AN: I'm not sure if people missed the last chapter or not, but please do read it!
I hope you enjoy this one! If you do, please let me know!
111
Jean-Luc felt, perhaps inexplicably, like every last nerve in his body was set on edge.
Beverly wasn't sleeping well, and that meant that he wasn't sleeping well. He felt like he was sleeping just below the level of consciousness, when he happened to drift off at all.
They were close—that's what everyone kept telling him. The baby could come any time, but she was going to choose her time. Everything about the situation was monitored and measured. The baby's due date was a falsehood. According to her due date, she was three days old and had shown absolutely no sign of entering the world.
Beverly had had a few contractions, but they were false. It wasn't until now that Jean-Luc was even aware that such a thing existed as a false contraction.
Beverly was doing her best, perhaps, to be somewhat cheerful, but she was irritable. It was always bubbling just below the surface. The past few days, especially, had created a sort of tension in the air that never dissipated. Beverly still insisted on working, and Jean-Luc tensed every time an alert of any sort went off near him.
They had walked corridors. Beverly had forced herself to swallow things from the replicator that had done little more than make Jean-Luc wonder about her choices. Jean-Luc worried that Beverly's body had no more give to it, and they'd somewhat argued about sex at least twice. Beverly wanted to have sex with Jean-Luc, insisting that he should take advantage since, once the baby came, he'd be in the proverbial dry-dock for a while, but Jean-Luc had tried to explain to her that he felt very little like making love when it came with a tag about dilation, effacement, and any other number of things that he didn't want to hear about any longer.
"I told Dr. Moran that I'm thinking about suspending her, indefinitely, if she doesn't offer me better news today," Beverly said. There was a hint of laughter at the end of her words, but it sounded strained.
Maybe, Jean-Luc thought, it only sounded strained because everything around him felt strained at the moment. He balled his fingers into a fist and squeezed. He turned his neck from side to side, and he purposefully relaxed the tension in his jaw.
"Jean-Luc?" Beverly said.
"What?" He asked. When he looked at her, he realized that he must have missed something—a question or statement. She furrowed her brow at him.
"Are you alright?" She asked.
Jean-Luc sighed. He tried to breathe out some of the building frustration that he felt.
"No, Beverly. I'm anything but alright, to be honest."
She sat up a little straighter in her chair—a feat, these days. She seemed so full of their daughter that Jean-Luc marveled slightly at the fact that she could even breathe. He could almost swear that there wasn't room for her lungs to expand.
"What's wrong?" She asked.
Jean-Luc laughed ironically to himself.
"What's wrong? Beverly—it would be simpler to ask what's right. I assure you that the list would be shorter. For starters—I am frustrated to a point that I hadn't imagined possible before. It's like waiting for an attack that you know is coming, without any ability to see where the enemy is or to anticipate what they might have planned. I am exhausted by percentages and centimeters. I would like to consume a meal or relax in the evening without mention of cervixes, and dilations, and effacements, or what have you. I would like to sleep without feeling that I must be ready to jump to attention at all times. I prepared to be on-call at nearly every hour as a captain, but I must say that this…this is far more exhausting than anything I've experienced thus far. And I'm finding that the urge to escape it, for even an hour, is starting to become so overwhelming that not even Deanna's best efforts can calm the desire."
As soon as he said it, Jean-Luc's entire body ran cold with realization that, though he'd meant some of it, he certainly hadn't meant to let any of it escape.
If Beverly had looked at him, furious, he might have felt better. His nerves were on edge and, maybe, it would have made him feel better if she'd rallied for a fight. Maybe they could have yelled at each other. Maybe they could have both said things they didn't mean until they'd screamed out their frustrations in a nearly primal manner—and, then, exhausted and at least a little unburdened, maybe they could have made up, and made love, and come to an understanding.
The way she looked at him, though, felt like it tore a hole in the very fabric of his soul.
"Beverly—I meant none of that," he stammered.
Beverly could rush nowhere. She often relied on Jean-Luc, or someone close to her, to offer her a little leverage for simply rising up out of most chairs into which she settled. For that reason, among others, Jean-Luc was sleeping very little at night. Beverly seemed to need something, constantly, throughout the night, and it was Jean-Luc who was offering her the assistance she needed in moving around the bed that she claimed was definitely not built with pregnant women in mind.
She didn't rush now. She didn't move as though she were angry. She didn't cry. She didn't try to storm out. She simply used the table for the leverage she needed, and stood with no more real rush than she normally would have.
"Beverly…" Jean-Luc said, getting to his feet.
She held her hand out in his direction. She gave him a hint of a smile that he didn't believe at all. The expression made his chest ache.
"I didn't mean it," he said. She waved her hand at him, palm-out and facing toward him, and shook her head.
"It's OK, Jean-Luc," she said.
Some part of him would have rather she shot him with a phaser than said those simple words.
"It's not OK…" he said.
"It is," she said. "It's fine. You are—the captain. And your job is very stressful. And we all appreciate that. You are…married to your ship, and your job…"
"And you, first and foremost," Jean-Luc said.
She held the tight-lipped smile and nodded.
"You need some rest," Beverly said. "And I think you should get some. As soon as I get to sickbay, I will be relieving you of duty for the next few hours. You should rest while Will is on duty. Then, you can…resume your duty to the ship."
"Beverly…"
"Go lie down, Jean-Luc," Beverly said, cutting him off. "I'm going to work—and you're relieved of duty…Captain."
111
"That was not on any list that I made," Deanna said.
"I am well aware of that, Counselor," Jean-Luc said. She laughed. "I hardly think that any of this is a laughing matter."
"Oh—it's not," she said. "And that's not why I'm laughing."
"You're laughing because you recognize that I have created a problem so monumental that it's beyond even the scope of your abilities," Jean-Luc said. "Pardon my language, but in certain crass terms, I have utterly fucked myself."
"That might be one way to describe it," Deanna said. "There's a solution to this, of course. Beverly loves you, and you love her. This is nothing more than—than a fight. A disagreement. You said something that, though you meant it, it was insensitive and your timing was poor. These things happen in marriages, Captain."
"This is a very poor time for it to happen," Jean-Luc said.
"Those are usually the times when these kinds of conflicts arise," Deanna said. "It's conflict born from fatigue, stress, and tension."
"She's going to keep me from ever seeing my daughter," Jean-Luc said. "And, perhaps, that's really for the best."
"Beverly may be hurt," Deanna said, "but she's hardly going to keep you from your daughter. Perhaps the best thing you could do, Captain, would be take the nap that she ordered you to take. A little rest has the ability to make everything better. At the very least, it makes us better equipped to deal with anything."
Jean-Luc sighed.
"I know you're right," he said. "I know that I'm irrational at the moment. I feel it in my veins, practically. And, yet, the only thing I want is to make it up to Beverly, somehow. I want to go back to this morning, and I want to not allow myself to say any of that. I want to—consume my breakfast, and simply offer her my support, and pretend that I am fascinated by however many centimeters of dilation—or what have you—she's achieved."
"Do you want to…go back to that moment more than you want to run and escape?" Deanna asked.
She handed him a cup of tea that would do nothing, but he accepted it because it would keep his hands busy, if nothing else.
"A great deal more," Jean-Luc admitted, swallowing against the tightness in his throat that the tea didn't help to remedy.
"Well, then at least there's been some progress," Deanna said.
"Counselor—I never thought that I would have to say this, but I expect a higher level of professionalism from you," Jean-Luc said.
She laughed, and this time there was a hint of genuine amusement.
"Am I being unprofessional, Captain?" Deanna asked.
"I feel as though my concerns are not being taken seriously," Jean-Luc said, "and they are quite serious—a least to me."
"Oh—I do take them seriously," Deanna said. "Forgive me for getting straight to the point, Captain, but these things do happen. A healthy relationship sometimes has its share of conflicts. Some would argue that the growth of your relationship depends on how you handle those conflicts. For many of our sessions, you've told me about this desire you have to escape—the wolf chewing off his paw to escape the trap. Now, you're telling me that the greatest desire you have is to go back and make sure that you're not released from the proverbial trap. That is growth…and progress."
"I hurt Beverly," Jean-Luc said. "And the most confusing part is that…I'm hurting, though she's done nothing, really, to reprimand me for my transgressions."
"She doesn't have to," Deanna said. "And, maybe she simply knows that. Besides, Captain, as inconvenient as it may be, the truth of the matter is that growth often comes from a place of pain."
"So—your only suggestion to me is that I return to my quarters and take a nap?" Jean-Luc asked.
"I think it's the best place to start," Deanna said.
Jean-Luc sighed.
"Beverly must be exhausted, too," Jean-Luc said. "Yet—she can't separate herself from any of this long enough to simply take a nap, entirely unburdened."
"Then—you'll take one," Deanna said, "and when you're feeling better, you'll be better equipped to help carry her burden…whatever that may mean at the moment."
"How does one ask for forgiveness when they've said something unforgiveable?" Jean-Luc asked.
"Very few things in life are truly unforgiveable, if the apology comes from a place that is heartfelt," Deanna said. "You'll find the words."
"And you're so certain she'll forgive me?" Jean-Luc asked with a laugh.
"At the risk of being unprofessional," Deanna said. She let her words hang a moment, and Jean-Luc smiled at her encouragingly and nodded to let her know that he hoped she would continue. "As a woman who loves a man who, sometimes, isn't as loveable as I would like for him to be…as we all are, from time to time…I'm confident when I say, Captain, that she already has."
111
Once he got to sleep in the bed that was large when he slept alone—practically vast—and in the room that was cool, and quiet, and still without anyone stirring next to him, Jean-Luc slept heavy and hard. He slept deeply for the first time in some time.
He slept so deeply, in fact, that when the sound of his combadge stirred him, he had to figure out where he was, and he wondered how long he'd been sleeping.
At the same time, something in his gut made him sure that he'd missed something. He could practically feel it hanging in the air around him that his combadge hadn't just sounded for the first time.
"Captain Picard…"
The voice was Dr. Moran's. For a moment, it had seemed foreign and unknown to him, but then he'd realized who it was. He could hear it, in her tone—what he felt—this wasn't the first time she'd tried to call him.
Jean-Luc fumbled for the communicator and activated it.
"Go ahead, Doctor," he said, his head cloudy with the sleep that he was trying to shake off.
"Captain—you're needed in sickbay as soon as possible."