For a Night
The gods' punishments were cruel but poetic.
Karl Agathon and the cylon Sharon believed their baby to be dead. Laura and Tory had arranged it with Doc Cottle and their conspiracy had so far been successful. Tory found a suitable adoptive mother for the infant and the baby was handed over to the woman's custody and away from Galactica.
This, Laura thought, this would have to be the reason she was being punished. The gods had known what she would do with the cylon child before she did and this was what they'd sent as her predetermined contrition. She deserved it. Artemis and Eilethiyia knew it as well as she did and they had come up with a fitting penance for her.
She hadn't understood why it was happening when Cottle first told her but now she did. Upon the first few quiet moments she had back in her private quarters on her ship after being informed that the Agathons had been told about their baby's fate the answer had come to her. She had to pay for the act of sin she'd completed. Even if she still thought she was doing what was best for her people, she'd have to endure the consequences of removing Hera from the care of her natural parents and leading them to believe their child was dead.
She had to answer for the pain caused to Lt. Agathon and his child's cylon mother.
Somehow the Gods knew that Laura would have to inflict this pain onto the young couple and whether they saw it as justified or not, they were making sure that she knew at least in part how it felt, penance for the full weight of her decision.
Almost two weeks had passed since she had her exam with Cottle in Sickbay. He had been leaving messages with Tory every other day insisting that the president contact him and Tory was starting to grow concerned.
He'd even traveled to Colonial 1 to check in on her.
"You need to come in," he'd snarled in frustration as they met in her quarters with staff just outside her door.
The scolding finger he'd waved in Laura's face smelled of latex and tobacco as he wagged it inches from her nose and the unexpected scent made her stomach lurch causing her to retch and dry heave in front of him.
The episode only ignited the doctor's concern further. After sitting her down in a chair and handing her a glass of water he dropped all preamble.
"I told you not to wait. You know the longer this goes on the worse it will be. How long until people start noticing episodes like this one and start asking questions? This isn't a game, Laura. We still need to figure out how long it's been and how to handle it! Now it's not my body and it's not my life but as you are my patient I must insist that if this is the choice you're making you do it quickly," he'd admonished.
She'd only nodded in understanding.
"Does he know?" Cottle had questioned though he looked as if he didn't really want to ask and perhaps didn't really want the answer.
"No," was her simple reply.
She wasn't sure why it almost caused her a sense of shame to say it. Cottle didn't comment further.
"Make the appointment, Laura," he'd repeated instead.
She agreed as emphatically as she could, mostly so he would leave and she could run to the head and vomit in peace.
She never questioned Cottle's ability to keep her condition a secret. He had done so with her cancer for a time and now they shared the secret of the Hybrid child as well. She knew that the doctor's frustrations with her had to be coming from more than just her obstinate procrastination. She'd been asking him to lie and keep secrets for her since they'd met. Why shouldn't he be angry with her? She was angry with herself. She was more than angry. She was disgusted.
The doctor was absolutely right. She needed to stop putting off the inevitable, but she was quite legitimately busy. There was an election coming up. She hardly had time to think with all the work she had to do; distractions that she welcomed as her mind seemed shut down each time she even attempted to consider her personal predicament.
It wasn't until a few days after her visit to LifeStation that she'd fully let herself comprehend what was happening.
She'd only gone to Cottle on Tory's insistence. She had suffered a dizzy spell after an early quorum meeting and her aide all but dragged her to the infirmary. If it hadn't been for her dutiful chief of staff Laura wondered if she'd still be in the dark herself or if she would have been stubborn, ignored the mounting symptoms and eventually collapsed at some inopportune time causing even more public suspicion. If she had Tory on Caprica Laura considered that she might not have let her cancer get as advanced as it had. Then again she was consciously aware of how purposeful that choice had been on her part.
After the exam and Cottle's alarming findings the president had assured Tory that nothing had transpired with the doctor other than routine blood work and precautionary tests to make sure that her cancer was still in fact gone. On the president's persistent assurance that she was in fine health, Tory had stopped inquiring though her suspicion lingered like a bad cold.
The first time it had sunk in it had hit Laura like a sack of bricks. She thanked the damned vengeful gods that she'd been alone when it happened. She'd turned face down in her cot late at night after having no luck falling to sleep on her back. Lying on her stomach had caused an immediate full aching soreness in her breasts and as her exhausted mind remembered that she was now cancer free all of the air suddenly left her lungs.
Once she was able to compose herself, after allowing an initial period of sobbing and several internal furious screams that she couldn't afford to voice out loud, she'd tried to go over the facts. She told herself that if she could settle it in her mind then she could settle it for real and be done.
At some point after her miraculous recovery she had gotten pregnant. She wasn't exactly sure when. Cottle would be able to tell when she went back. It wasn't as if there were many instances to choose from. She and Bill had been together a handful of precious times, none of which she thought would ever have the current consequence.
Months before her cancer diagnosis back on Caprica she had noticed that her cycle had started to change. She would miss a month or two, then be regular for just as long, then miss again and so on. She'd figured it was the start of that inevitable phase of life. It was even part of the reason she had gone to see her doctor in the first place. She knew that she couldn't ignore what was happening to her any longer and if she was entering menopause too she figured that it was time to see a doctor and figure out what the rest of her life would be like, no matter how little of it was left. Her irregular cycle was forgotten about when the doctor realized the size of her mass. Later, once she heard the biopsy results, her concern over the rest of her issues just went out the door. She was dying. What did it matter?
Then the world ended and she was floating around in frakking space enduring more stress than she'd ever been under in her life. She spotted here and there, or missed a month completely, or didn't miss, but mostly she just stopped thinking about it. As she got sicker it finally stopped all together and she just figured that her body was getting weaker and her organs were starting to fail all together. When she recovered and her irregular cycle returned she was surprised, but she just figured it was her body starting back where it left off and that soon she would have a hot flash or two and that would be the end of it.
It should have been the end of it.
She bitterly assaulted herself with reprimands, calling herself stupid and careless out of anger, but logically she knew that no woman in her position would have thought that they needed contraception. This was just the cruel frakked up musings of the gods.
It wasn't as if she had some sad longing or was full of regret for never having children. She knew with the way her life had been, the men she had chosen to be with before, it was never the right situation. Her life was full of children as a teacher. She'd gotten to touch the lives of so many and that made her happy enough most days. She had made her choices and generally made peace with them.
Bill was the only thing that sometimes disturbed that peace and a small part of her resented him for it. He provoked feelings in her that she'd thought long dead. He made her wonder. He invoked too many thoughts of 'what if'. If they had met before. If they were younger. If the worlds had not ended.
It was too late. They were too late. She couldn't even entertain the notion of some silly happy ending. It was all so stupid.
She wouldn't lie to herself. Cottle was right. Her body was confused between trying to phase out her natural cycle, fighting her illness and restoring her health after her recovery. It had allowed this to happen, but it shouldn't have. Besides her age she had been through too much for the odds to be in her favor. Cottle assumed that she would miscarry sooner or later and he was concerned that she would bleed out. The chances that the fetus was healthy were less than stellar. The chance that she could make it safely to term was even less, but even more than that it was preposterous to think that she could attempt to bring a child into what often felt like the slow anguished demise of her people rather than an active war.
And Bill.
She could never interrupt his life in such a way. The two of them had been charged with maintaining the safety and wellbeing of the human race. How could she ever even contemplate staining his reputation and disturbing the trust that so many held in him? She couldn't do it to herself, she couldn't do it to him or their people.
It would be selfish and dangerous to try and why should they even want to, she thought. Even without the constant cylon threat and seemingly hopeless journey through the galaxy looking for a home for his people, why would Bill Adama want this at his age?
Why would she?
She didn't know why and yet part of her deep down did and she hated herself for that more than anything else. She'd cried herself to sleep that night in her cot and told herself that she would call Doc Cottle soon.
When Hera was born it gave Laura an excuse to avoid making an appointment with Cottle just a bit longer. Though Laura knew what she had to do for the sake of her people as soon as she'd heard Hera had been born alive it was also the moment she decided that her pregnancy must have been some predestined atonement for the fate of the Agathon baby. Why else would the Gods give her this now, when her only real choice was to destroy it? Perhaps she was being melancholy or feeling sorry for herself with this notion, she considered. Perhaps if she told herself that ending the pregnancy had a purpose, even just as penance or retribution, she could make peace with it. Soon it would be over and done with but she knew the anger would never leave her.
She had let it go on long enough. In a matter of days, a week or so, it would be another bad memory but first, she knew that she would have to tell Bill.
Had it been someone else, had it been her life before on Caprica she probably would have hidden it; told herself it was none of their business. Not with Bill Adama. Not with this man.
He would know something was seriously wrong and she didn't have the strength to do her job and hide it from him. More so she knew that he would want to know. No matter how hard it was going to be it was going to be easier than keeping it from him. He would understand.