Dear Readers: I hadn't originally intended for this story to go past the voyage to Coal Valley, but I had so many nice reviews and encouragement that my mind started wondering about this happy couple. And so . . . .
CHAPTER 30 THE RETURN VOYAGE BEGINS
"What time is your doctor's appointment?" Jack called out of the bathroom as he pushed his hand under the dispenser labeled "shaving gel" and a quarter-cup of a green substance landed in the palm of his hand.
Elizabeth walked a few paces across the small living quarters and leaned against the doorway to the shower room. She watched Jack rub the gel on his face until he had a nice white foam. "Mine's at one twenty. What about yours?"
"One o'clock. We can go together after lunch", Jack remarked as he wiped a razor along his jawline.
The couple had been on the transporter for two days and were scheduled for the first of their biweekly routine check-ups to ensure that they didn't have any adverse effects to space travel. The past two days had been vastly different from their first two days on the original journey when the couple had been newly acquainted. Instead of the bickering, taunting, teasing that they had done then, these first two days had been spent enjoying each other's company as a married couple and without having to share the living quarters with two others.
"I'll stop by the security office for a bit this morning, but after our appointments, we'll have all afternoon free."
"Great. I promised I would meet with some of the children on board. They want me to help them do a skit, but I can do that before lunch," Elizabeth replied. "We should probably go around and introduce ourselves to more of the crew."
"Or we can just stay in our room," Jack said with a knowing chuckle.
"Thornton", the doctor's called out as the door to the infirmary opened hours later, and the 12:40 appointment, a young attractive woman wearing a uniform and sporting a long blond ponytail, walked out and headed down the corridor.
"We're both here." Jack responded to the doctor's call.
"You might as well both come back together. More comfortable than waiting in the hallway."
The sterile-looking room was larger than the standard living quarters but not by much. It contained an examination table, two chairs, a desk, and three beds - with stiffly starched white sheets and foil heating blankets - for possible patients.
Elizabeth took a seat in the plastic chair against the wall and waited patiently while the doctor examined Jack. Even though it had been over a year since she had last seen the physician, Elizabeth remembered the man with his serious attitude from her voyage to Coal Valley. His hair had grayed more but his mood had remained the same. Dull. Professional. Stern.
After efficiently assessing Jack's blood pressure, vision, temperature, weight, muscle mass, balance, and several other body systems, the man declared Jack to be "an excellent specimen", and within fifteen minutes of entering the doctor's room, Elizabeth found herself sitting on the examination table with cuffs on all four of her limbs.
"I see you had some complaints about your wrist and back. The lower left side," the doctor remarked as he stared at his computer screen and reviewed Elizabeth's medical record from her time on Planet Assaymark.
"I hurt them during Krav Maga – it's a self-defense and fighting system," she unnecessarily explained, feeling proud that she had kept physical active while on the planet. "I thought I might have broken something, but it was just a bruise and a sprain."
"How's it feeling now?" the doctor asked as he moved from the computer to stand in front of her. He gently ran his fingers on her left wrist and then moved the joint back and forth. Extending and flexing it.
"It's fine. It only hurt for a few days. And the back is fine too – it only hurt for a few hours. It was the wrist I was mostly worried about."
"This was three weeks ago?" he asked.
"Yeah, about that. Whatever the record says."
"I noticed that they took x-rays instead of an MRI," the doctor stated as he went back to looking at her computer record.
"They said nothing was broken."
"Hmm mmm," the doctor mumbled as he kept his eyes on the computer screen.
"Do you think it was a hairline fracture of the wrist? That I should have had an MRI to confirm if it was broken or not?" Elizabeth questioned.
"You said it doesn't bother you anymore?"
"No. It's fine."
"Probably just a sprain. Let me know if it starts causing trouble again and I'll give you a splint for it. I'm just wondering why they took an x-ray rather than an MRI," the doctor remarked with a perplexed sound to his voice.
"The MRI machine was down for repairs," Jack volunteered. "It doesn't matter, does it? She's feeling fine."
"X-rays are contraindicated in some cases," the doctor replied as he removed the cuffs from Elizabeth's limbs. He hung the black cloth monitoring devices on the appropriately labeled wall hooks and picked up a slip of paper from his desk.
Well aware of the routine when the doctor had reached for the three-inch wide piece of paper, Elizabeth automatically put out her left finger, let the man prick it, and watched as a drop of blood fell onto the paper. Moving her finger, she let another drop fall in the middle of the paper, and then a third to fall on the far-left side. She - just like all the space travelers - had been regularly tested so many times for any number of ailments that the pricking of the finger was no longer bothersome.
"Any fever? Chills? Fatigue?", the doctor questioned as he looked at the paper with its now changing shades of color and then set it down on his desk.
"No, no, and no," Elizabeth answered. She tried to keep from giggling as Jack, who was sitting in the chair she had previously occupied, rolled his eyes at the doctor's boring tone and then winked at her.
"Read the third row from the bottom on the chart," he ordered.
Elizabeth read the letters aloud and realized that her vision was perfect as she said the same letters that Jack had said minutes earlier when it had been his turn to have his vision checked. Jack nodded to her and smiled when she got them all correct.
"Any problems with your teeth? Feeling sweaty? Hair loss?"
"No, no, and no." Elizabeth bit her smiling bottom lip and glared at Jack who was behind the doctor and was now comically pulling on his hair with one hand and on a tooth with the other.
"Your muscle tone is good, blood pressure, weight, temperature, vision, hearing, all good. It's important to keep exercising if you remember from your first voyage," the doctor noted in a monotone voice.
"That's how she got injured", Jack noted apologetically. "She was blocking one of my moves. We'll be more careful."
Elizabeth smiled as she remembered the incident and how concerned Jack had been when she had fallen and yelped in pain. After more than a year of practice, she was getting very adept in the art of fighting in the Israeli style which combined the best of boxing, wrestling, judo, and karate. Although she had been injured three weeks ago, she had previously bested Jack on more than one occasion. Usually when she caught him off guard. Okay, only when she caught him off guard. But still, a win was a win.
Jack now stood up in anticipation of the end of Elizabeth's routine examination. With their examinations done, he was looking forward to spending the rest of the afternoon free time with her.
"Yes," the doctor said as if contemplating something. "As I said, I was surprised that she had an x-ray rather than an MRI. Sometimes the simplest of choices can have long reaching and unintended effects."
Jack and Elizabeth gave each other a curious look at the doctor's odd statement. Both thinking the same thing; that he was a stange man and they gratefully wouldn't need to see him for another two weeks.
"What did you mean earlier when you said contraindicated?" Jack asked. His question was more of an effort to be friendly than out of any genuine curiosity as the doctor didn't seem quite finished with the examination.
"X-rays shouldn't be used on people with certain devices in them. It can cause a break-down of necessary components.
"But that doesn't have anything to do with Elizabeth," Jack responded pleasantly. "She doesn't have any devices. No hearing aids. No pace maker. No prosthetic knees."
"She does have a device," the doctor corrected Jack. "She was given a BCHD prior to departing Earth."
The doctor returned his attention to Elizabeth. "Did you tell them that you had one? Did they look at your records?" His questions made her suddenly feel like she was being reprimanded for having done something wrong.
Elizabeth shrugged. "I don't know. It was a young technician. He'd only been on the planet a month or so. But I think the x-ray machine still worked fine. My wrist hasn't hurt in two weeks."
"As I said x-rays are contraindicated with certain devices."
"What are you saying? That I ruined the x-ray machine," a confused Elizabeth asked. "That my birth control hormone device somehow made the x-ray machine malfunction so it didn't read my bones correctly? That I may have a hairline fracture of the wrist? Or something wrong with my back?"
"No. I think that your wrist and back are fine. The BCHD is meant to last 24 months. I see from your records that it was implanted in your left hip the week before you left Earth. It was meant to last the entire length of your time away from earth. When you had your low back x-rayed, the machine likely degraded the device which is in your left hip – the same general area. "
"Can't you just implant another one?" Jack asked causally.
"It's not that easy," the doctor replied with a sigh.
"I thought it was just a simple procedure. A tiny square," Jack remarked as he found the idea of not having regular birth control until they arrived back in Earth a bit unsettling.
"We are on a space transporter traveling through deep space. I don't have any BCHDs. They are meant to be implanted prior to space travel. Not during."
"What about condoms? Just give us some condoms," Jack encouraged as he looked to Elizabeth and then back to the doctor. Although Jack found that using a condom wasn't ideal, if that was what they had to do, they would.
"We don't have condoms stocked onboard."
"Why the heck not?!" a now concerned Jack questioned the doctor.
The doctor raised his eyebrows at Jack before responding. "Because all females are implanted with a BCHD. They are not supposed to allow them to be degraded. And because all travelers are examined prior to being accepted on a voyage, there are no sexually transmitted diseases. So, therefore, condoms are not required," he explained in a critical manner.
Jack's eyes grew wide. "So, you're telling me that we can't have sex for the next four months because we don't have any birth control?!"
"Jack, calm down," Elizabeth said as she tried to remain calm herself despite finding that the idea of not having sex with Jack for the next four months was terrifying.
"Did you hear what he said?!" a wide-eyed Jack said to Elizabeth. "We won't have any birth control for the next four months! FOUR MONTHS!"
"We do like it . . sex," an embarrassed Elizabeth explained to the doctor. "There must be some type of birth control on board. An IUD? A diaphragm?"
The doctor shook his head at the couple who were obviously still in the honeymoon phase of their marriage despite having been married more than a year.
"Pills?" Elizabeth asked hopefully but the doctor just shook his head again.
"You must have some condoms onboard," Jack argued.
"I can assure you Officer Thornton that to my knowledge there are no stowaway or contraband condoms on board this transporter."
"A hormone sponge I can insert?" Elizabeth volunteered desperately but the doctor just gave her a look of disdain.
"No sex for four months," Jack mumbled in shock as he began pacing the small room.
"We can do the rhythm method. Right?" Elizabeth pleaded as she looked at the doctor. "We would prefer. . .um. . . not to stop having sex."
"No sex for four months", a stunned Jack said as if continuing to repeat it would wake him up from a bad dream.
Elizabeth took a deep breath to allow herself time to think because the doctor was now ignoring her as he looked through her computer file.
"It will be fine. We'll do the rhythm method. I'll time my cycle," she said after a moment.
"The rhythm method?" Jack questioned. "That requires planning and timing and thinking ahead", he noted pessimistically as he ran his hands through his hair. "Geez. I can't believe this."
"Or you can . . ." Elizabeth bent her head and looked at Jack out of the corner of her eye and, hoping the doctor would at least pretend not to hear, hoarsely whispered ". . . you can pull out early."
Jack looked at her incredulously. "For four months?!"
"Settle down", Elizabeth pleaded as she felt herself becoming anxious at the thought of not having normal marital relations.
"Settle down?! How can I settle down? We're going to be sharing a 10-foot by 10-foot room for the next four months and he's just told me that I can't have sex with my wife!"
"You can have all the sex you want," the doctor calmly interrupted while only seeming to pay them slight attention as he reviewed Elizabeth's examination findings.
"Really?!" the distraught but surprised couple eagerly said in unison. They gave each other hopeful looks and Jack's shoulders relaxed instantly.
"As much as you want," the doctor said in a bored voice as he typed into his computer.
"As much as we want?"
"You can have it ten times a day for all I care," the doctor replied.
"But you said that you don't have any birth control for us," Jack's voice questioned.
"If you were trying to avoid getting her pregnant, I agree that it would be a concern. But you're not trying to keep her from getting pregnant," the doctor noted.
Jack and Elizabeth looked at each other in confusion and then turned their attention back to the doctor.
"Of course we are" Jack said in a perplexed voice. "We're in space."
The doctor typed a final entry into the computer and then turned to look at the couple before speaking.
"Officer and Mrs. Thornton, you already are pregnant."
Up next: Chapter 31 – The Tango