Second Chances: Chapter 12
Parental leave was nice.
For about six weeks.
Izzy—Isela; B'Elanna was upset with herself that even she was starting to think of her daughter by the nickname Nicki had given her—continued to eat too often and not sleep often enough, but other than that, was a fairly easy baby, and they were quickly able to get into a routine, proving that while she may be a Paris, she was still the daughter of an engineer. They ate, they went for walks around the neighborhood, they went to a lot of doctor's appointments at Starfleet Medical, they ate some more, B'Elanna tried to sleep and Izzy didn't know yet that she was supposed to try, and over and over again. They were still living with the Parises, and Alicia was more than happy to dote on her youngest grandchild, which went a long way in making up for not having a second parent involved.
B'Elanna loved her daughter, even when she was eating too often and not sleeping often enough. She loved everything about her, especially as she was beginning to develop a personality and trying out different facial expressions and different sounds, but she would have given anything to have a complicated engineering problem to work through. Or even a basic mechanical repair.
Maybe she could take Alicia's replicator apart and back together. She had gotten much better at replicators since the first time she tried that as a kid.
She remembered Tom teasing her about building a warp core from scratch during a weekend in Greece. The memory made her smile, then roll her eyes.
How someone so different could have known her so well was beyond her understanding.
Nicki had graduated from her Medical Officers' Basic Course right in the middle of her class; she could have easily been the honor graduate, with how much she had had Starfleet drilled into her growing up, but right in the middle of the class was exactly where she had wanted to be. She was immediately made a senior lieutenant with a guaranteed promotion to lieutenant commander in a year when she finished her hybridology training, which amused B'Elanna and annoyed Sydney so much that they were all treated to a long monologue at dinner after Nicki's graduation about how ridiculous it was the way Starfleet treated physicians and how they shouldn't be treated differently than any other officer.
Nicki had mildly responded that if Sydney didn't like how the promotions worked, she could just go to medical school and complete a residency and fellowship and also get such preferential treatment. Sydney had rolled her eyes, but at least she had shut up.
B'Elanna didn't dislike her oldest sister-in-law; she would just rather deal with any other member of the Paris family.
The diversion for Nicki's graduation and celebratory dinner was the first break in the routine of being a new parent, and it made B'Elanna crave more. It made her crave going anywhere that wasn't Starfleet Medical or the Paris' neighborhood.
She knew it was dangerous, but she found herself imagining what parental leave would have been like with Tom. Even if her pregnancy had progressed without any problems, Dr. Gault would have insisted that she deliver at Starfleet Medical. He would have also insisted she travel to Earth at least a week before she delivered; Tom would have started his parental leave to go with her. They probably would have still stayed with the Parises after leaving the hospital, because Alicia would still want to help with everything and there would be no way either of them would turn down free assistance.
That would be the first four weeks. They would start with short trips away, always within easy transport distance of Starfleet Medical, because Tom would be nervous about something happening. A few hours in New York or Washington, DC, maybe, and then they would start overnight trips. Hawaii. Florida. Cancun. Places with beaches, because B'Elanna liked beaches.
By the end of the second month, they'd be spending most of their time away. Probably a few weeks in France. Maybe Tom's uncle's place on Lake Como, or his cousin's place in Australia, or both. Izzy wouldn't understand the significance of any place they take her, but that would be okay. Her father would love pretending that he was showing her Earth, her parents would be relaxed, they would love her very much, and that was all she needed.
They'd move back to their apartment on Mars Station for the last month of parental leave, moving Izzy into the nursery that Tom would have painstakingly furnished and decorated. There would undoubtedly be a mobile of starships over her crib, and probably something Klingon that Tom would insist on and B'Elanna would raise her arms in defeat and let him display.
She opened her eyes, and the disappointment she felt at remembering that that was just a fantasy brought a fresh wave of pain. She had been doing that too much lately, doing things that she knew would hurt her, to remind her that she still felt. Not physical pain; Izzy already only had one parent, she couldn't do anything to risk reducing that number to zero. Besides, there was nothing she could do in her post-partum state to bring her physical pain. She longed to run, to run until her quads cried for relief, until her lungs burned, until her heart wanted to burst out of her chest. She wanted to sprint, to throw herself over the vault and fly down until she smacked down on the mats. Hard.
But even that pain didn't hurt this way.
She had an appointment at Starfleet Medical that day—no, it was Isela who had an appointment. With who? She had met with Dr. Zalun about the not sleeping thing the week before, so it probably wasn't him.
Dr. Yagasaki. The gastroenterologist. Something about monitoring the way Izzy's—Isela's—redundant stomach was developing.
If there were problems with it, it wasn't affecting her eating. She was still demanding to be fed more than every other hour. And it was exhausting.
She packed what she would need for the few hours away before securing Isela in her carrier, feeling the now-familiar weight and warmth of her infant against her chest. "Isela has an appointment at Starfleet Medical," she told Alicia as she headed for the door. "I'll probably get lunch with Nicki after."
"Do you need any help?" Alicia asked, already halfway out of her chair.
"No," B'Elanna snapped, then added, "but thank you."
The appointment didn't take long; Dr. Yagasaki did some scans, then said in that way that all doctors did that they were going to continue to monitor. She asked when Isela would start to cut back on how often she needed to eat, and he gave the incredibly scientific answer of "seeing how she does."
B'Elanna was beginning to doubt Nicki's claims of how much science went into hybrid medicine.
She commed said sister-in-law when she was done with the appointment, and Nicki said she could meet her in about an hour for lunch. It was a nice day outside in one of the few months of the year that San Francisco had nice days, and B'Elanna elected to spend the hour walking around in the gardens around Starfleet Medical.
She looked down at her daughter as she entered the garden. Isela was, of course, awake, but calm as she appeared to study her surroundings. At her last general pediatrician's visit—the week before; they were spending far too much time at Starfleet Medical—Solaris—who B'Elanna now knew was actually Dr. Jaxon—had said that human babies at six weeks couldn't see much past a meter in front of them, but with her Klingon genes, it looked like Isela could see almost as well as an adult. And then launched into a long description about how infancy was the most vulnerable time of life and Klingons had apparently evolved to get through it as quickly as possible, which was also why she was growing so much and possibly why she was eating so much, and B'Elanna had known it was easier to let him talk than interrupt him.
Besides, it wasn't like she had had anywhere else to go.
"Do you see the flowers?" B'Elanna asked her daughter as they walked, feeling silly as she did so. "There are a lot of colors today. Usually all you can see around San Francisco is gray." Cold and gray. Kahless, why did she live there? Maybe when she finally moved out of the Parises' house, she'd move somewhere warm. The elder Isela used to live outside Phoenix, Arizona, and B'Elanna remembered enjoying the searing heat when she would visit. That might be warm enough.
They continued to walk through the gardens, with B'Elanna pointing out the various flowers and trees and ponds and fish to an infant who appeared that she couldn't care less, and honestly, B'Elanna sympathized with that. She was about to take a seat and pull out a PADD and do some reading, but the sudden sound of her voice caused her to turn quickly enough to earn a noise of surprise from Isela. "Navi," B'Elanna said in surprise as her half-sister approached. She nodded briefly to Commander Tulon, following her daughter from a distance.
"Broke my arm rock-climbing," Navi said, answering the unasked question of what she was doing there in the middle of a school day and holding up an obviously mended arm. "Hi, Izzy," she cooed at the infant, getting a giggle in return.
"I didn't know you were into climbing," B'Elanna replied. "Tom and I used to go climbing on Mars." There was actually a period of a couple of months that they went out almost every night after work for at least a short climb and spent the weekends climbing and camping, and then like all of Tom's hobbies, his interest waned and more and more time stretched between their climbs. "I think I have his climbing programs somewhere. We should hit the holodeck sometime. And you can't break any bones with the safeties on."
"Navi seems to be in a 'what's the point in doing it if it's not dangerous?' phase," Commander Tulon commented dryly. "Navi, we need to get you back to school. Go on to the transport station. I need to talk to B'Elanna for a minute."
Navi rolled her eyes in that way that twelve-year-olds did before she bid B'Elanna and Izzy good-bye and bounded off to the transport station, and B'Elanna's defenses automatically went up. She didn't know if it was something in the psychologist's expression or just that she was a psychologist, but she knew what was coming.
"How are you, B'Elanna?" Commander Tulon asked gently.
"I'm fine," Torres remarked crisply, and it wouldn't have taken a telepath to know that she was lying.
"B'Elanna," the psychologist continued, her voice still gentle. "I'm concerned about you—"
"Why?" Torres snapped in interruption. "You're not my commanding officer. You're not my therapist. You're not my mother. You're not even my step-mother. You're just married a man who, much to his own regret, happens to be my father."