CHAPTER 38 - PROMISES

"Who is she?"

Elizabeth, sitting in a chair and holding a water bottle, turned her head when she heard the woman's voice. Two women, both dressed in Pegasus crew uniforms, were staring at her as the entered the air-box. She recognized the insignia of the First Officer on the shoulder epaulettes of the woman who had spoken.

There were now six crew members crowded around Elizabeth, who had been revived with smelling salts held under her nostrils by a crewmember who had hastily grabbed them from a first aid kit.

"I have no idea, ma'am. She's given me two different last names but neither is listed as a passenger in our system. I'm not sure what her real name is."

"Did you do a retinal scan?"

"I can't. Her pupils are overly wet. She keeps crying," the man said in bewilderment.

"What did she tell you?" the First Officer asked.

"She claims she's married to that security officer that was here earlier, and that she's also the daughter of the maker of this transporter, and that she's a school teacher."

"Our mysterious trouble maker has a triple identity," another crew member said sarcastically.

"She says she's pregnant, skipped both scans, got past me without noticing, and was here to visit a midwife. She gave me a candy bar which I think was her attempt at bribing me to let her get on the other transporter," the man with the name tag engraved 'Kyle' added.

"I wasn't bribing you!" Elizabeth exclaimed defensively. "You asked if anyone had given me anything!"

Everyone was talking about her like she wasn't even there. Granted she had almost fainted, which she suspected was due to a lack of eating breakfast and lunch added to her running, but she was now fine after sitting down and drinking some water.

The crew members all stared at her as if she was an oddity. Elizabeth, who after attacking a crew member and then almost fainting, had spent the last few minutes hiccupping and crying through an interrogation. She clearly didn't fit into their neat orderly world.

"What did she tell you?" a puzzled First Officer, who was clearly needing clarification, asked as she turned her attention from Elizabeth to Kyle.

"That she was here for a pregnancy check-up with her midwife, that her father and mother made this transporter, that her husband is the law enforcer, and that she's a school teacher."

"Do you think it's space madness?"

"Seems possible. Check out her crazy shoes," one of the men answered as he pointed to Elizabeth's weighted shoes with their suction-cup bottoms.

"I found this apron in the corridor," a female crew member said as she held up the protective garment. "A passenger said he saw her throw it off." The crew all looked intently at it and squinted their eyes in confusion.

"It's mine!" Elizabeth snarled and reached for it. She snatched it from the woman's hand and placed it across her own midsection. "To keep radiation from my womb."

"Your womb?"

"Yes, my womb!" she said angrily. Tears stinging her eyes. "Womb. Singular. Not a double womb."

"Can a woman have two wombs?" one of the men whispered to the woman at his side.

"Beats me," the woman said with a shrug and then moved her finger in a circular motion around her head to indicate that Elizabeth might be mentally unstable. "Maybe she's on something."

The First Officer tried to ignore the 'crazy' symbol and addressed Elizabeth. "You got pregnant in space?"

"Yes. I got pregnant in space," Elizabeth said rudely. "Actually, it was on Plant Assaymark," she added wearily.

"How'd that happen?" one of the men asked dubiously.

"I had an x-ray of my wrist and got pregnant," Elizabeth snapped. "Not that it's any of your business."

"Aahh. The old x-ray-of-the-wrist pregnancy," came the snotty response. "I always thought it was intercourse that got women pregnant."

"It wasn't the x-ray! It was the romantic non-fireman thing!" Elizabeth argued hotly.

"There was a fireman? Or not a fireman? On Planet Assaymark? And he got you pregnant with an x-ray machine?" the First Officer asked delicately, as if dealing with a possible emotionally unstable woman.

"Oh, never-mind," Elizabeth muttered.

While the crew members began talking amongst themselves, Elizabeth barely listened to their words.

". . . Thatcher, but then she said Thornton. She can't even figure out what fake name to use. I don't have either listed as a passenger, but that security officer that was here was named Thornton. Maybe she heard him say the name.. . .

. . . . . . .Get the doctor in here. . . .

. . . . .Does anyone recognize her? . . . .

. . . . Hey, wasn't that one scientist's wife a midwife back on Earth?"

Elizabeth was tired of arguing. It was too late. The ships would have separated while she had hovered just above consciousness, and before the smelling salts.

Tears started to spill out of her eyes again. Thirty minutes ago, she had been happily thinking about her pregnancy. Everything had seemed so positive. So perfect. Now, she wiped her eyes at how terribly wrong things had gone.

She felt all alone.

All she could think about now was the math. The horrible word problem forming in her brain.

If a woman who is approximately three months pregnant has to fly two months to Coal Valley and then turns around and flies four more months to Earth, where will her baby be born?

"Did you stop the separation?" someone in the crowded room asked Kyle. "Why aren't we moving away?"

Elizabeth's head jerked up. She looked at Kyle excitedly.

Kyle, whose hard professionalism had started to soften at Elizabeth's tears, shook his head at the crew's question.

"I started it up again after she pushed the stop button, but then they stopped it from their side," he replied.

"The other side? They stopped it? Why?" a woman wearing Ensign insignia asked.

Kyle moved over to the desk and reviewed the screen with its blinking lights and messages.

"Sixteen oh five it was stopped by me. Sixteen oh six I started it up again. Sixteen oh seven she pushed the button. Sixteen oh eight I started it up again but at sixteen oh eight – the same time- the other side put a hold on it."

"Did they say why?"

"Yeah. They're checking their passenger count," Kyle responded as he read from the screen. "Something must be going on over there too."

"I told you! They must have realized I'm missing!" Elizabeth yelled out triumphantly even though snot was dripping from her nose.

Within a minute, the doctor had answered the crew's call and arrived in the air-box with the midwife, who had vouched for Elizabeth's identity.

"You shouldn't have been running," the man reprimanded Elizabeth as he held his stethoscope to her chest and listened carefully.

"It's okay," Elizabeth protested. She was happy to see the midwife nodding in agreement with her. "I run on the treadmill every day. I just was wearing too much weight today between the shoes and the apron, and I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch. And, well, I was really nervous."

"There's nothing to be nervous about now," a female crew member said in a friendly voice. As if dealing with a younger sister who needed comforting.

"You'll be on your ship in a few minutes. But that doesn't give us a lot of time," the woman added with a twinge of regret evident in her voice.

"A lot of time? For what?" Elizabeth asked in confusion. She couldn't think why more time was needed. Goodness, she just wanted off this ship and back on her own. The personnel on the two transporters had communicated with each other and realized that there was indeed one misplaced passenger; the unlocking mechanisms were being reversed on both ships.

"What do we need time for?" Elizabeth, her face stained with tears, asked again.

The woman gave her a sad look. "You're not a pretty crier," she said sympathetically.

"That bad?" Elizabeth asked as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"Look, you need to toughen up," one of the men spoke out trying to be helpful. "No man wants an emotional wreck for a woman. We stopped the undocking but you don't want your husband seeing you like this."

Someone handed Elizabeth a tissue and she blew her nose. "It's okay. He's seen me cry before. Just the other day, I was crying when I thought he was having an affair with one of our roommates," she explained off-handedly.

"Your husband cheats on you?" a woman asked with concern.

"Never! I just thought he had. Because they were spending time together and I misunderstood the situation. It was all my fault."

"You can't blame yourself for what your husband does," the First Officer remarked tersely.

"It really was my fault," Elizabeth explained. "We have a very emotional relationship," she added as she thought about the intensity of their love. "I've been crying since the first time he broke up with me, and then again when I thought he was going to leave me and go back to Earth. And that was before we were even married!"

The curly-haired woman began running a facial wipe, which had appeared out of the first aid kit, along Elizabeth's face, while another woman gently combed her hair. "Maybe you shouldn't be with a man who you think is always going to be leaving you?" the first woman said cautiously.

Elizabeth sniffled. "Oh, it's not like that," she said dismissively. "I meant 'leaving me' because of work. You know that unavoidable kind of leaving. Not the threatening kind. Unless you count the time that Daddy sent me a suitor, but I didn't take Jack seriously that time when he threated to leave me and go back to Earth on the next transporter."

"He threatened to leave you on the planet by yourself?!" the woman said in a stunned voice. She gave a knowing glance to her crewmate, who stopped combing Elizabeth's hair and quietly moved away.

Elizabeth blew her nose into another tissue which someone had handed her and took a sip of water. She was feeling much better now that she knew the transporters were preparing to reopen the transition point.

"It wasn't that serious," she said pleasantly. "You know what it's like. When you have rich overprotective parents and your father sends a man to protect you when you go somewhere primitive. But then your father doesn't want you to fall in love with the middle-class law enforcement officer he sent even if that law-enforcement officer is wonderful. So, your father sends his hand-picked man, who's also your childhood friend, to come after you and woo you. And the man you really love – who's the middle-class law enforcement officer – gets jealous because even though he loves you desperately, he's a little insecure about his social standing. So, he threatens to leave you in the heat of the moment if you don't send the taller man home."

The female crewmember simply stared in bewilderment at Elizabeth for a moment before finding her voice. "My parents are soy bean farmers. They don't care who I marry as long as I'm happy."

"Oh. Well, yes, there's that too," Elizabeth said with a friendly shrug.

"You and your husband don't . . .fight a lot, do you?" the woman with the short curly hair asked hesitantly.

"Not at all! We love each other. I can't even remember the last time we fought. Unless you count when we found out I was pregnant . . .and then when he refused to have sex with me," she said pensively as an after-thought.

All the crew members were now sympathetically staring at Elizabeth and wondering what kind of horrible man she had married.

"Miss, are you sure you want to go back to that transporter? You can come to Coal Valley with us. We'll find you a space," one of them volunteered.

"Of course, I want to home! Jack's on that transporter. But, you've all been very nice. I'm sorry for all the trouble. "

"There she goes blaming herself for everything," one of the women muttered to the First Officer. "No wonder her husband gets away with treating her so badly."

"Refusing to have sex with her? Fighting with her because she got pregnant? Blaming her because he almost has an affair?" a man whispered. "And he seemed like a decent guy when he was aboard earlier today. It just goes to show you can't always tell about a person."

Elizabeth didn't hear the comments as she stood up and tucked her shirt into her pants. She lovingly looked at her belly and ran her hand over it gently.

"Congratulations", one of the men offered. Trying not to feel too badly for Elizabeth who was obviously in some sort of emotionally abusive relationship.

"Thanks!" Elizabeth answered with a big smile. "And you're right, my husband won't want to see me a complete basket-case. I was just a little emotionally overwrought. Thank you all for your help."

"DOCKING COMPLETE," the sensor over the door announced. "DOORS OPENING."

Elizabeth realized she had no reason to rush into Jack's arms when she saw him. After-all, she had just seen him a few hours earlier. It would be far better to pretend that nothing dramatic had happened in the last half hour.

Three seconds later, Elizabeth, now trying to be confident and forget the anxiety she had recently felt, was walking towards Jack. He was talking to a man in uniform and casually leaning against the processing desk, as if he was merely waiting for his wife to come out of a beauty salon rather than a transporter than almost took her away for six months. Jack's eyes showed a mixture of relief and what decidedly looked like comical frustration when he saw her.

"Is that her?" the uniformed man added with a nod towards Elizabeth.

"Yes, thanks for holding things," an unruffled Jack responded.

"You may want to remind her of the necessity for precision when it comes to time."

"Will do," Jack said as he smiled at Elizabeth, who gave him a friendly wave.

"I'm so sorry, Jack. They wouldn't let me through," Elizabeth hurriedly explained when she reached him. "They were just a little uptight about their processes."

He chuckled, indicating he was used to her misfortunes and they began walking side by side out of the room.

"Are you okay?" he asked casually.

"I'm fine."

"Everything okay with the baby? Mid-wife visit went okay?"

Elizabeth nodded eagerly. "Everything's fine with the baby. Molly said I'm doing really well. She was wonderful."

"And you almost missed the flight why?" Jack asked curiously as they continued to walk along a corridor.

"I just got a bit lost on the ship. And well, it was just a bit of a mess," she replied with a sigh.

"So, you're okay?"

"Of course, I am. I handled everything just fine. I explained that I needed to get on this ship and they held it for re-docking. It was fine," she said in a false upbeat voice as she remembered that men like a strong woman.

"No trouble?"

"Not really," she replied. "Really, Jack, you have to have more faith in me. I'm a grown woman. I can certainly handle visiting another transporter."

Jack paused for a minute and tried to bite his smile. "So, the transmission that our Captain got from their crew asking if I was a jealous man who emotional abuses you with threats to leave you, withhold sex, and have an affair – that was some sort of misunderstanding?"

"Yes!" a stunned Elizabeth exclaimed. Man, did the Pegasus crew misunderstand everything!

"If everything was fine, why are your eyes are red and puffy?" Jack asked politely as he kept pace with her and nodded hello to someone walking past them.

"I . . .um . . .you know, it was just a drier atmosphere on that ship. You probably noticed it too when you were over there."

"Actually, I didn't."

"Really? How odd," Elizabeth replied as she hurriedly wondered how to change the conversation. "But it was the atmosphere that caused my puffy eyes," she insisted.

"If you say so," he responded as he put his arm around her waist. "But I have my own theory."

"Theory? Your own theory?"

"You know, me being in law enforcement, I tend to notice details and come up with theories" he said lightly as they turned a corner in the corridor. "Do you want to hear it?"

"Um. Okay,"

"I am guessing that you had trouble getting back onto our transporter and got so frustrated that you started to cry. Not one of your sad cries but one of your angry frustrated cries. Where instead of cursing at someone who frustrates you, you just burst into tears."

"It was awful," Elizabeth wailed as she gave up her pretense. "It wasn't fine at all! I was worried I wouldn't see you again until after the baby was born! No one would believe me at first! They treated me like I was some deranged woman who was trying to get out of going to Coal Valley because I had changed my mind. It was horrible!"

Jack stopped walked and turned to face her. "Put your arms around my neck", he ordered.

A puzzled Elizabeth did as he ordered and then gasped when he bent forward slightly and swooshed her up into his arms. One arm under her knees and the other under her upper back.

"Come on my dandelion", he said tenderly. "You've had enough excitement for the day. I think you are in need of some coddling."

"And cuddling", she offered as she buried her face into his chest and let him carry her in her favorite position.

"And cuddling", he agreed with a smile.

The humming of the heat moving through the air vents was the only sound in the living quarters as the couple lay entwined on one of the six berths where they had been for almost an hour. Elizabeth's head was resting on Jack's chest as she listened to his heartbeat.

"We should get up," Jack noted. "The roommates will be back soon and we need to get to dinner. You've got to be starving."

"Just a few more minutes," Elizabeth implored, but a second later, she lifted her head and stared at Jack.

"Weren't you worried at all? That I was stuck over there?"

"Not really."

"Not really?! I could have been gone for six months!", she exclaimed.

Jack chuckled. "You would not have been gone for six months. First of all, I had no idea you weren't back on our ship until after I finished my work and went looking for you. The guys in the airbox said you hadn't scanned through to the other ship, so yes, then I got a little worried that you had never made it to the midwife's appointment. I tried messaging you –"

"Sorry," Elizabeth said with frown when she remembered she hadn't charged her bracelet.

"And then I had an announcement put on the intercom asking you to come to the security office. Bobby from the quartermaster's said he saw you on Pegasus. That's when I figured you must have somehow skipped the scanning, and I quickly told the Captain to hold the departure."

"Think how close we were to being separated! Like Penelope and Odysseus," Elizabeth said dramatically as she thought of the ancient Greek epic poem.

"Penelope and Odysseus were apart for twenty years because of the Trojan War", Jack said scornfully. "Not because the wife lost track of the time and got lost on a four-story ship."

"Still", Elizabeth objected to Jack's flippant response. "We would have been apart for six months."

"No, we wouldn't have been," Jack maintained. "If we went weeks out of the way to pick up a stowaway, we certainly could have gone back and redocked as soon as I realized you had been left aboard the Pegasus. It would have been an inconvenience and Becca may have thrown a fit about the navigation, but for goodness sakes, I would have made them redock."

"You would have?"

"Of course, I would have!"

A sheepish Elizabeth remained quiet as she thought about Jack's logic.

I guess I never thought about it that way. Darn, he's right. I got all hysterical for no reason.

How embarrassing!

Why in the world does he stay married to me?!

"Although . . .," Jack said thoughtfully, "Any time I'm away from you, it does seem like twenty years. . . . . Let's make sure we're never apart for too long, okay?"

"I promise," Elizabeth whispered as she tilted her face and kissed him.

"I promise too," he whispered back.

UP NEXT: CHAPTER 39