A/N: Alas, the copyrights to Star Trek aren't mine yet. Let me know if you think my chapters are too long and need to be broken up into shorter segments.

Chapter 2

Ritha's finger twitched in time with a soft beeping sound. Voices droning nearby penetrated a brain saturated with exhaustion from endless days of repairs and patches in order to make the Enterprise capable of flying again. A blue eye popped open to survey her surroundings, because the last she'd known, she was in the medical bay checking on Scotty. Which was where she must have passed out considering her face was mashed up against a mattress next to Scotty's hip and she was half-hanging off a stool. Not the most uncomfortable of positions she'd ever woken up in, but she definitely didn't want to think about the unfortunate reasons for waking up in a more awkward place.

Tense muscles in her neck could have drowned out Megadeath's High Speed Dirt with their screams of pain when she righted herself on the stool. Said muscles were only shouting half as loudly as the broken ribs she'd been treated for earlier in the week. Her glance, however, immediately went to the vitals monitor on the headboard of Scotty's bed to make sure he was still alive and breathing. She hadn't known him long, but Scotty was infectious. He had one of those quirky personalities that was easily loveable, was casual, believed in his engineers, and actually respected her. It made being irritated when he stared at her ass impossible.

"There are better places to sleep than on a stool in Sickbay. You know, like the bed in your quarters maybe? He's not going to heal any faster with you here."

"How long have I been out?" she inquired of the blonde doctor who padded over to check Scotty's vitals. Said blonde doctor also happened to be her sister.

"Long enough for Bones to grumble about his sickbay not being a hotel but not so long that he decided to admit you. An hour maybe."

"Is he any better?"

"In the hour you've been asleep? Actually, we were able to take him off ECMO. He's stable, breathing on his own, and we expect him to make a full recovery."

"Thank God for that. This ship wouldn't be the same without him."

"You two aren't dating, are you? I mean, some of the other engineers have been up to check on him but none so religiously as you and Keenser. It's like he's Mecca, and you two are pilgrims."

"Us? Dating? God no! I have a strict policy against dating people in my own field on the same ship. You end up spending so much time together that all the little personality quirks you may have found cute in a boyfriend end up being annoying."

"Well, that's a good policy to have."

An uncomfortable silence descended over them in which neither could look the other directly in the eye. Ritha ended up massaging her neck with one hand and brushing at a stain on her trousers with the other to make it look as though she weren't uncomfortable. So many things she wanted to say during those tense moments were left unsaid when her determination to fix things between them chickened out. Years of "its all Dad's fault they got a divorce" and "they'd still be together if Mom weren't such a stuck-up snob" had taken their toll. She wasn't sure their relationship was even fixable at all.

The silence was broken when Stella cleared her throat and said, "Since you're here, let me take another x-ray of your ribs to check your progress. I would expect the breaks to be healed already, but given how much you've been moving around, I'm not surprised."

"I'm fine, Stella, and I should be getting back to work. With any luck, the ship will be mobile again in a couple of days." She started to get up only to have Stella's hand on her shoulder force her butt back onto the stool.

"You're not fine until I say you are, so consider yourself lucky I signed off for you to return to that grease trap you call Engineering instead of admitting you to Sickbay. This will only take a second."

"Yeah, it's a grease trap, and I'm a wrench monkey. I think you've said enough disparaging remarks about my profession to last me the rest of my damned life."

"I didn't mean that! God, you're so stubborn. It's like you're a carbon copy of Dad, because he's this stubborn."

"And what's wrong with being like Dad?" she snapped. "Dad's a good man, a successful engineer, and unlike Mom, he cares about what a person has on the inside instead of just how they look or how much money they…"

The sibling pissing match was brought to an immediate halt when Doctor McCoy stormed out of his office like he was ready to set fireworks off under their asses and said, "Take your bickering out of Sickbay before you make someone code just to get some peace and quiet."

"I'm sorry, Doctor McCoy," Stella immediately said. Her chin practically hit her chest to go along with the blush staining her cheeks. "Ensign Monroe was being difficult about allowing me to assess her condition."

"Yeah, blame it all on me being difficult. Now that I've checked on Scotty, I'll get back to my grease trap with all the other wrench monkeys where I belong."

"Monroe, freeze," Bones commanded. "Westin, quit arguing with the patients about their care. If she doesn't want to cooperate, shark her with another calcium mender and revoke her light duty status until she wants to cooperate. When Doctor Westin has completed her examination, see me in my office, Ensign."

She was in mid-step when Bones' command stopped her in her tracks. "Shark her with some calcium mender? What a strange choice of words." Her first exposure with the technique of hypo-sharking happened when Stella, suddenly and without a single warning, popped her in the neck with her hypospray hard enough that it actually stung.

"Sharking is the delivery of hypospray injections while the patient isn't paying attention." Stella explained. "It's only necessary with stubborn patients and was coined by Doctor McCoy while treating the captain, who is a notoriously difficult patient."

Grumbling under her breath sounded like a good idea until she realized just how childish any further complaints would have been. Running to avoid treatment just to prove some macho superiority over her sister also sounded pretty childish, so in the end, she eased onto a stool.

"Scan away, Sis," she finally said, but her glance followed Bones as he checked Scotty's vitals and headed back into his office. How the Hell had he heard their bickering anyway? As superstitious and suspicious as he was, he'd probably bugged all of Sickbay.

Another awkward silence bordering on the realm of uncomfortable wet-blanketed them while Stella passed a hand-held device over her ribs. Once again, Stella broke it first. "Is it always going to be like this between us?"

"God, I hope not. We've gotta make this work, Stella. Neither of us can afford to request another transfer, but we also can't go on like this without one of our COs busting us all the back to Earth."

"So how do we fix it? We've tried waving a magic wand and reciting hoodoo spells to make all the bad juju between us go away, but I can't magically understand you and vice versa."

"Then we start by stopping all this blaming. No more name-calling, talking about who is the bad parent, or taking pot shots at each others career."

"Do you really think we can do it?"

"We don't have a choice," she answered, feeling as though some nasty grease plug had finally been flushed through her proverbial pipes. "I'm sorry I was difficult and ended up getting you yelled at by your CMO."

"Two patients, whom we thought were taking a turn for the better, died today. I'm surprised he didn't bend us over an examination table and spank us until we couldn't sit for a week."

"Kinky," Ritha said, unsure of what she should say about the loss of their patients. Saying one was sorry was so cliché, but what else was there to say? "I really am sorry about your patients."

"So am I." There was a short pause before she continued, "Okay, you're good to go, but I want you to come back tomorrow for another scan. At the rate you're healing, you can expect to stay on light duty for another two days. Now, go see Bones. It's best to have private meetings with him before he realizes he's skipped lunch again."

"He does that often enough you've charted his grumpiness around the skipping of meals? Someone needs to tie a pork chop to that man's wrist."

A calming breath was necessary to fortify herself when she approached Bones' office, but the anxiety only returned when Stella gave her one of those "good luck, and I hope you come out in one piece" looks. The past several days had been spent in different stages of tension wondering when Bones would take her to task for her poor performance during the attack. One word from him and Starfleet would skip the probationary period she was on and jerk her back to Earth so fast she'd make warp five.

Yes, it was his power as CMO she was apprehensive about, not the man himself. Strip away that power, and Bones was an extremely attractive man. There were glimpses of a southern charm in him when he was in just the right mood with just the right amount of relaxation time that she found intriguing. Combine that with an awesome sense of humor when he was around Spock and the captain and it wasn't difficult for her to explain why she wanted to take up permanent residence in his pants.

Deciding that being cowardly at this point would utterly destroy her own sense of self-worth, she pressed the chime on his door. Said door swished open a second later to grant her access where she found him seated behind a desk and surrounded by a stack of data pads. He seemed content to ignore her while his nose was buried in the data pad when all she wanted to do was get the tongue-lashing over with. She was like a puppy who had had an accident on the carpet and knew they were about to get their nose shoved in it.

Since fidgeting was out of the question, Ritha did what she did best; flirted. "You know, I usually make someone buy me dinner before they get me alone in a place where clothes are removed daily."

He didn't take the bait. "Have a seat, Ensign Monroe."

"So there won't be an anal cavity search to find out whether or not I've taken to storing things up my ass like Scotty? Thank God." She eased into the chair across from him.

"I would have asked Doctor Westin or Nurse Chapel to join us if an anal cavity search had been necessary. No, I asked you to see me because I want to recommend you make an appointment with Spock to receive counseling for whatever issues made you freeze in the middle of combat."

That was it? He was going to recommend counseling instead of reaming her out for it? "I've had traditional counseling."

"Good, then Spock might actually make sure this never happens again, because his methods are far from traditional. Understand something. The Enterprise crew consistently ends up with the worst missions. If something bad can happen here, it will, which means this crew has to be the best of the best in order to survive."

"And you don't think I make the cut."

"In the past year, you've turned down two promotions, have applied for and received three transfers, and have been described by your last CO as unmotivated. If I'd been responsible for signing off on new crew members, I would have told Scotty to leap off Hadrian's Wall without a Goddamn helmet."

"Hadrian's Wall isn't actually a wall anymore," she remarked. "What little ruins remained were torn down a couple of decades ago during the reunification of the British Isles." His disapproval shouldn't have stung the way it did.

"That's all you've got to say for yourself? One word from me could have you shipped back to Earth, and you want to prattle on about Hadrian's Wall?"

"The number of female engineers active on Starfleet vessels only takes up one page. Sexual harassment isn't supposed to happen in this day and age, but it does. The only way to insulate ourselves from it is to act like one of the guys. Guys don't talk about pesky things like emotions and mental trauma, so it's not like I can just flip a switch and suddenly start spilling my guts to you."

"You've been sexually harassed on this ship? Give me names and ranks. That shit doesn't fly on the Enterprise."

"It hasn't happened here, but that wasn't the point. The point was… Just forget it. So you want Spock to be my therapist. Is it really a recommendation or a veiled order from the CMO?"

"Think of it this way, Ensign Monroe; heed my recommendation, and this won't go on your permanent medical record. Be stubborn about it, and I'll have your ass shipped back to HQ with a psychological discharge. Is that clear enough for you? Jim and Scotty were willing to give you some rope. Don't hang yourself with it."

"Gotcha. You and me, now we're operating on the same wave length," she said. Being thrown off-balance wasn't her idea of fun, so she was desperate to turn the focus of this meeting away from her. "By the way, I love it when you take charge. It makes me all gooey and excited inside."

"I don't have an injection for that," he responded. The arch of his dark brow reminded her of Spock, but it was the thickening of his Southern accent that intrigued her.

"Just so we're clear, McCoy, if your ex-wife ever tries to come back and take your bones, you can always jump mine."

Shoving to her feet, Ritha swept out of his office with a knowing little grin in place at having gotten in the last word. Hopefully that not-so-subtle offer shocked him into remembering her for more than the three seconds it would take for his attention to focus back on work. She was sick of him making her lady parts quiver for an hour after seeing him when she didn't seem to have a single lasting effect on him aside from him dwelling on her piss-poor record.

***

If your ex-wife ever tries to come back and take your bones, you can always jump mine. Her last comment echoed in his ears until his face heated. Good God, was he blushing? Wondering whether or not that meeting had gone in her favor or his was an impossible thing to sort out, so he didn't even try. There was too much work to do filing all the injury reports for an erection to cloud his thinking, but that was exactly what was happening.

Jim would tell him to screw her just to get her out of his system, but one-night-stands with coworkers were exceedingly stupid ideas. Technically, sexual relationships with crew members were against the rules, but seeing as how they lived on a starship in space and went months, even years, without shore leave, they were overlooked. There was an even better reason not to get involved with her. If she developed feelings for him he didn't reciprocate, they could lose a crew member. Scotty would pout for the next year at losing an engineer he swore up and down had unlimited potential. At the same time, if he didn't take her up on her offer, his damned crotch might explode!

The sudden chiming of his office door brought him back to reality. He had work to do, and there he was acting like a teenager who could somehow relate carpet to sex. Grumbling about stupid bodily needs, he opened the door with a spoken command to find Spock waiting outside with his hands clasped behind his back. Bones had already checked the hobgoblin's hands for magnets to explain why he always had them clasped together. No luck.

"Lieutenant Uhura hasn't relapsed, has she?" he asked.

"If you are referring to her nausea from yesterday, then yes, she has relapsed. She made a personal request for me to escort her to Sickbay after spending much of the morning plagued by queasiness. Doctor Westin is performing an examination."

His chair was left spinning when he flew out of it in record time to brush past Spock and head out into Sickbay proper. Lieutenant Uhura was sitting on an examination table while Stella took readings with a tricorder. A bump on the head shouldn't result in ongoing nausea unless said bump had aggravated a preexisting condition. There were plenty of those to rule out before coming to a definitive diagnosis. Harkinson's Syndrome, in which the positioning of the skull's foramen magnum was slightly out of alignment with the spinal column, could result in pressure on the spinal cord which could lead to malfunctions in coordination and balance and could result in nausea. Drake's Syndrome, a mutation in which the brain stem grew unnaturally low and could bulge out of the foramen magnum, was also a possibility. Even something as simple as vertigo could cause nausea.

"Have you noticed any pattern to the nausea?" Stella was asking.

"It seems to happen most when I'm around certain types of food. The smell of Spock's soup last night just about sent me to the lavatory. This morning, the captain had some awful concoction of pancakes with a side of refried beans that had me hunched over a recycler for twenty minutes."

"We'll start with fresh CT scans of the brain and skull, concentrating on the foramen magnum and the brain stem," Bones said, which should have told Doctor Westin he was taking over the case from her.

Stella either didn't take the hint or chose to completely ignore him, because she continued by asking, "And when was the last time you had your menstrual cycle?"

"A couple of months ago, but that's not uncommon for me. They've never been exactly regular."

"Doctor Westin…" He was interrupted when Stella shoved her tricorder in his face so he could read the hormone levels on the screen. Bones blinked. He blinked again. Then he got his handheld out to check the hormone levels against the accepted levels. "Lieutenant, Doctor Westin would like to perform a quick blood test to ensure these readings are accurate." And he was going to go throw up and possibly get drunk.

"Doctor McCoy, have you found an anomaly in the tricorder scans?" Spock asked in his "you're starting to worry me" tone which wasn't all that different from his "I'm bored senseless" tone.

"One minute, Spock. I'm not saying a damn thing until these results are authenticated through a blood test."

"If you have found an anomaly, I would prefer to…"

Bones cut him off. "Just give it a minute! Your Vulcan control should last at least that long."

"I just need to take a drop of your blood," Stella assured Uhura while extracting said drop from the lieutenant's fingertip. The blood was then delivered to a nearby machine so all the appropriate tests could be run.

When Stella brought him the tricorder displaying the results, he had to read it three times, his face turning a different shade of green each time he read it. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Uhura. You're pregnant."

"Pregnant?" Nyota gasped.

Any other man in Spock's position would have hit the floor in a cold faint. Spock merely blinked rather owlishly and said, "You are certain, Doctor? The probability of Lieutenant Uhura being with child, taking into the equation that we have both undergone the temporary sterilization procedure, is less than one point three four percent."

"I know that, Spock," Bones countered.

Stella stepped in as the voice of reason when she said, "The sterilization process is only ninety eight percent effective. Technically if you're both in that two percent, it is possible. Since you're a hybrid, Commander Spock, we really have no way of knowing if the procedure is effective on you at all."

Bones needed a chair and a fifth of whiskey. A miniature clone of Spock and Nyota running around the ship? He was having visions of disaster, including but not limited to having the probability of diaper changes correlating with the precise consumption of formula being quoted in his face every day when Spock Junior was rushed to Sickbay because his finger had been twitching for the past five minutes.

"After she gives birth to a green-blooded hobgoblin and you two decide you're ready to start having… Condoms, Goddamnit!"