Six weeks after Kuzon and Lin first met, she found herself puking. "Damn food cart!" she hissed. She loved those fried noodles, but every now and then, they went the wrong way.

She decided it would just be rice and Gatorade for the rest of the day. She felt better, until the next day when she was puking again. "How can I be this sick from rice?"

She puked three times before she could finish getting ready for work. She called in sick, knowing she couldn't get through the day if she couldn't get out the door.

By the time the third day rolled around, she was still puking. "I should go to the hospital."

Lin drove herself there, once she got a window where she stopped hurling and parked in the parking lot. She walked in and explained that she had been vomiting for days. "I thought it had been food poisoning, but maybe I was wrong."

There had been a nasty, lethal virus going around. They put her the segregated unit just in case while they got a doctor to see her.

"Do you have any other symptoms?"

"I've been tired, but I think it's from lack of energy. I can't keep anything down."

"And this started …"

"This is the third day."

"And are you sexually active?"

"No-yes. Sorry, I wasn't for a while and now I am."

"And are you using birth control."

"Yes. We have condoms."

"And have you always used them."

"I had been on the pill, but I stopped taking it when I was single and then …." Shit! She didn't remember if she had used a condom that first night. She didn't have any and who knows if he brought any to the bar. "Um …"

They took a blood test. And although she was relieved not to be deathly ill, she wasn't much happier about being pregnant. She liked Kuzon; how could she not? Unfortunately, she had only known him for six weeks, hardly enough time to commit to raising a child with him. Who knows if he wants children?

"I need to lie down," she told the doctor.

They took her to a resting area.

"Do you want us to call anyone on your behalf?"

"No. I'm a big girl. I need to tell people myself."

She drove home. She wasn't expecting Bumi to be there.

"Hey Linny!" Why does he call her Linny? She never told him he could. In fact, she told him he cant' too many times to count.

"Hey Bumi," she sounded tired.

"You don't look so hot. Have you been sick?"

"I'm not sick," she told him. Unfortunately, she ran to the bathroom and hurled like 10 minutes after she got home.

"If you're not sick, then why are you puking?"

"Why do you think?"

"Um, you could be pregnant, but …"

She didn't answer.

"You're … what?"

Bumi had just gotten home from the United Forces. He didn't know about Kuzon or the newspaper drama or anything else.

Lin explained how she met him in a bar. He was nice and really attractive. She took him home, but she didn't think about the fact that she had stopped taking the pill after she and Tenzin broke up and well, "I don't think we used protection. If he had, it didn't work."

"What are you going to do?"

She shrugged. "I just found out, and I hadn't even told him yet."

"Do you think he'll be happy?"

"I have no clue. He never talked about kids. We haven't been together long enough to talk about kids."

"Well I guess you gonna have to talk. Maybe this will all workout."

"Chief Lin Bei Fong, knocked up by cutie she met in a bar. I can see the headlines now."

"I think it sounds better than Chief Lin Bei Fong, hung up on some baldheaded dweeb."

Lin flipped him off.

"You know I'm right. You're smiling and junk."

"You were always so poetic."

"I try. When do I get to meet this Mr. Bei Fong?"

"Who says you get to meet him?"

"As your surrogate older brother, I gotta vet this guy."

"You waited until after he knocked me up?"

"Well, I was away, and it's not like you wrote to me about him."

"I wasn't sure if he'd still be here when you got back. What are you doing back so early?"

"Budget cuts. They cut our tour short."

"That's kind of sad."

"Tell me about it. My wages got cut."

"Aw!"

"You mock me."

"I do, but I guess I don't have to care about my wages."

"Of course not, Miss Mighty Bei Fong."

"Well there is that, and Kuzon has money too."

"What does he do?"

"Advertising. He got the campaign for Sato's new car."

"Oh that thing is pricy."

"Yeah I know. He got one for free since he did their ad campaign."

"Dang! I wish I went into advertising."

"How, you can't draw for crap?"

"Thanks Linny."

"Just keeping it real."

"Well, I'm going to go harass my brother because I can."

"Please don't …"

"I won't tell anyone, especially not Baldy McStupid."

"Thanks Bumi."

"See ya!"

When Lin said she wasn't in the mood for all you can eat steak, Kuzon knew something was wrong. He came by her house with ingredients to make chicken soup. "Have you been sick?"

"Sort of," she said as he came inside. "I've been vomiting the last few days."

"So no steak."

"Yeah, no steak."

"Was it those noodles?"

"I thought so, since I had just eaten them, but I went to the hospital,l and they told me I was pregnant."

Kuzon's eyes got huge.

"I know we never talked about kids, so if you don't want to …"

He pulled her into his arms. "You just made me so happy."

"What?"

"I don't have much of a family. Sure, I love my moms, but they're getting old and without my sister or my niece, it's just me. You don't have much of a family either at the moment, not withstanding your friends. Maybe this is our time."

"I don't know anything about mothering."

"I got two mothers. I can help with that."

"Neither of us had fathers."

"You had uncles of sorts. It can't be that different."

"We both work absurd hours."

"I'm due for a sabbatical year."

"What?"

"I can take a paid year off work. I can start it when the babies are born and when you go back to work, I'll stay here."

"You'd do that?"

"I was going to travel instead, but maybe we could take some road trips with the baby. I do have that snazzy new car."

"Show off."

He kissed her forehead. "I'm not going to propose right now, mainly because you seem like the kind of woman who would be offended if she got proposed to just because she were pregnant, but I do want us to work."

"You do?"

"I don't have much luck with women, Lin. Sure I am handsome and have money, but that's all women ever see when they look at me. It's nice being with someone who has no reason to care about my paycheck, and my mother keeps bothering me about grandchildren. What does she always say; will you make them before I'm dead?"

Lin looked at him. "My mother has never said anything of the sort."

"Well, I'm sure my mother says it enough for both of them."