Second Chances: Chapter 8
It took a few weeks, but Lt. B'Elanna Torres finally started to get used to the different operation tempo at R&D in San Francisco. Her job with the Theoretical Propulsion Group was just that: theoretical. They had big questions and big ideas, and nobody really expected answers. At R&D, they were responsible for answering all the questions that came in from the Fleet, from the mundane to the complicated. As the most junior engineer, both in rank and time with the group—as well as the one about to go on parental leave—Torres spent most of her time on questions on the simpler end of the spectrum. Most of the questions could be answered with a search of the published literature, and those that required an actual experiment could typically be set up and run within a day, despite being slowed down by the abnormally large belly she was carrying around.
Pregnant belly or not, she still worked long hours, probably too long, which earned her gentle scoldings from Alicia when she arrived at the Paris house in the evenings. She didn't know how to tell her mother-in-law that work was still the only thing to distract her from the fact that the rest of her life had gone to hell, or that being exhausted at the end of the day was the only way to fall asleep in the bed that had once been Tom's without thinking about what she was missing.
Two weeks away from the estimated due date Dr. Gault had given her, she was ready to get the whole pregnancy thing over with and get her body back, even though she didn't feel ready for parenthood. Or the four months away from work during parental leave.
Or completely coming to terms with the new reality she would find herself in: that of a single mother who had no idea what to do with an infant and missing a husband who had looked forward to figuring that out with her.
She was in the process of setting up an experiment in an effort to respond to a query about those damn gelpacks when her console beeped with an incoming message. "What now?" she muttered to herself as she pressed to confirm.
A message from Owen asking if she could come "home" early. She sighed as she glanced at the chronometer, seeing that it was already 1700; a quick glance around the room confirmed that most of her fellow engineers had already wrapped up their work for the day and gone home. She sighed again and typed out a quick reply, telling him that she was on her way.
The gelpacks would have to wait until tomorrow, which was just fine with her. She hated the damn things, hated that her first assignment at UP made her as much an expert in them as anyone else, and had no idea which biomedical engineer had convinced which admiral that they would be an improvement over traditional systems.
She entered the Paris house a few minutes later, the sarcastic quip she had ready for Owen dying on her lips when she saw who was sitting in the living room with her parents-in-law. "Hello," she said instead, mostly to get their attention, as engrossed as they were in their conversation, but also to express her confusion—and displeasure—at what she was seeing.
The tall Klingon man stood abruptly at the word. "B'Elanna, daughter of Miral," he said with a nod, which only made her narrow her eyes further. "I am QanaH, of the House of T'PaH." He waited for a beat for recognition to take place; when it didn't, he added, "I am your cousin."
"I remember you," she said, and she did, from her visit to Qo'noS when she was five. They were about the same age, but because Klingon children matured faster than humans, he had seemed much older. And had been entirely dismissive of his smaller cousin.
He gave a slight nod to the words. "I trained in engineering under Miral," he said. Torres snorted and rolled her eyes.
"Good for you," she said dryly. "If she was half as demanding of a professor as she was a mother, I'm sure it was a treat." In truth, it wasn't surprising that she and her mother weren't the only engineers of the family; the House of T'PaH was a small one, far from being one of the noble houses that sat on the High Council, but one that had historically produced scientists. Torres' grandfather had boasted that it was a member of their family who created the Klingons' first warp drive; she had no idea if it was true, but from she knew of the family, it was entirely conceivable.
"She was a demanding instructor, this is true," QanaH agreed with a nod. He hesitated after those words, just long to enough to make Torres narrow her eyes and cock her head, alarm bells beginning to ring through her brain.
Engineer or no, she had been on Earth or Mars for six years and Kessik IV for the seventeen before that, and no family member had ever visited her in either location. "What happened to my mother?" she asked coolly, willing him not to say the words, even though she knew that that was what he was there to do.
It had already been a terrible year. She didn't need anything to add to it.
"There was…an explosion, in her lab," QanaH finally said. "Miral and three assistants were killed."
She didn't feel the wave of disbelief that she had felt when Owen had brought those two admirals to Utopia Planitia, but nor did she feel any sort of physical reactions to the words at all. It was like she was numb to all of it. "What kind of explosion?" she asked, her voice even.
QanaH again hesitated before responding, "Trilithium."
"Trilithium?" she asked, now confused. "Klingon systems don't use…" Her voice trailed off, remembering reading the reports of the Romulan-sponsored civil war that had occurred on Qo'noS while she was still a cadet. "Romulan?"
"Romulan involvement is not suspected," QanaH said stiffly.
"They're the only ones who have trilithium weapons," she pointed out. "The only ones we know of, anyway."
"Early investigations reveal that the trilithium resulted from errors in dilithium processing," QanaH said, his voice just as stiff.
"That doesn't make any sense," Torres argued. "Why would my mother be involved in dilithium processing? She's not a chemical engineer. She does industrial engineering. There's no reason…" Her voice trailed off as she remembered an emphatic conversation over raktijino, her mother's words about a coming war with the Cardassians, and her eyes widened as she realized the implications.
Her mother had been working on a weapon.
"It's true, isn't it?" she asked softly. "There's going to be a war."
"B'Elanna?" Owen asked. She waved his words aside with a silent promise that she would explain everything, even as her eyes didn't leave her cousin.
"There is much involved that I am not privy to," he said, his words still just as stiff and stoic as they had been.
She opened her mouth to comment further, but instead of words, she found herself gasping for air at the abrupt searing pain in her abdomen.
"B'Elanna?" Owen asked, concerned. "Are you alright?"
"Doctor," she managed as she shook her head, still fighting the pain that was preventing her from even taking a full breath. She heard her father-in-law calmly calling for an emergency medical transport, the words barely registering in the back of her mind as she fought her fading vision. With one blink, the quiet of the Paris' living room was replaced with the bustle of the emergency department at Starfleet Medical.
Half an hour later, her pain and breathing were both under control and she was in a private room in the antenatal department. "You've got to stop scaring us like this," Dr. Gault said as he entered the room. She gave him a glare, but knew it wasn't her best effort. "Fortunately, everything looks good," he continued.
"How can everything look good?" she countered. "It felt like I was being stabbed in the gut!"
"I don't know what you've done to anger her this time, but I can pretty confidently say that she isn't going anywhere for at least a week," he said. "Klingon fetuses can kick pretty aggressively—"
"I've felt her kick," Torres interrupted. "That isn't what that was."
He shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you," he said. "You're not in labor, there's no placental separation, the baby looks happy and healthy. At this point in pregnancy, it's not unusual for the uterus to give some practice contractions—"
"Can I go home?" she interrupted. She didn't really care to listen to him hypothesize about what could have caused her pain.
"I'd like you to stay here overnight for observation," he said. "I've commed Dr. Bayrote—"
"I didn't imagine this!"
"I didn't say you did," he said mildly. "You're having a difficult pregnancy and are in a difficult social situation. Those are usually things that people discuss with their psychiatrists, and since I've known you long enough to guess that you haven't been in here to talk to him since the last time you were hospitalized, I thought you might be due." He shrugged again. "You can discuss replicator recipes with him, kick him out, or talk like rational adults. I don't care. Makes no difference to me." He waited for a response, which she didn't give, and moved for the door. "I'll be back to check on you in the morning. Let the nurses know if you need me before then. They'll let me know if you spontaneously go into labor, but like I said—she's staying put for a little longer."