Chapter 8
The next few days were uneventful. Kara was relieved that Lee had managed to rearrange his schedule so that he was around during the days. While she didn't like sleeping without him, it was easier than trying to occupy her time without his dry sense of humor and endless complaints about her luck with cards.
When she reached the end of the week without incident, he'd let her go back on light duty. That meant paperwork in CIC, but it was better than lying around all day. She had managed to get some rest, but in general she'd been bored despite Lee's entertaining presence. Her first day back had been a little stressful. She had kept down very little breakfast and no lunch. If she hadn't managed dinner, she was sure it would have been the end of her return to work. But keep it down she did, and by the next morning she had felt better. Her second day at work had gone better. She hadn't been sick after breakfast, and only lunch had made a return visit. Dinner had stayed put, which had been a relief. Lying down after meals really did seem to keep them in place. It was a fact she intended to keep in mind.
This had been her third day back on light shifts, and Kara had made it through the day without getting sick at all. It was something she was very grateful for. She understood Lee's continued fear, but she really did feel better. And she hated the Life Station with a passion that only one who had spent far too much time there could have. Granted, all that time hadn't been as a patient, but that fact didn't make her time spent there any more tolerable. Nonetheless, she gave Lee a daily report as to her nutritional status, and watched the worry in his eyes when she admitted to being sick. He'd made her promise that if she had done so today she would go back and see Doctor Salik.
As it stood, she'd managed the day quite well. She'd kept down three meals for the first time in almost a week, and if she'd been slightly nauseous at times, it didn't really count without the throwing up. She wouldn't lie to Lee, but she hadn't made any promises regarding nausea — only actually getting sick.
So Kara was fairly proud of herself - as well as relieved - as she made her way back to the room she shared with Lee following her duty day. Her stomach wasn't exactly back to normal, though. She'd had occasional cramping through the day in addition to the lingering soreness in her right side. Salik had told her not to worry so long as it didn't get any worse, but she had to wonder how long it would last. It wasn't exactly painful, but she definitely was noticing it. She had made a mental note to ask Doctor Salik about it when she had her next appointment.
It surprised her a little when she didn't find Lee in their room. He had been pretty good about keeping their shifts opposite so that when she wasn't watched by her co-workers she was watched instead by him. He had come by today to make sure she went to lunch, but he hadn't said much then about what he was doing — only that he wasn't tired so he had chosen to get a few things sone, and that if she needed him she could call the port landing bay. Tyrol would be able to find him. She didn't know what the big mystery was, but it wasn't the first time Lee had been working on something that he couldn't talk about outside their room. He didn't keep much from her, but neither did he talk about secure matters in the Dining Hall.
As she'd already eaten her dinner, Kara decided that a book and nap might be just what she needed while she waited on Lee. Once he was back, they might play some cards or just talk awhile. She didn't feel up to managing the ready-room tonight, even for the company that might keep her busy. The work days were wearing her out, but she had been told that fatigue was normal. She wanted desperately to believe it.
Kara was out of her duty shirt and reaching for her book when the pain hit. It wasn't severe — more an intensification of what she'd been feeling earlier that day — but it was more than just passing. She took a deep breath as she straightened up and pressed a hand to her lower abdomen. Discomfort was one thing, but true pain worried her. This meant that she should probably call Doctor Salik, and soon.
She was on her way to the phone when the illness hit her out of nowhere. One minute she was calmly standing there trying to decide whether or not she should go down to Life Station or call for help as Salik had requested, and the next she was diving for the bathroom in hopes that she wouldn't have a mess to clean up. She made it, barely, but her pride over managing three meals was quickly displaced by the dread of all three returning at once. It turned out that the vomiting didn't last long, but what it lacked in duration it made up for in intensity. She now had both arms wrapped around her as though to keep herself from splitting open.
That was how Lee found her. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, her head resting on the toilet seat, and both arms wrapped around herself as she tried to figure out how in hell she was going to get to the phone. Worries that Lee might worry about her being sick were quickly replaced by a grateful relief that he was there, his arms keeping her upright and his words sounding a lot more gentle than she thought they had a right to be.
"How long?" he asked her, his voice soft if not particularly calm.
"It just started," she told him. "I swear, I was fine until I came in from dinner."
"Will you be okay for a minute?"
She didn't feel okay at all. "Yes," she answered, and immediately wished that she hadn't because his arms were gone and she wasn't feeling all that steady. Rather than fall, she laid herself down on the bathroom floor, her head resting on the metal flooring.
"Salik's on the way," he told her when he returned only seconds later. She didn't even have the strength to thank him.
The cramping was back, and it was bad. She held her breath against it, her body shaking with the effort. "Lee, this really hurts," she finally got out between the sharp waves of agony. She was going to lose the baby. Oh Lords, Salik had warned her it could happen, but she had hoped so much that he was wrong. She wanted the baby — she wanted him — and there was nothing she could do to keep him.
"I know. The doctor's on the way. I promise, he'll be here in just a minute." He didn't try to lift her, but instead he sat down on the floor beside her and let her rest her face on his leg. It felt a hell of a lot better than resting her face against cold metal.
"I felt okay," she told him, very near tears now, but whether from the pain or the fear she wasn't sure. "And then"
"Shhh," he whispered, brushing her hair out of her face. "It'll be okay."
At the very least he wasn't blaming her or reminding her that the doctor had said this could happen. He didn't sound angry either — only worried — and she found that to be a relief. As she lay there, she even managed to convince herself that she might be feeling a little better. The pain wasn't so intense now, and the nausea had eased. She was almost ready to tell that to Lee, but then the pain came back. She couldn't stop the cry that time; it slipped out before she realized that she'd made a sound.
Then she only wanted the pain to stop. She curled herself into a ball to try to guard against it, her breath coming in short gasps. Oh, Lords, it hurt. It really hurt, and this time it wasn't going away.
It felt like a lifetime later when Salik and his team arrived. What she noticed most about their arrival was that they needed her to unbend to get on their litter, and that she just couldn't do it. Finally they managed to get her strapped in place on her side, and then the world started tilting. She was actually glad when the graying started around the edges of her vision, because she knew that it meant the pain would be easing soon.
The waiting was the worst, Lee decided.
Salik had brought her in, put in an IV, and promptly kicked Lee out of the room. The man had a habit of doing that, and Lee was beginning to take exception to it. As CAG, he was fairly used to being able to do what he wanted when he wanted and go where he pleased when he pleased. Having Kara's physician ordering him out went a little ways beyond annoying him. Lee was even tempted to make a phone call to his father, but he didn't want to worry him unless he had to.
Lee wasn't sure what had gone in during the time he'd been exiled to the to the makeshift waiting area outside the main care bay. It had taken more than an hour for them to do whatever it was they had done, but Lee couldn't complain about the results.
They had finally let him in about ten minutes ago. Kara was sleeping peacefully, and Salik had told him that she wasn't in any imminent danger. Lee hadn't asked about the baby. He had been afraid to. So Lee had wound up sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to the bed that Kara was occupying in Life Station. Salik hadn't been in yet, but Lee was fairly sure he knew what the doctor would have to say. From the way Kara had been doubled over in pain, the chances of the baby being okay seemed minimal. Still, Lee really didn't want to hear it. He wasn't ready to see his dream die.
Little changed over the next hour. Cassie came in once or twice with a pleasant smile to check on Kara, making notes on her clipboard as she did so. "She's doing well," the tech had assured him. Lee didn't know what exactly that meant. He wasn't sure he wanted to. But he was grateful for it just the same. If he had to lose the baby that they had both begun to want, at the very least he wouldn't be losing Kara as well. As he'd held her on their bathroom floor, he hadn't been so sure that she would recover at all.
"Still here?" Doctor Salik commented as he approached Kara's bed from doorway across the bay. "She won't be waking up anytime soon. We have enough medication in her that she'll be out for at least a couple more hours. You should get out while you can."
"I'll stay," Lee told him simply. He wasn't leaving her. He couldn't leave her.
"She's going to be fine," the doctor told him. "But she's got a long road ahead of her. How badly do the two of you want this baby?"
Lee's head snapped up so that he could meet the physician's eyes. "Does it matter?" he asked apprehensively.
"Actually, it does," the doctor told him, and he pulled up a chair to sit down across from Lee. "I can't promise that this pregnancy will get any easier," he said. "We have the uterine contractions stopped, but she's still spotting slightly. I can't tell you if that will get better or worse as the pregnancy progresses."
"Why?" Lee asked. "Why was she hurting in the first place? Why is she bleeding?"
The doctor looked at Kara and sighed. "You know, medicine doesn't always give us the answers. I wish that it did. My best guess is that she's not maintaining a high enough fluid level to maintain a pregnancy. Sometimes it's the simplest things that cause us the greatest difficulty. She's keeping down some liquids, but it's just not enough. When she becomes dehydrated, she gets sick. The sickness dehydrates her further. The cycle is what is causing the problem. So long as we keep an IV in her, and medicate her to reduce the vomiting, she seems to do pretty well. Now, if you're asking me why she's so sick when other women have no problem at all, well that I can't answer. If you're asking what we can do to keep things controlled, I have some ideas."
"What do we need to do?" Lee asked.
"To begin with, until we can get her past this phase of pregnancy and determine if the pregnancy is even viable, we have to keep her hydrated. That means bed rest, an IV, anti-emetic medications, and possibly nutritional supplements as well. She can't do anything that might make her sick. Period. Once we get to a point where we can get a good look at the baby — around twelve weeks or so — then we can find out if it's been worth the effort. There are no guarantees with this course of treatment. She may still miscarry, or the infant's development may be affected by either the medications or malnutrition. But quite honestly it's the best I can offer you."
"She's going to hate that," Lee said slowly, but she would hate losing this baby more. "I don't think I've ever seen her slow down to anything less than a dead run."
Doctor Salik smiled, and it was the first true humor Lee had seen in him since "We're looking at a minimum of six weeks of her remaining as still as possible. And even after that, I'm not sure the pregnancy will survive. But if we can get her to that point, we'll at least know if there's anything worth trying to save." The doctor looked over at Kara for a moment, and Lee could have sworn that he saw something more than a physician's concern. "My gut feeling is that if we can just get her past this hurdle, the baby just might be okay. I don't have anything to back that up with, though. In a couple of weeks, we can take a small biopsy of the placenta, culture it, and find out if we're dealing with a structurally normal batch of chromosomes. The vast majority of miscarriages this early are because of genetic defect. Once we know where we stand, we can make a more educated guess as to whether or not we should even bother trying to save it."
"Why can't you do that now?" Lee asked.
"I could," the doctor replied. "But the risk of the procedure terminating the pregnancy is drastically high this early. It's not an acceptable risk if you really want to have this baby."
"So we wait, keep her still, and treat the symptoms until we know if there's a bigger cause for them?" Lee asked.
"Essentially."
"It will have to be her decision," Lee thought out loud. "But I think she'd be willing to try it."
The doctor smiled. "I thought she would be. She's a stubborn woman, but she knows when to listen to reason. Usually."
Lee just smiled. He couldn't argue with that logic. The doctor left him then, putting his chair back as he did so and leaving Lee with a lot to think about. He had his own ideas about how Kara would take the news, but he'd been wrong about her reactions before. Still, it was better news than he had feared. At the very least he wouldn't have to tell her that the baby was gone.
"How is she."
Lee didn't even startle at the familiar gravelly voice. He should have known that word would have gotten back to his father. Patient confidentiality or not, the Commander was well informed as to what was happening with his crew. It wouldn't have been hard for him to find out that something was wrong, and from there it was just a matter of asking the right questions.
"She's resting," Lee told his father.
"Has she been awake yet?"
Lee shook his head. His father's hand on Lee's shoulder was comforting, but knowing what he would soon have to tell Kara was not. "Did Salik tell you?" he asked as he looked up at his dad.
"About the baby?"
"Yeah."
His father nodded. After seeing it, Lee turned his gaze back to Kara. "I don't know how to tell her," Lee finally said. "The doctor says she'll have to stay in bed for the next few weeks. That will make her crazy. Hell, I don't even know if she'll be willing to do it."
"You'd be surprised what a parent is willing to do for their child," his father said with a soft smile. "How long will she sleep?"
Lee shrugged. "The drugs should have already worn off, except for the stuff that keeps her from throwing up. I think she's just tired. She hasn't been sleeping very well."
"Which means that you haven't been sleeping either," the Commander determined.
Lee shrugged again.
"Are you okay?" Adama asked gently.
"I don't know," Lee answered. "I'm I'm glad she's alright," he finally said. "But"
"I know," his father said softly, and he sounded like he did. "She's not going to be easy to keep still. I can remember when your mother was pregnant with Zak, she had some trouble towards the last. She had to stay in bed for about a month. They pulled me off duty and sent me home to play nursemaid." His smile turned wistful. "But it was worth all the complaints and whining. And by the time Zak was a month old, I think your mother would have liked to had laid down for a couple of weeks."
"I remember that," Lee said softly. "Not all of it, but I remember her being in bed. She used to read to me. I was only a couple of years old, but I think that's just about the first thing I remember: the two of us lying in her bed and her reading from that ancient storybook.
"The one with all the pictures," William said softly. "I still have it, you know. Somewhere. After the After the accident your mother couldn't bear to have it around, but she didn't want to get rid of it. We compromised. I promised her she could have it back when she was ready. I suppose I should pass it on to you, now."
Lee he didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he could say. He didn't usually allow himself to think of the family he'd lost, but at the moment he could do no less. "Thank you," he finally said.
His father nodded, then cleared his throat "Do you want me to stay with her for awhile so you can go get something to eat?"
"No," Lee answered. "I don't want to leave her."
"Then do you need something? Coffee?"
Lee shook his head. He wished that he had more to offer his father. He really did appreciate the thought and the support, and even the memories. But for the moment he was more than a little worried. He didn't have a clue how Kara would react to the doctor's plan, and a part of him was terrified that she wouldn't be willing to do it. If she chose not to, he really couldn't fault the decision. After all, the odds were not in their favor. All they really had going for them was a doctor's intuition and a lack of options.
"Would you like me to stay or go?" his father asked.
Lee thought about that for just a moment. As he did, a thought broke though the preoccupation that had filled him. His father was supposed to be on duty. Lee was supposed to be on duty. "Is my shift covered?" Lee asked with a concerned look at his dad. It hadn't occurred to him before then that he was scheduled to work tonight.
"The rosters are up, and they can call Colonel Tigh with any questions. The patrols are all fairly routine at the moment, and Tyrol could run the place if we gave him the chance."
Lee nodded. "Colonel Tigh's in CIC?"
"He'll stay as long as I ask him to," the Commander said, answering Lee's unspoken question.
He looked up at his father for a moment, knowing that if anyone understood what he was feeling it was probably this man. After all, he was a father, and for all their differences Lee had to admit that he'd been a damned good one. "I want you to stay," Lee finally said.
His father didn't say a word, but he nodded and walked across the room to get another chair. Placing it beside Lee's, he settled in beside his son for however long the wait would be.
The wait wasn't as long as Lee had feared it might be. Still, it was nearly two hours later when Kara began to stir. She shifted a few times before opening her eyes. He watched as she got her bearings, recognized the room, and then met his eyes. As though watching a bucket fill with water, he saw comprehension and memory fill her where only confusion had been before. By the time she spoke, he saw the fear coming into her expression.
"What happened?" she asked. He didn't quibble over her direct approach. Kara had never been one to skirt around an issue.
"You could at least say good-morning," he suggested. It was barely that, but he wanted to put this discussion off just a little longer.
"Lee?" Her voice was somewhere between groggy and afraid.
So much for putting anything off. "You're in the Life Station," he told her.
"I know that," she said. "What happened." She asked, and the hand that had been so limp before tightened almost painfully around his.
But it was hard to say. He'd seen her face when she'd faced the possibility of a year out of Vipers, and to confine her to bed seemed so much worse. How did he ask her to put literally her entire life on hold for an indefinite period of time? He knew he had to tell her; it was his responsibility to ask her. But the words just wouldn't come.
He met his father's eyes in a moment of silent understanding, and then he heard him speak. "Hey there," the eldest Adama said with a soft smile. "What do you hear?"
"Not much at the moment," she as her eyes flashed to Lee's and locked there.
His father had placed a hand on his shoulder again, and that seemed to give Lee the extra strength he needed to find the words. "The doctor says you're going to be fine," Lee told her, starting with what had been the most important to him.
Kara nodded, her hand squeezing and releasing his in a jerky manner. "What about the baby?" she asked in a broken voice.
"I'll leave you two alone," his father told him. The older man put one arm around Lee and gave him a brief hug, then bent down to kiss Kara on the forehead. "Call if you need anything," he told them. Lee watched his father leave before turning his attention back to Kara. It was all he could do to face her.
"Did I lose the baby?" she asked in the same broken voice.
"Not yet," he answered. "And maybe not at all. The doctor said the reason you were cramping is because you weren't keeping down enough fluids. Once he got the IV going, you did just fine." He waited for the relief to come into her eyes. It didn't happen.
"What aren't you telling me?" she asked. "Everything's not fine, is it?"
"We don't know," he admitted. "Doctor Salik said he had a good feeling about it though. If we can just keep you hydrated, and still, then you should be able to carry the baby. He can't promise, but that's his professional opinion."
"So why do you look like everything's wrong?"
He sighed, and sat down on the edge of her bed just to get a little closer. "Kara, the doctor doesn't want you moving around at all. That means staying in bed until we know for sure that the baby is doing okay, and medications to keep you from throwing up. You'll probably have to keep the IV, too. You'll have to do that until we can find out if the baby's okay, or if something's really wrong with him."
"How long?"
"Six weeks until we know," he admitted. "And after that, maybe until the baby's born." Lee brushed her bangs back out of her eyes, and finally met her gaze with all the love he had in him. "I know it's a long time," he told her. "But it's the only chance of saving the pregnancy."
"No work?"
He shook his head. "No walking around at all. No leaving the room. Hell, I'm not even sure if he'll let you leave Life Station. He said you'd have to keep the IV, at least for a while."
She looked away for a moment, her hand tightening as she took it all in. He could almost watch her mind processing the information. He remembered so vividly when she'd told him that it might have been easier if they weren't parents now. She knew how he felt about it, but it was a lot to ask of her with very little promise behind it.
After a long pause, she looked back at him, and there were tears in her eyes. "But it's a chance, right?"
Lee shrugged, trying not to impose his wishes on her. It was her body; it was her choice. "That's what Salik told me."
She nodded, and he watched a determined light come into her eyes. "Then that's what we do," she said firmly. And finally, as she looked up at him, he saw the first glimmer of a smile. "But you have to promise you'll play cards with me," she told him with a wink.
Lee began to laugh; what else could he do?
