Stardate 2260.207
When Voris opened his eyes again, he was standing at the entrance to the Hall of Ancient Thought on Mount Seleya. The images were hazy and ill-formed, but he had few memories of this place. His forefather, Skon, had brought him here once as a boy, and he had visited upon the death of his mother's father a short time after that, but he was not well acquainted with this sacred site. Strange that his mind would choose to bring him here.
"Have you decided to stay?"
He didn't need to turn around to know T'Sala stood behind him. He could not answer her question, because he had no definite answer.
"Come to me, adun."
He slowly turned, startled to find her wearing the clothes she wore on the day of their bonding ceremony, her face partially hidden beneath the mask of a pale purple veil.
"Do I have a choice?"
Her eyes scanned the scenery. "Everything you see before you is a choice."
He nodded and walked toward her, one slow step at a time. Her back stiffened and she cocked her head, almost conspiratorially. "You must decide soon. This place will not last forever."
"It would be illogical to elect to remain in an impermanent location."
"Every logical decision has an illogical element."
Voris threw up his hands. "I want to stay, but I want to stay with you, not my memory of you."
"There is a reason your mind has brought you here, Voris," she replied, motioning behind her to the Hall of Ancient Thought.
"This place is gone also. It now only exists in my memories, and the memories of the Vulcans who survived."
"The place is gone, but the idea of it is not."
Voris gulped. "You imply you exist somewhere else."
She tilted her chin. "I exist in your heart."
Voris sighed, turned his back to her, and paced several irritated steps. She was talking in circles. "And when I die, then where will you exist?"
"That is for you to discover on your own."
His chin trembled. "I want to stay with you."
"Then stay."
He exhaled sharply, and turned to face her. "It cannot be so simple as that."
"No, it isn't," she agreed.
Voris stared at her for a long time. He loved this woman and for a time, it seemed as though nothing else mattered. He could stay here, even in this half-existence, and he could be content. He was about to tell her so when he noticed movement from behind her flowing skirts. A small face peeked out from behind T'Sala's thigh before quickly disappearing again.
"Who is that?" he asked, afraid of her answer.
"You already know," T'Sala replied, turning slightly without taking her eyes off him. "She is a fascinating thing."
Voris took a cautious step forward as T'Sala led a small girl from behind her back. The harder he stared at her, the less clear her features became, but she had a pair of unmistakably blue eyes. Human eyes.
"I always wanted one of our own," she said wistfully, kneeling down to the child.
"I know," Voris choked, stepping forward.
"She reminds me very much of you."
When he looked at her indirectly, she seemed so clear, but whenever he tried to focus on her, her form became blurry, like he was seeing her through the edges of a magnifying glass. Voris desperately wanted to see her. He knelt down beside T'Sala and offered a shaking hand to the girl.
The child hugged T'Sala tightly and buried her face in her chest, only to peek back at Voris several moments later. It was like Dagny was looking back at him. T'Sala whispered, "You are still a stranger to her."
He replied without thinking, "I do not want to be. I want us to know each other."
T'Sala stood suddenly, the girl evaporating into the folds of her wedding dress. "You cannot have both."
Voris instinctively started to lunge forward at his daughter's disappearance but stopped himself when he realized he would only be grasping at air. Seeing her and having her taken away was a unique kind of emotional pain that he hadn't anticipated. T'Sala wasn't real, but neither was the child. How he hated this place and his inability to repress emotions.
"You do not realize it yet, but you love her," T'Sala finally said.
"And I love you too." He had never actually spoken those words to her, but she did not seem surprised by his admission. She had always known he loved her, just as he had always known she loved him. Words were unnecessary.
"Your time is running out." She descended the stairs and walked toward the edge of the cliff. Voris squinted against the fading evening sun and walked down to meet her. The valley floor stretched on forever in all directions.
They watched the sun sink and as the light faded from rich orange into red and threatened to become purple, Voris clutched her hand but could not bear to look her in the face. "I'll miss you."
"I know. But adun, if you are going to go, you must go now."
He let go of her hand and turned to see her face one last time, but she was already gone. He gazed out over the horizon, closed his eyes, and stepped over the edge.
"Is he doing any better?" Ann asked, clutching the basket of food so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
Dagny's answer was automatic. "Not really."
"But he's not getting worse, is he?"
Dagny blinked several times, gently touched the blanket around Voris' feet and replied, "No. He's just… there. He has a pulse and brain activity, but…"
"He's going to be ok," Ann said, cutting off Dagny's train of thought. "We're going to be ok."
Even if it didn't feel like it, she was probably right. The number of confirmed cases of Orion lungworm had risen to twelve in the last forty-eight hours, but things were still manageable. Seven of her patients were on a ventilator, but three of those patients, Khel and the teenage Romulan twins, had regained conscious and were slowly being weaned off mechanical ventilation. With any luck, all three would be breathing on their own within the next several hours.
Four other patients, two Rigelians and two Romulans, were stable on supplemental oxygen. Their records indicated Voris had vaccinated three of them in the days prior to the outbreak and the fourth had received a vaccine twenty-two years ago as a child. They were sick enough to need to be admitted to the clinic, but their immune systems were getting around to responding to the virus and they would probably be back on their feet in a week.
Four hours ago, some men had brought in a nonresponsive ninety-nine-year-old Romulan man, and though Dagny and Aisla had fought for the better part of an hour to stabilize him, it hadn't been enough. Ann's son Nicolas had helped move the body into the surgical suite, but Dagny needed to process a death certificate before his friends could perform a ceremonial cremation.
She'd had a lot of help from various volunteers. Hadrian Moore, an older gentleman who had been through Starfleet's First Aid Course, was now working a regular shift in the clinic in addition to managing logistics for the colony. His skills were a bit rusty but he was good enough at checking vitals and making notes in charts. Aisla had been in the clinic since the outbreak had started and had managed to get by with taking naps upstairs in Dagny's bed every twelve hours. The Svendsen family, along with many people who routinely stayed on the Oglethorpe, rotated through to sit with patients and give their loved ones—if they had loved ones—the chance to go home and shower or rest. And through it all, Zernon and Jester Blakely, the man who ran the local tavern, had kept everyone in the clinic fed.
Even though people seemed to be pulling together for the greater good in the clinic, Constable Kilpatrick had remained busy breaking up scuffles between Orions and some of the other colonists. It was bad enough that all the Vulcanoid colonists were at risk of contracting a dangerous virus without the added risk of Orion colonists being assaulted because of it.
That morning, or maybe it had been last night, Aisla had been summoned to the detention center to patch up some lacerations and broken bones following a brawl in the main tunnel that had pitted three Orion men against a mob of about a dozen people. For once, Dagny was glad she was confined to the clinic because the world outside currently seemed to exist on a razor's edge, with everyone looking for an excuse to descend into civil disorder. Bergeron colony had always seemed too good to be true, and all it had taken were a few cases of Orion lungworm to prove people still had an ugly side, if they were scared enough.
The clinic door opened and when Dagny heard her name, she jerked her eyes open, shocked to discover she'd been drifting off while standing next to Ann. She rubbed her forehead and turned to greet Samantha Bergeron, who was holding a PADD and wearing a resolute expression.
"I can only handle good news right now," Dagny said.
"I can't promise it's all good, but it's not the worst news we've had this week."
Dagny raised her brow and waited for Sam to continue. Sam looked around and noticing Jake in the corner watching them, motioned for him to join the conversation.
"Is the northern colony going to send supplies?" he asked excitedly.
"Ah, no, but the Federation is willing to provide an emergency relief package. It's going to take a month for them to get out this way, but they'll deliver three months' worth of food and some extra medical supplies."
Dagny almost wanted to laugh because in the back of her mind, she could hear her father say, "Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." How she missed his silly little sayings.
Sam handed her the PADD, which contained an inventory of the items the Federation was donating, including the stasis chamber she had Voris had asked for two months ago, plus two extra biobeds, four more biofilters, and another chemical synthesizer. The other items were nice to have but not really essential. Two more tricorders, another bone knitter, and two more dermal regenerators were useless without another person trained to operate them. Still, she was grateful and understood the inherent value in having spares on hand.
"It's nice that the Federation is willing to help out," Dagny shrugged. "That's got to be a good sign, right?"
"I have a feeling they're coming this way to see what the Klingons and Gorn are up to and delivering medical relief to us was just a convenient excuse," Jake replied darkly. "I have it on good authority they checked on the northern colony last month, so they weren't due out this way again for a while."
Sam crossed her arms and nodded in agreement.
"What's going on with the Klingons and Gorn?" Dagny asked, looking back and forth between Sam and Jake.
"I don't know for sure, but I'm hearing through the very end of the grapevine they're in the midst of a territorial dispute," Sam explained. "If they go to war, we're going to end up getting caught in it; maybe not right in the middle, but close enough that it won't matter."
She should have been shocked or at least frightened by the news, but she was too worn out from the current crisis on her doorstep. "So, we'll get food and extra medical supplies in a month, which isn't much use now, but it's better than nothing. You were right, it could have been better, but it could have been a lot worse."
"Don't count on it," Jake scowled, glancing at Sam. "If I know Miss Bergeron, she likes to lead with the good: softens the blow, you see."
Sam winced and nodded. "The reason the Federation is dropping off food is because they're quarantining us for a year."
"A year?" shouted Jake, drawing the attention of the rest of the clinic.
"No one goes in or out—that was the deal," Sam said gloomily. "You'll have to land the Oglethorpe and I need to submit a by-name list of all colonists within the next twenty-four hours. The Federation Health Service will send people out here in a year to screen everyone and confirm the colony is free of the virus. I guess in the meantime, New Vulcan and Rigel have resurrected their previous vaccination programs."
"They're cutting us off from trading for a year and only giving us enough food for three months?" Jake protested. "That's worth about as much as a fart in the wind on a cold day."
"We have the food you brought back on your last trip, plus the current food on hand in the greenhouses, and we have plenty of land on the surface."
"We're in the dead middle of winter," Jake shot back.
"Snow melts," Sam responded. "And when it does, we need to be ready to start planting."
"So that's it then? We go from being a profitable mining colony to one relying on subsistence agriculture? Most of the people here are miners, not farmers."
"Most of the people here weren't miners when they showed up, but they learned. I have a feeling they'll learn to plant crops if it means their kids get to eat."
Jake clutched his head and turned around. "This is unbelievable."
"Do calm down, Jake," Sam sighed. "It's not the end of the world."
He grumbled and shuffled back to his wife's bedside. Dagny was about to join him and check up on the patients when Sam added, "The Federation Health Service also wants an update on the current outbreak. Still only one fatality?"
"Yeah."
"How's Dr. Voris doing?"
Dagny exhaled slowly through pursed lips. "He's hanging in there, but he hasn't regained consciousness."
Sam's eyes flicked to Dagny's belly. "I've known a few Vulcans in my time. They're real stubborn when it comes to dying. He's going to be ok."
For her sake and the rest of the colony, she desperately hoped so. Dagny shuddered at the thought of being forced to live on Bergeron colony for the next year all by herself. Her need for Voris to get better extended far beyond her complicated feelings for the man. Not only was she not prepared to have a baby on her own, she wasn't prepared to assume the responsibility for caring for more than a thousand colonists by herself.
The hours ticked by and she was able to remove Khel and the twins from the ventilator and two of her other patients on mechanical ventilation were now awake and would probably be able to come off it in the morning. From everything she'd read, it would take them between four and six months to fully recover from Orion lungworm, so they were at the beginning of a very long journey, but the atmosphere was far more hopeful than it had been in days.
She intended to keep them all in the clinic for at least another week if she could spare the bed space because approximately five percent of patients were reported to suffer from spontaneous relapse syndrome within the first few days of recovery. Even if they didn't relapse, they had weeks of extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, and muscle weakness and spasms to look forward to.
The situation remained serious but the scenes unfolding in the convalescent ward were beautiful to behold. In the far corner, Nhael was patiently helping her sons eat their broth when they grew too tired to hold a spoon. On the left side of Voris, Khel and was sitting up and baby Christopher was lying on her legs, gripping his mother's fingers with happy zeal. She was pale and her voice was raspy from the endotracheal tube, but the wide smile on her face was only slightly smaller than that of her husband's.
The ward was packed with volunteers and friends and family huddled around bedsides, telling tired jokes and immersing themselves in the unique brand of camaraderie that was found only in hospital settings. Nearly everyone seemed to be doing better. Voris was the lone holdout, and staying busy checking up on everyone else was losing its effectiveness at keeping her mind off his situation.
She was exhausted and uncomfortable. She'd developed a rash on the lower part of her face from wearing a mask for three days straight, taking it off only to race upstairs and gobble down a quick meal and slurp of water before wading back into the trenches. She wanted sleep, but she wanted Voris to wake up more.
Another hour passed by and then another and soon, the ward started to quiet down as people settled into sleep for the night and most of the visitors trickled home, promising to come back first thing in the morning. Dagny made another quick round to check her patients, gave herself her weekly injection of immunosuppressants, and then found herself back at Voris' bedside.
She was so desperate for him to get better that it was almost making her angry, though she wasn't exactly sure what she was angry about. Being angry at him was ridiculous and being angry with herself was just as unproductive—she'd done everything she could. It was up to him now, and waiting for him to make up his mind about whether or not he wanted to live made her feel as helpless and overwhelmed as she had on the Albret, trying to synthesize trialgenine in the midst of a Class 9 neutronic storm.
"Excuse me, Dagny?" She felt a gentle hand shake her shoulder and sat up with a loud snort.
Her eyes drifted back into focus to see Jacob Diels standing over her with Christopher in his arms, and she realized she'd been sleeping sitting up in the chair. The right side of her mask was wet from where she'd been drooling. "Oh, sorry, was I snoring?"
"Yeah, but it's ok. You're not the only person." Jake smiled and glanced over at the two Rigelians in the opposite corner who were snuffling in tandem.
Dagny sat forward and rubbed her eyes. "What can I do for you, Jake?"
"I hate to trouble you, but Christopher needs formula and you said Khel still couldn't feed him and-"
"Say no more," Dagny said, bouncing to her feet with more energy than she'd have previously guessed she had.
Khel breastfed her son, but ever since she'd been admitted to the clinic, Dagny had been forced to replicate infant formula so Christopher could eat. Replicating food was a moderate energy expense and the ops station had contacted her the day before to ask about it, but there was nothing to be done. Some nursing human mothers had pumped and donated breastmilk, but human breastmilk was exceptionally fatty and lacked sufficient iron and copper that his unique Romulan physiology required, and so she'd been forced to supplement his diet with replicated formula.
When she returned with the bottle, she found Jake in a semi-dozing state next to Voris' bed, Christopher fussing in his arms. Dagny shook his shoulder and asked, "Are you going to make it?"
His eyes jerked open, revealing the bloodshot whites around the irises. He vigorously shook his head to wake himself up and replied, "I don't know that I've ever been this tired."
"Why don't you let me feed him? You go rest."
"What about you?"
"I have to stay up at least until Aisla wakes up and comes down to keep an eye on things, which should be in about half an hour. It'll keep me awake."
Jake looked unsure, but he also looked exhausted, and after a few short seconds of hesitation, passed off his infant son and slumped onto the cot next to his wife's. Dagny pulled Christopher's infant cot to the other side of Voris' bed, sat down in the chair, and popped the nipple of the bottle into his mouth. He fed hungrily.
Christopher was only two months old, but he was already bigger than a human baby would be at his age. Her own baby would probably develop much as Christopher had, which was interesting food for thought. She gently stroked the fine black hairs on his head and fingered his tiny, pointed ears. In many ways, it still didn't feel real that she would have one of these for her own in a little more than four months, assuming everything turned out ok.
She hadn't listened for her baby's heartbeat in ages and after the intense pains in her stomach several days ago, she was too afraid to. The medical literature had suggested Orion lungworm couldn't cross the placenta and affect a fetus, but that was only true for mothers who were fully Vulcan. No studies had ever been done on hybrid pregnancies.
She started having flashbacks of all the times her mask might have slipped down from her nose, wondering if she'd been exposed to the virus. If not Orion Respiratory Virus, maybe she'd been exposed to something else. Maybe all the times she'd started overheating from the early stresses of managing the outbreak had hurt her baby, or maybe lack of sleep was doing some kind of harm to it.
She looked down at Christopher, who was suckling earnestly at the bottle, and her eyes started to well up at the thought that after everything she'd been through, she might lose her baby anyway. She'd offered to feed him because she thought it would take her mind off her troubles, but it was only making them so much worse. The what-ifs were threatening to drive her batty.
Even more than hearing her baby's heartbeat, she wanted to feel something, any little kick or flutter or movement to let her know things were alright. She was almost twenty-three weeks along, visibly showing, and still had felt nothing. If Voris were awake, he'd tell her to stop worrying and offer to perform a scan to set her mind at ease. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and with a shaking voice whispered, "Dammit, why won't you wake up?"
Then something brushed her knee. Surprise made her open her eyes and when she did, she found Voris blinking frantically up at the ceiling. In her hurry to get to her feet, she nearly dropped the baby. She slid her left hand under the baby's bottom and propped him up on her chest, and with her free right hand, gripped Voris' fingers and said, "Voris, can you hear me? If you can understand me, squeeze my hand."
Holding Voris' fingers sent an odd, subtle wave of exhilaration through her hand and all the way to her chest. It was familiar, but she couldn't remember when she'd ever experienced it before. When he gave her hand a weak squeeze, she almost laughed in delight.
"Give me a second, I'm going to check your vitals, ok? Squeeze my hand if you understand."
Voris squeezed her hand again, firmer this time, and when she tried to pull away, she noticed his eyes were darting between her and Christopher. The look of shock on his face was probably the most un-Vulcan thing she'd ever seen, and it took her a few seconds to realize what he was probably thinking.
She put her hand over her mask to stifle a sharp laugh and nodded to her stomach. "This is Khel's son, Christopher. You've only been out for two days, not six months."
His facial features relaxed, but when Dagny tried to pull away from him again to check his vitals on the monitor at the foot of his bed, he tightened his grip. He was too weak to hold her, but the action sent a strange jolt through her. Her worry started to melt away and she felt more content than she had in ages.
"I'm so glad you're ok," she replied, squeezing his hand in return. "A lot's happened in the past few days. I don't even know where to begin."
Voris gripped the counter, thinking he would need to sit down and rest soon. It was remarkable how the act of even standing for thirty minutes at a time could exhaust him. Still, he had a desire to be useful, particularly since Dagny had been forced to manage everything on her own for so long and so, he returned to slicing the vegetables for their end meal later that evening.
He was supposed to be resting, but spending the entirety of his day in bed wouldn't be good for his recovery either. Extended periods of bedrest led to muscle atrophy and reduced circulation and so every two hours, he made it a point to get up and walk a lap around the room.
He was already much stronger than he had been five days ago when Dagny had removed him from the ventilator, but his fitness remained very much diminished. Earlier that morning, he had showered and dressed himself, but by the time he returned to his bed, he was panting heavily had required a long nap. It would take him months to adequately recover, but in his professional opinion, he would recover.
Two days ago, he'd agreed to move from the convalescent ward to his former bed upstairs in order to make space in the clinic. All but one of the Orion lungworm patients had been released to finish their period of convalescence at home, and because Dagny was confined to the clinic, Aisla stopped in to check on the home-bound patients once per day.
The outbreak could have been much worse. In the end, twenty-five percent of the Vulcanoid colonists, including Khel's infant son, had been infected. It was remarkable there had been only one fatality. The outbreak had revealed many failings of the current immigration system and he'd spent the past two days devising plans to in-process new arrivals and screen and immunize the entire colony against other notable pathogens. He had begun drafting the proposal for Samantha Bergeron that afternoon, but even dictating a memorandum had been tiring and he'd dozed off while composing it.
The stairs creaked. Dagny was coming up from the clinic and he suspected she would be cross that he was out of bed. Since he'd regained consciousness, she had fallen into a habit of forgetting that he held a medical degree and had been practicing as a physician longer than she'd been alive.
"What are you doing?" He glanced over his shoulder to see her standing in the threshold.
She pulled off her mask and scowled at him. His assumption that she would be irritated had evidently been correct.
"I am slicing vegetables, as you can see."
"If you were hungry, why didn't you call for me? I had my PADD on and-"
"It was not necessary to disturb you when I am perfectly capable of performing this task."
"Why are you so stubborn?"
"Obstinacy is illogical, as is your opinion that I am too frail to assist in preparing an end meal."
She clenched her jaw and exhaled loudly. "I know how you feel. It's no fun to be in bed. I spent a whole month on bedrest not that long ago, remember?"
"I do."
"What would you have done if you came back from the clinic and found me in the kitchen cooking you dinner when I was supposed to be on bedrest?"
"You are creating a false equivalence. Bedrest was essential to maintaining your pregnancy, and while rest will be necessary to recovering my health-"
"Get back in bed, Voris," she interrupted with a loud sigh.
He raised an eyebrow and finished his sentence. "I am unlikely to regain my strength by being entirely idle."
She crossed her arms. "Your hands are shaking."
His eyes darted to the cutting board. Her observation was correct. He made the last few cuts in the potato, heaped the sliced sections into the strainer, and began the grueling journey to the kitchen table.
Dagny tossed her mask on the counter, rinsed her hands in the sink, and took over his task. "Did you sleep at all after lunch?"
"Yes," he replied. "What is the current status of the clinic?"
"Arjen, the Rigelian boy, went home today with his mother. He still has a little swelling in his spleen, but it's almost returned to normal. I sent them home with the steroid autoinjectors you recommended. So, thank you."
"You have no need to thank me," he responded.
"I know, but having you around to offer advice has been nice. I took it for granted and sometimes got annoyed with you for dispensing it when I didn't want it, I had no idea how much I relied on it until I didn't have it."
"By all accounts, you managed this incident well without me. You will make an excellent physician."
Dagny finished cutting the rest of the vegetables, set the casserole in the oven to bake, and joined him at the table with two glasses of water. She wore dark circles under red-stained eyes. She was tired, that much was evident, but there was something else.
"You are worried."
She looked up from her glass of water, her light blue eyes subdued and quiet. "I hate it when you can feel my feelings."
"I also dislike it when you can sense mine."
She laughed and set her glass down. "Then yes, I suppose I'm worried. You caught me. If I'm going to be honest, I was terrified the whole time you were out. I kept thinking, what if I lose you? I don't want to raise this baby alone."
"You once insisted that's what you would prefer."
"But things have changed, haven't they? We've gotten to know each other and you've been a good friend and mentor to me. And then I said some really stupid things and you moved out. I never wanted you to go. I missed you."
Voris took a sip of his water. "I believe I my decision to leave may have been hastily made without a logical evaluation of the entire situation."
Dagny shot him a look of disbelief. "What does that even mean?"
"I regrettably allowed myself to go without sufficient rest and meditation for an extended period of time and it affected my decision-making."
"You mean, you acted illogically."
"I did not say that."
"That's the only logical conclusion."
He set the glass down and asked, "Why are you worried?"
"Why are you changing the subject?"
"I am returning to the original subject."
"Before we do that, I have to know—will you stay?"
"Specify."
She shot him a dark look. "You don't have a choice but to stay on the colony for the next year, so shouldn't it be easy to deduce I'm asking if you'll stay in our quarters with me?"
He met her eyes. Humans never ceased to surprise with their occasional clarity of mind. "Yes, if you want me to."
Dagny smiled, finished the last of her water, and stretched out her legs. "Of course I want you to, or I wouldn't have asked. Thank you."
"It is illogical to thank me for opting to remain."
"It was illogical to move out in the first place."
"Are we to have an accounting of every irrational decision either of us has made since we've been in each other's acquaintance?"
Dagny shook her head and laughed. "I guess we can stop there."
"It would be advisable. And so tell me, why do you worry?"
She folded her hands on the table and sighed. "There's a lot to be worried about. It's not safe to say we've seen the last of Orion lungworm, we're stuck on this colony for at least another year, tensions are still pretty high between the Orion and Romulan colonists, there are a lot of rumors flying around about the Gorn starting a fight with the Klingons-"
"What has transpired between the Gorn and Klingon colonists?" Voris interrupted.
"I don't mean the colonists. I mean the Gorn Hegemony and the Klingon Empire."
"You say they are rumors."
"They are, but don't many facts often start out as rumors?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Yes. But all rumors are illogical, as is worry."
She broke eye contact with him and leaned forward over the table. "I'm also worried about the baby."
"Do you have cause to be?"
"Over the past few days, I've been experiencing sharp pain in the lower part of my belly. It could be round ligament pain but I don't know for sure."
"Are you experiencing bleeding?"
"No."
"And have you maintained your regimen of medications?"
"Yes. I've done everything I was supposed to. I mean, my temperature monitor did go off quite a bit, especially in the initial hours of the outbreak, but I tried to be careful. I'm worried about the virus crossing the placenta too. I know it's not supposed to be able to, but what if a placenta in a hybrid pregnancy is different?"
"Did you fail to wear your mask in the clinic?"
"No, I did, but what if it slipped or what if it still got through? It's not foolproof, you know?"
"It has been sixteen days since your initial exposure to Orion lungworm through Aisla's niece. You have worked in the clinic caring for patients sick with Orion lungworm for eleven days. The incubation period is only three to seven days, and it is highly contagious. If you were exposed and the fetus was harmed as a result, you would certainly know by now."
"I know and I keep telling myself that, but…"
"Can you still detect a fetal heartbeat?"
"I haven't checked."
"Why not? There is no harm in performing a routine scan."
"Because I'm not ready to know," she said, rising to her feet to check the status of their dinner.
"You prefer to remain ignorant?"
"It's not about being ignorant, Voris, it's about being scared!"
"Knowledge is the means by which fear can be successfully overcome. Your pregnancy was progressing well, and-"
She held up her hand and cut him off. "I haven't felt the baby move yet and I feel like I should have by now. Why haven't I felt a kick or poke or something, anything, yet?"
"It is unusual, but not necessarily indicative of a problem. Why not bring a tricorder upstairs and scan for a heartbeat? It seems preferable to distress."
She bit her lip, whirled around, and pulled the casserole dish from the convection unit. "Maybe tomorrow."
Voris was too tired to continue arguing with her over her irrational decision to remain uninformed about the health of their child. They ate a quiet dinner together and despite it only being 1915 hours, they both retired to bed immediately after. He was troubled by Dagny's admission, but was simply too tired to remain awake.
For the first time in weeks, he dreamt. Visions of the Hall of Ancient Thought were interwoven with the clinic. His father made an appearance, as did Dagny, but the visions were too chaotic for him to make any sense of them. The last thing he remembered, he heard Dagny yelling in the distance. The yelling grew louder until finally, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"Voris? Voris, are you awake?"
He opened his eyes and though it was dark, he could see Dagny's silhouette in the pale light of the tiny, emergency kitchen light. She was clutching her belly.
"I am now," he answered, trying to pull himself into a sitting position. "Is something the matter?"
"Nothing," she breathed. "The baby, it's moving!"
He leaned forward, squinted, and mumbled, "Lights, dim to fifteen percent."
A warm glow fell over the room, allowing him to see the exuberant look on Dagny's face. She sat down on the edge of his bed, grabbed his hand, and pressed it low on the left side of her belly. It felt like a rapid and erratic pulse.
He attempted to suppress emotions of surprise and delight, but realized he was sensing the same emotions in Dagny and gave up. They shared in each other's wonder for several minutes, tracing their hands over her abdomen as they attempted to follow their child's movements.
When he eventually pulled his hand away to shift his weight, Dagny's face fell. "It stopped."
"The fetus cannot sustain constant motion," he replied. "It requires periods of sleep and rest, much as we do."
"I know, but…" She pulled his hand onto her stomach again and almost instantly, the baby within her started to wriggle again. Dagny clasped her free hand over her mouth in a poor effort to hide her joy. "It's like it knows you. Vulcans are supposed to be touch telepaths, right? What if it's responding to you?"
He cocked his head and glanced into her eyes. There had been research done on Vulcan fetal development to see if fetuses could respond to telepathic movement, but it was very difficult to control for the mother's innate telepathy as well. It was an interesting theory and he removed his hand several times, and each time Dagny insisted the baby had gone quiet. He traced fingers over her belly, and it seemed as though the fetus was following his movements. Voris could not deny there were times it was difficult to repress his emotions as he felt their child respond to his touch, but after half an hour, he caught her eye and said, "Perhaps we should return to sleep."
"Yes, I know. I know you're very tired and need your rest and I know the novelty of this is going to wear off, but I just- I'm not ready to let it go just yet. Please?"
He sighed. "If that is what you prefer…"
"Ok," she replied, cutting him off.
He had a hard time suppressing his shock at what happened next. Dagny pulled back his quilt, slid her legs under it, and laid down facing him. Her body was situated far enough away that there was no real intimacy to it, but it was still very… he wasn't sure what it was. It was certainly very forward of her—both of them were hardly dressed and sleeping together in a bed was generally only appropriate between mates. He was only wearing underwear and and undershirt and she wore a nightdress that made it apparent that she wasn't wearing any undergarments. Despite these facts, he was reluctant to call her gesture inappropriate, even as she grabbed his hand again and rubbed it over her belly to elicit a response from the child inside her.
He sensed pronounced awkwardness growing in Dagny but rather than allow her to succumb to it and go back to her own bed in embarrassment, he simply shut out the lights and allowed the darkness to set them both at ease. He stayed awake as long as he could, stroking her stomach to keep the baby moving, but Dagny was asleep long before he was.
The focus of his dreams shifted. They were still indistinct and nonsensical, but Dagny was a constant presence throughout and the mood was more peaceful. They awoke several hours later to her temperature monitor going off. Somehow during the course of their sleep, they had rearranged themselves such that her back was to him and she was snuggled tightly against his body, and his right arm was draped over her stomach, his right hand nestled on her breast. They pulled themselves apart with excessive haste.
"Oh, I uh- I'm so sorry, I didn't mean…" Dagny's face was turning a brilliant shade of scarlet.
"Nor did I," he added, doing his best to avoid looking at the clear lines of her nipples under her night dress. He pulled the quilt higher up on his bare chest and took a slow breath.
"I mean, nothing happened. Nothing would happen, anyway, I just- yeah. Thank you for, you know, humoring me. Sorry if I- well, it won't happen again. I really didn't mean-"
"I know," Voris interjected. "I apologize if I have caused some offense."
"N-no," Dagny muttered, rising from the bed and covering her breasts with her hands. "I mean, it's not like we haven't- it isn't like we've never seen each other- well, you know. I wasn't offended. I'm sorry if you were."
"I was not offended," he admitted, finally looking in her direction.
Her temperature monitor finally stopped beeping and she glanced down at her stomach. "Ok then, well… good."
He stared at her for several seconds before she quickly added, "Well, we're up a bit early but I'll get started on breakfast and…" She stumbled through the curtain to her side of the room without finishing her sentence, leaving Voris to wonder at the illogic of two people trying to avoid acknowledging mutual embarrassment over a shared incident.