don't remember the exact night, it would have been February...maybe March. It wasn't something I was keen to hold as a treasured memory."

"We could arrange a scan," Helen suggested softly.

For a moment Martha felt a flicker of excitement at the thought of seeing her baby for the first time. Of seeing proof that after all those years of hoping and wishing, that one thing she had wanted most had finally happened. That feeling disappeared with a sobering realisation. She gave a shake of her head. "I've spent twenty years waiting for the moment I heard this news, for the moment I got to see that image of my baby for the first time. I don't think that I could stand to see this baby, knowing that there's a good chance that I might not live long enough to give them the chance to have a life."

Dipping her head into a small nod, Helen told her, "I can understand that, but you shouldn't give up hope, the specialists that Lex has brought in are experts in their fields."

"I'm sure they are. But tell me honestly, have you seen something like this before?"

"No," Helen admitted.

"Then they won't necessarily know how to even begin treating me," she guessed easily.

"They may have ideas that we haven't thought of," Helen insisted.

"And I genuinely hope that they do, but I need to prepare for the reality that they might not." She offered a small, sad smile. "Believe me I want nothing more than to get better and I will fight this every step of the way, but I can't do that and deal with the irony that just as I get my miracle, I end up with days left to live. I can only deal with one life changing event at a time," she quipped, her voice straining with the effort.

"Of course, however you find it easier to cop with this. But we are here to support you. So if there's anything we can do..." She tailed off.

"There is actually something," Martha told her as a sudden thought occurred to her. "I don't want anyone to know about the baby and that includes the specialists that Lex has brought in." If they were to mention it to Lex then Martha doubted that he wouldn't be long in putting two and two together. She couldn't risk that, especially not now.

Helen's features creased into a confused looking frown. "I'm not sure I understand why," she admitted.

"Because I don't want Clark to know. He'll be angry and upset and I don't want to put him through that if they don't find a way to treat me." She took as deep a breath as she could manage, steeling herself to continue. "He'll think I betrayed Johnathan's memory, I don't want to give him that to cope with if I'm not going to be here to support him."

"I understand that but all doctors are bound by a code of confidentiality-"

"All it would take is a small slip when updating Lex and then he might feel duty bound to tell Clark. I don't want to put that pressure onto either of them." She kept her gaze on Helen, watching as she chewed her lip nervously. "I do understand that you might feel that puts you in a difficult situation, hiding something from Lex."

"It's not so much that, I'm a doctor and patient privilege takes priority over any personal connections. My reluctance is more that some treatment decisions may differ if they are aware of your pregnancy," Helen pointed out.

"As I understood it, you are still the doctor in overall charge of my care."

"That's true."

"Then they will be running all treatment ideas passed you and you can intervene if needed." Martha watched Helen and realised she was about to refuse her request and so added hastily, "I know that it's probably against the rules, but if the odds are against me then I don't want to leave my son with the last memory of his Mom being that she betrayed his Dad."

Helen gave a sigh. "I suppose that I could misplace that particular page of your blood results for the next twenty four hours."

Martha felt her shoulders relax. "Thank you," she told her, her tone sincere.

But only if it doesn't interfere with your treatment."

At that Helen left and Martha sank back into her pillow - well as much as the polyester casing would allow - and let her hand drift onto her stomach. Pregnant, after all these years, it almost felt like a cruel joke. She and Jonathan had hoped for so long that they might get that miracle, even when they were blessed with Clark there would be the moments they would wonder what it would be like to have another baby, for Clark to have a little brother or sister.

As she grew closer to forty she had gradually thought about it less and less, hadn't even considered it as a remote possibility. She had been careless, didn't once think about using protection, despite having lectured Clark on it so many times. In all of the moments she had spent with Lionel, she hadn't given it a single thought.

She squeezed her eyes shut, her mind was racing, panic flickering through her. She had wanted this, it was the one thing she had ever truly wanted and the thought that she had actually heard those words meant the world to her. Then she would remember her prognosis and she felt guilt about the child she would potentially never bring into this world and then guilt for the son she would leave behind. She hoped for a cure, even knowing that it would bring with it a whole new set of problems.

Painful coughs wracked her frame for a moment and Martha shook her head. She couldn't think about the baby just now, couldn't think about dealing with the consequences. Not yet.

When Martha woke again she could feel a weight resting on her covers. Blinking her eyes open she saw Clark watching her anxiously, his arms crossed and resting on the bed. She reached out and patted his hand, he managed a forced smile. "It's good to see you awake," he told her.

Martha squeezed his hand. "How are you holding up?"

Clark shrugged. "Managing. Environmental Health searched the farm though."

"I heard," she told him calmly.

"I moved the ship."

Martha smiled at him reassuringly. "I knew that you would."

His eyes met hers and she could instantly see the maelstrom of confusion within them and dread filled her as he told her. "But they did find something. Mom, why didn't you tell me that you had the key?"

She knew that if she were to lie he would want to believe her, but she just couldn't do it to him. She had wanted desperately to protect him, to protect what was left of her family and all she had managed to do so far was make a couple of rather large errors in judgement. "Because I was being selfish," she admitted quietly. "I told myself that I was protecting you by hiding it, but really I was protecting myself."

"Where did you even find it?"

"Lionel had it. I think he's been collecting information on the meotor strike, it was with the rocks and folders."

Clark looked nervous. "Do you think he knows about me?"

"No," Martha told him honestly. "He suspects something odd is going on within Smallville and he was slightly suspicious that there was something...unusual about you. But he didn't connect the key to you, I'm sure of it."

"So why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was worried that if you had the key again you would start wondering about ...about where you were from, start thinking about your birth parents again." She pressed her hand briefly against his cheek, feeling his stubble graze her fingertips, reminding her that he was growing up so quickly. "I was worried about losing you to them. It was selfish of me, I knew it then, although I didn't want to admit it, not even to myself."

He reached up and squeezed her fingers. "Mum, you'll never lose me, but I do want to know where I came from. There's so much that doesn't make sense to me and I wish it did."

"I know, and I shouldn't have tried to stop you from finding out about your heritage, I just couldn't bear the thought that someday they would come back and claim you and that if you went looking for them then that would just speed up the process."

Clark have a small tut, the ghost of a real smile on his face as he told her, "Even if I was to find them, they couldn't replace you Mom, not when you do all the cooking and washing."

Martha laughed, causing her chest to spasm and prompt another coughing fit. Clark looked over her, looking anxious. "I'm ok," she forced out between splutters.

"This is my fault," he muttered.

"And how did you reach that conclusion?"

"There's green spores in the barn, I think it's something the meotors brought with them."

What did environmental health say?"

"Nothing," Clark admitted. "They took the soil to test and have ordered a clean up of the barn, but I know what was there. I could feel them and they wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for me. I brought them with me."

Martha took in her her son's pained expression and her voice soft she told him, "Clark, you were not in control of what happened to you all those years ago and you didn't control what followed you here either. This was down to chance, not you."

"You're sick because of it." His mouth wobbled as he admitted heavily. "And I heard the doctors that Lex brought in talking, they don't know how to treat you."

"I know and believe me I don't want to leave you, but if this it then I need you to know something." Her gaze locked into his. "You made me happier than I ever thought I could be, finding you was the best moment of my life and you brought your Dad and I so much joy, more than I ever thought possible. And I would rather have had fourteen years with you than another forty years without you. You are my son and I am prouder of you than I could ever hope to put into words. I know you find your abilities challenging at times, but I'm confident that we taught you right from wrong and I know that you are going to be just fine."

"I don't want to do this my own," Clark admitted, his voice strained as the confession took so much from him.

"There will be other people in your life, people you care about who you'll be able to confide in and those who love you will support you."

Clark managed the smallest of teasing smiles. "I thought I wasn't to tell anybody under any circumstances, ever."

Martha tapped her fingers against the back of his hand in a mock warning and forced herself to admit, "Your Dad and I may have been over cautious about protecting your secret at times, but only because we wanted you to be safe and to have the chance to build your own life. You will always have to be careful who choose to give your secret to Clark, but I know that you'll be sensible about it."

"How can you have so much confidence in me?"

"Because the boy I see sitting in front of me has all the good qualities of his Dad and then some. You will be a wonderful man and you'll do amazing things. I'm sure of it."

"And if I do, when I do," he amended, seeing the chiding frown on her features when he said if. "It'll be because of the strength and wisdom I got from you as well Mom."

Martha had to force herself to hold back her tears. Despite all she said she worried desperately for the son she would leave behind, who would have no-one but the state to care for him. She reached up to brush his hair from his forehead and remarked suddenly, "Clark, you're burning up!"

He moved back from her hand, telling her dismissively, "I'll be fine, I always am."

"You have never been sick before, if this has affected you..." Her mind raced with the possibilities, none of them good.

"I'm nowhere near as sick as you are," he insisted. "I'll get better."

Suddenly a thought occured to Martha, the light from the ship, she remembered the moments in the barn, the light and warmth that flooded through her and then after that she fell pregnant with absolutely no effort. She'd been told it was impossible, that it could never happen and yet it did. "Clark," she started unsteadily, "This might sound odd, but I think the ship can heal."

Clark looked at her as though she'd suddenly grown horns. "Mom, how could it ever-"

"I can't explain, just the day of the storm, when the ship got out there was a light from it and I think it could help you. If you can't shake this off, then get the key and take it to the ship."

"If I brought the ship here-"

"That's too dangerous," she warned him. "I want you to be careful. I need you to be careful."

"If the ship could help cure you then I can't just ignore it."

"If it's safer then that's exactly what I want you to do." Martha pressed her hand against his forehead again and told him firmly, "In the meantime go and get some rest."

He got unsteadily to his feet. "I'll be careful," he promised her.

Martha watched as he left the room and decided it was time to swallow her pride and make the phone call she'd been avoiding.