Mission Day 95
Mark had gotten a birthday email from his parents, of course, and his mother had even gone so far as to bake one of her chocolate-frosted birthday cakes for him, in absentia. It was a nice touch. She'd even attached a video clip; the first one that she'd sent him on Hermes, of both his parents singing Happy Birthday to him. His mom had lit the single candle in the middle, their special candle shaped like a question mark, that they recycled for every family birthday, as was their tradition. He'd smiled to see that silly candle again. It had made its first appearance when his mother had turned fifty-five, some ten or more years ago, and Mark had no idea how many family birthday cakes it had graced, by now. Quite a few.
His Dad had thought it was hilarious, of course, to cut a big slice out of the cake, and mention several times, on camera, how delicious it was, as he'd heartlessly eaten Mark's birthday cake. That bastard! Mark would be sending a strongly-worded response to that. So very uncool. And so perfectly typical of his dad; it had made him laugh. 'Next year we'll all be together, Mark! Happy birthday! We love you!' his mom had signed off, and he'd been thankful he was alone in his bunk when he'd watched it, because he had almost cried. He missed them so much.
Just hearing their voices and seeing the cake there on the kitchen table where he'd eaten dinner so many times, growing up, made him nostalgic. It seemed so far away, and long ago, now.
His actual birthday cake on Hermes, was a sad little, personal-sized pound cake from the deep-freeze, with no frosting. Or candles, for that matter. The whole 'fire in space' thing, he supposed. He'd opted to share it with the crew, so they'd divvied it into six little meticulously-carved slices, courtesy of their sure-handed flight surgeon. It had worked out to about two bites apiece. Oh well. He'd enjoyed it anyway.
He supposed that he would have to wait until Thanksgiving to have an actual homemade dessert; he hoped that Flight Supplies had packed the makings for a pumpkin pie or something. The crew would be pitching in, together, to cook their Thanksgiving meal in the Hab during the surface mission, which would surely prove to be an interesting endeavor. Mark had never had a Thanksgiving dinner that had been wholly cooked by microwave before, but hey, first time for everything, he thought.
Ares I and II might have gotten all the best firsts, but Ares III would be the first crew to celebrate a major holiday on their surface mission. The plans were, as far as Mark knew, for the crew to record a brief Happy Thanksgiving message from the Hab, and NASA would broadcast it during the NBC-affiliate football game later that evening.
Mark was a baseball fan (Chicago Cubs, woo!) but Martinez, in particular, loved football, and had complained that they wouldn't actually get to the see the aforementioned Thanksgiving game. Not until well after they were all back aboard Hermes, homeward bound. Nothing to be done about that; there would be almost no downtime on their surface mission, and it would be a waste of resources, anyway. There were no more baseball games for Mark, either way, because back on Earth, it was October. And generally speaking, October baseball for the Cubs was not a thing. They seemed to be having another bad century.
After they had recorded their Thanksgiving greeting for the Earthlings, they'd all prepare the dinner together; the flight supplies guy had hinted that their families had been responsible for making suggestions for the different dishes. Mark wasn't sure what recipe his parents might have put forward. Knowing his father, though, he'd probably trolled Mark by shamelessly telling NASA that green bean casserole made with cream-of-mushroom soup was his absolute favorite. (It was his least favorite thing in the history of forever, for the record.)
Their special dessert for Thanksgiving dinner had better not turn out to be a frozen, personal-sized pound cake, he thought, immediately suspecting that he'd just hit the nail on the head. Damn it.
Houston
The first week of April. That was when the baby would be due. Pretty soon, it was going to be time to start telling people. Mindy was not looking forward to telling her mother about this.
It had been, so far, something akin to pulling the pin and tossing a live grenade right into her life. Her plans, her career, her future; everything that she'd been building for herself since she was old enough to have any dreams or ambitions. Everything had changed.
Her baby, the little grenade, she grinned.
Her baby. She was going to be someone's mother in just a few short months, she mused.
Someone's single mother, even; something that she'd never really even seriously considered for herself. And then, of course, the baby's father, a man that she barely even knew, for Christ's sake, was on a spacecraft, halfway to fucking Mars. She wasn't even sure what to do with that little factoid, at the moment.
What the hell was I thinking?
She couldn't help it; that was the question that kept going through her mind, on auto-loop, as she looked back over those events with a more critical eye. Why did we not use something? Because we were drunk, and carried away in the moment, and… yeah, there was simply no justifying this, she thought. She was going to be living with the outcome of this particular failure-to-plan for the rest of her life.
What the hell was I thinking!?
Mindy believed strongly in a woman's right to choose; but at the same time, there was no choice to be made, from the moment she'd seen that blue line appear. Her mind was already solidly made up. She wanted the baby, of course she did. She had the means to provide for a child; she had always rather hoped that her future would include a baby or two, even if she had always coupled that hope with being settled down with someone.
She could do this. Of course she could.
There was a daycare center there on campus, and the benefits and leave policies were more generous than most employers. It wouldn't be cheap, but she could swing it, if she were careful. She had to imagine that she was in a better position than most first-time parents, even if she was going to be doing it all by herself.
She'd had her third appointment today with her new OBGYN, and every subsequent doctor's visit had made it seem more real. She had liked Dr. Fite right off the bat; he hadn't judged, or asked any personal questions. She was now the proud owner of a long spool of print-out sonogram pictures that she wasn't at all sure what to do with But they were tangible, and she liked to leaf through them. Infallible proof that this baby existed. He or she even had the tiniest of thrumming little heartbeats, and Mindy had listened, awed.
Her baby. Hers.
Well, the baby was rightfully half-Mark's, as well.
What. The. Hell. Was. I. Thinking?!
She really wasn't sure what to do about that aspect of the situation.
Do I…somehow, tell him? she wondered. It wasn't as if she could call him up. Really, she had no fucking idea how she could contact him at all, or if it were even possible. They hadn't even swapped phone numbers. On the other hand, it didn't seem fair for anyone else to know, before he did.
If she waited much longer, she wouldn't have to tell people. Already, her clothes were getting tight in the waist.
What the hell was I thinking!
Ares astronauts could get email, she knew. Of course they could. She'd have to look into the details of how it worked, though. Figuring out his email address would be a cinch; NASA used the same name formatting across the board, company wide, and he was certainly the only Mark Watney in the Ares Program. But she felt pretty certain that they used some sort of filtering protocol; they had to, no doubt, to prevent random people from wasting CAPCOM's time by sending spam or other unnecessary messages to space.
She had her answer, after a bit of research.
There was a director for the flight crew; for Ares III it was Mitch Henderson, who had the final say on what media was to be included in the daily data dump that was sent via satellite to Hermes. Mindy knew who he was, though she'd never interacted with him, herself. He had a reputation for being a bit on the difficult side.
No big deal, she thought, ruefully. I'll just call up this Henderson guy, tell him that I'm pregnant with Watney's kid and would they please drop him an email to let him know?
They would probably think she was (A) completely insane, (B) epic-level stupid, (C) a liar, or (D) all of the above.
Even if they did believe her, (and why the hell would they?) would they even want Watney to be distracted with something like this, in the middle of the mission? Her best guess was probably not.
The end result was that she could easily get herself fired, or stigmatize herself, with the higher-ups thinking that she was a loon, and in all likelihood they wouldn't tell him, anyway. Getting herself fired or placed on the office idiot-list simply wouldn't do; she needed this job, now more than ever.
She could wait it out, she supposed. Watney would be back, sometime in late July next year, and she could tell him then. She knew where he lived, after all. It would be superbly awkward, of course, but at least it would be private, and they could agree to keep things out of the public eye. She could tell him in person, that way.
That sounded like a better solution. Much more reasonable. She could take matters into her own hands, and she wouldn't be at the business end of corporate gossip: the cautionary tale of Mindy Park, the junior assistant from SatCon that actually notified Mitch Henderson, the Ares III flight command, that one of his astronauts had knocked her up.
It made more sense to wait. She could just tell him herself, in person, next July.
There was probably a very decent chance that Mark would want no involvement at all, anyway. He might even get angry, when she told him. A guy doesn't get to be nearly forty without marrying or having kids for no good reason, she figured. And that was fine, she reasoned. His choice. She wouldn't press him on the matter if he wasn't interested, or if he wanted nothing to do with the situation. But he had the right to know, at least, right? Informing him so long after the fact wasn't ideal, of course, but it really was kind of an unusual situation and she felt like he would understand, probably. Maybe.
He had seemed like a reasonable guy. He'd be surprised, sure. So was she; it was such an outlier of an outcome, that she could still hardly believe that it had even happened. But he wouldn't be a jerk about it; at least she didn't think so
Knowing Mark Watney, he'd probably laugh about it. The man could find the humor in any situation.
At any rate, she had until early April to second-guess herself on the matter.
In the meantime, she had this strip of black-and-white sonogram images to muse over. Pictures of this little person she was growing. Dr. Fite had mentioned that at sixteen weeks gestation, the baby was about the size of a small baked potato.
Mindy was a woman that appreciated a good imaging of an alien landscape, after all.
She was smiling as she taped one of them to her new refrigerator.