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“Coitus Conceptus” Rating: NC-17 This story is a sequel to Coitus Experimentus. ((((((((((((((((((((((( Part 6 ))))))))))))))))))))))) Trip opened his eyes, finally breathing clearly. Sickbay. A brief moment of amnesia was replaced rapidly by total comprehension, as events ticked into place within his mind. He turned his head. T’Pol still slept hard in the bed across from him. Phlox had elevated her upper half somewhat, to aid the congestion in her lungs. Her life signs blipped along reassuringly, belying the waxen pallor of her minten cheeks and alabaster eyelids. Trip slowly sat up, almost accustomed now to passing out every time he tried to do something: it really had started happening with such shocking regularity over the last day or so. He wasn’t sure what time it was, and didn‘t dare lean close enough to his own readout to make out the tiny clock in the bottom right corner. After a moment in which he sat but didn’t tip over, Trip realised he actually was clear-headed. He looked across and focused on T’Pol’s eyes, immersed in some dream, jumping about underneath thin, distraught eyelids. He knew she didn’t like dreams. Trip slid off the bed and landed lightly on the floor. Likely it was just the effects of the radiation, or the medicine, or both, but he felt strangely lighter-than-air as he gained his balance. And his bare feet enjoyed the raw, firm feeling of the cool floor beneath them, even as his ankles ached numbly under the sudden, gravid weight of his body. He stepped across the space separating him from T’Pol, and feebly grabbing a nearby chair at the head of her bed, he sat down as close as he could to the woman he planned on marrying. He wasn’t exactly sure when that idea had completely solidified within his mind. It was somewhere after she had fixed her lips so devastatingly upon his own that morning, and yet well before his hysterically overstimulated cardiac organ had seemed to stop while he watched Phlox lift his shockingly large, shockingly tiny, yet successfully firstborn child from T’Pol’s messed-up middle section. Not looking at T’Pol’s blanketed middle now, not letting himself wonder about anything else except the fact of her miraculous survival, Trip put his head down on the starchy-feeling sheet, pushing his face against his mate’s warm, limp forearm. He could feel her sleeping mind now, pulsating faintly and reassuringly as it traversed the dreamscape within her brain. It seemed Phlox had pulled her back somehow from that distant, frightening planet she had been on before, when Trip had barely been able to catch at the faintest scent of her soul. He looked up again at her passive, sleeping face, marvelling at how quickly he had grown used to having her nearby him in his mind. Reaching out a forefinger, he gently stroked it down the bridge of her straight nose, amazed at his own stiff, weak muscles as he did so. “Commander,” Phlox said quietly from behind him. Unflapped, Trip let his finger bump gently over her lips and down to her chin before he slowly stood and turned to meet the physician who had silently approached. “Doc,” Trip said. He was surprised at the gravelly tone to his own voice. It sounded as if he’d aged twenty years overnight. Phlox was pleased to see the young man up and about. With radiation, you never knew what you were going to get. Some patients walked away seemingly unscathed, others succumbed with frightening simplicity. Fortunately for the two people who had decided to walk out during an ion storm, it seemed as if the fates had smiled upon them. Both were recovering well. “How are you feeling?” Phlox enquired. His human patient didn’t look good, but his physicians’ intuition told him that most of that was fatigue. What the man needed now was a solid few nights’ rest. “You tell me,” Trip replied, somewhat warily. He turned to look at T’Pol again as Phlox answered him. “Your total radiation exposure was much higher than the recommended lifetime dosage,” Phlox started, “I’d not volunteer for such work again, if I were you. At least not in this incarnation. If we are to look at it in terms of coulombs absorbed per kilogram, we can safely say you each took about 2.1 grays of radiation.” “Whew,” Trip breathed. “Ouch.” “Indeed,” Phlox agreed. “I’ve started you both on a corrective course of therapeutic serum. I have had great success with this treatment; however, I’ll need to check up thoroughly over the next few weeks and months to make sure you don’t have any signs of radiation sickness.” “What can we expect?” “Hopefully nothing,” Phlox said, “but you should tell me if you start feeling nauseous or notice any fatigue or skin troubles. My main concern will be to watch you for cancers, especially leukemia, so that any may be nipped in the bud, so to speak.” Phlox smiled nicely, as if he had just said ‘dandelions’ rather than ‘cancer’. “Thanks,” Trip said uncomfortably. What else could you say? Phlox continued. “You both suffered several stress micro-tears to your anterior talo-fibular and calcaneal ligaments, and, in your case, the left syndesmotic as well.” Trip looked at the doctor. “Your ankles. Both of you suffered rather nasty bilateral sprains.” “Ah,” Trip nodded, in sudden comprehension. He bounced lightly on his toes as he resumed his examination of T’Pol’s relaxed face, noting the sickish ache of newly mended tissue in his ankles. He dimly remembered feeling as if his feet—firmly strapped into his magnetic boots—were being ripped from his shins while he tried to withstand the whipping force of the storm. “All mended now,” Phlox assured him. “Expect a little stiffness. As to the other matter,” he paused, “I should have you court-martialed.” At the doctor’s sudden, near-icy tone, Trip again tore his eyes from the pale face that was too still. “Pardon me?” “Your little stunt with the tranzaline,” Phlox clarified bluntly. “Oh,” Trip replied, somewhat abashed. At the time it had seemed the only logical thing to do. He had to see if she was okay. “I was, uh, havin’ trouble stayin’ awake.” “Yes, well, when one gets to that point, the proper thing to do is take a break, something no one on this ship ever seems to understand.” Phlox’s voice was filled with the frustration of someone describing the very worst part of his job. “Yeah, I’m with you there,” Trip agreed, thinking of his own unsuccessful attempts to keep the recalcitrant T’Pol off the hull. Now look where she was. “You are far worse than she,” Phlox immediately reprimanded, divining Trip’s thoughts from the tone of his voice. Caught out, the engineer smiled faintly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He looked into Phlox’s face honestly, and tried to placate the usually jovial man. “Thanks for fixin’ me up.” “Don’t thank me,” Phlox corrected blandly. He tapped a few controls to scan through T’Pol’s recent readings. “I was unfortunately completely occupied with T’Pol’s emergency surgery when your heart stopped beating. Crewman Cole was the one who defibrillated you back into existence. A fine illustration of my need for more staff.” This got Trip’s attention. “Stopped beating?” he repeated. “Amanda?” “Yes and yes,” Phlox confirmed. “After that, I sent her home to bed—but not before she left a portion of her blood plasma for T’Pol’s use.” Shit. Trip mind whirled as he stared vacantly down at the sheet before him. He had known that Amanda had transferred to Sickbay as a medic, and he remembered her appearing before him last night or whenever and then ratting on him to Phlox for giving himself that shot. But he’d never really figured her for the type to…do all that other stuff. His cheeks flamed. “I would have donated…” Trip was cut off as the doctor pointed out the flaw in his logic: “And I would have appreciated your assistance; however, given the fact that you rendered yourself a cardiac patient, you were in no position to help. It is most fortunate that Cole was here at the time. I may have decades of experience and over ten degrees, but I doubt that even I could have handled the impossibly premature triplicate delivery of a severely traumatized mother whilst simultaneously reviving a fibrillating stimulant overdose patient. You may imagine who would have been the first of your new family to expire.” Though Phlox tried to modulate his voice to a professional timbre, a concerned note of frightened irritation shone clearly through. Almost like a parent’s when their child runs into a road. Trip thought he understood. The health of the crew was the man’s business. If someone died, it was on Phlox. Trip certainly wouldn’t appreciate someone coming along and messing with the ship’s engines. Trip sighed, genuinely chastised for once. Always sure he could take care of everything, he usually forgot to take care of himself. But he didn’t realise exactly how close he had pushed it, until now. And Cole having to fish him out of the River Styx of all places. He didn’t see how he’d ever live it down. Especially once T’Pol found out…Trip winced at the thought of the Vulcan woman’s sure-to-be-righteous rage. “I’m sorry Doc,” he finally said, truly contrite. “I know,” the doctor answered, mollified. “And T’Pol has thanked Crewman Cole already, so don’t feel too bad.” “She did?” Trip asked, astonished. “She was awake?” “Momentarily,” Phlox replied. “During the blood transfusion. She asked about you. And the baby. Once I said you were all fine, she fell asleep again.” The portly man clasped his hands behind his back and waited for the import of his words to sink in. “Doc,” Trip began hesitantly, “is it just me, or d’you keep referring to, uh, like…multiple children?” He laughed faintly as he spoke, but even as he formed the half-serious words, he had a shadowy, strangled-moment-of-death recollection of Phlox lifting a second squirrel-sized handful of head and feet and umbilical cord—before all went black and sideways. “Come and see,” Phlox gently told the introspective human man, who was frowning and chewing his lip in strained recollection before him. He held an arm out to allow Trip to pass by him and together they entered the semi-darkened alcove at one end of Sickbay. Trip stared in fascination, halting at the door. The famed fish tank, the one that had gestated his clone into existence, sat in the far corner of the small, dim area. Pinkish, hazy fluid filled the glass container. Phlox paused in his step, looking over at the human man, allowing him to prepare to cross the room. A look of utter wonder lit Trip’s face as he finally genuinely realised what all of this had to mean. He met Phlox’s eyes strongly for a moment, and then slowly he walked over to the tank. Phlox had left a low-lumen, ruddy light glowing faintly nearby, so that it was possible to check progress without upsetting the patients. Trip’s newly restarted heart pounded rather alarmingly, as he crouched a little and pressed his fingers against the warm glass. Three. There were three half-size infants gently bathing in the nourishing environment of the artificial womb. Each twitched ever so slightly and randomly, as they hovered—eyes closed—at peace in their individual universes. Trip’s mouth was open, but he was unaware of the fact as he turned to look at Phlox, who had joined him in his half bent pose, looking into the tall fishbowl that held the many new members of the ship manifest. “You should have seen them fifteen minutes ago,” Phlox said with a quietly avuncular air. He watched his tiny charges with the mixed fascination and fatherly pride he held for all his patients and small creatures. “They are in a sleep cycle just now. Give them a bit and you’ll really see some acrobatics.” Trip turned back to the glass in disbelief, a knocked-for-six sort of smile starting to pull at his still-open mouth. “Three of ‘em?” he asked. “Where’d you find three of ‘em?” Phlox’s face, too, stretched into a wide grin as he regarded the children before them. “Don’t ask me,” he defended. “I just pulled them out. You’re the ones who put them there.” At this, Trip laughed, and he crouched further down on one knee to see the babies closer. One of them had pointed ears! He craned his neck to see the other two in the dim light. Both had round ears. Two of my children have round ears, and one of them has pointed ears, Trip thought to himself. He swallowed, slightly giddy for a moment. His blood pounded in his head. He had no idea what he was going to do. One thing was certain. He couldn’t wait to wake T’Pol up and figure out what that was and start doing it. But three! “Look, we had a conversation with this baby,” Trip explained, as if somehow that would sort it and make the three into one again. “It’s a long story,” he added, in response to Phlox’s eyebrows shooting up quizzically. “On the hull. There was definitely only one.” Trip paused at his own statement, reflecting. “Well, on the other hand, I guess if you’re a brand-new embryo, you’re probably a lot like your siblings. Not usually a lot going on in there. More than there should be in this case,” he allowed, nodding toward the tank vaguely, “but, still. Maybe what we sensed was all three of them.” “I think you’re right,” Phlox agreed, in light of the physical evidence before them. “Quite a philosophical quandary, though. What is it exactly that makes one person different from his fellows? When your memories and experiences are identical, what then separates us? I’m sure you’ll have many wakeful nights during which you’ll be able to fully ponder the riddle.” Phlox smiled down at the stunned young man before him. Diapers were randomly occurring to him at that particular moment. “You and Commander T’Pol will have several issues to discuss soon, I think.” Phlox spoke gently, but with a quietly confident air. These two had certainly stared down worse. “Does she know there are three of ‘em?” Trip asked, turning back to the glass. “I do not believe so,” Phlox answered. “I’ll leave it up to you to communicate the…ah…happy news.” The doctor looked at the exhausted, yet semi-exhilarated man curiously. “What about you?” he asked. “Can you sense them now?” “Nah,” Trip demurred. “Not really. Not like before, when T’Pol was awake,” he looked over his shoulder in the direction of where T’Pol was in the other room. “She will re-awaken soon,” Phlox assured him gently. Still bent, Trip nodded up at him, looking back at the babies and wondering how he could possibly start that conversation up normally. He’d just have to bring her in here. The pointy-eared baby opened its lidless-seeming eyes and began to suck a stiff little cartilaginous thumb. “Are they girls? Boys?” Trip asked, totally absorbed by the sight of his brood. “Both actually,” Phlox answered. “They are fraternal siblings…three separate eggs. Two daughters and a son. That one had the better position of the three and is the largest by 15%.” Phlox nodded towards the pointed-eared fetus, who was now waving her arms up and down in a robotic fashion. “One of the girls,” he added. Trip smiled as he watched her, and he had a sudden, passing—but violent—urge to find a camera and start madly photographing. He resisted it, knowing there would be plenty of time for that later, and likely Phlox was documenting their every cell-division in any case. A quiet ping from a side console let Phlox know that his other patient was awakening and he made his way into the main bay to see how she was. Trip, totally engrossed in the sight before his eyes and fingers, didn’t notice the doctor leave, nor yet the faint, muted stirrings of his mate in the other room. * * * T’Pol’s eyes fluttered open of their own accord, though her mind was kicking and screaming illogically to stay asleep: she remembered fully what had happened and dreaded the possibilities that could greet her upon awakening. Air sucked in and out of her willing lungs automatically, her heat beat its steady parasympathetic rhythm, seemingly unfazed by the recent, ruthless demands made of it. For a moment, T’Pol lay utterly still, staring at the ceiling, taking a quiet, quick, dizzy inventory of herself, as she surfaced from the confusion of dreamfilled, drugged sleep. Pain. Faint, but everywhere. She knew her own physiology intimately enough to detect—over and above the natural lethargy of awakening injured after a long unconsciousness—the fact that she had been medicated rather heavily. A thick set of foreign molecules filled her bloodstream, repairing her body and dulling her senses while she healed. Usually T’Pol resisted taking sedatives or painkillers of any kind, preferring to use only the power of her mind to overcome pain. But today, she was grateful in a frightened sort of way for the protective shield the drugs offered from what she intuited would be extreme, overwhelming pain. Microscopically she moved her fingers and toes, reassuring herself that, though stiff, they were still there and functioning. Her sensitive ears picked up the sound of Phlox’s somewhat voluminous clothing rustling, as he bustled across the bay and toward her biobed. He was aware that she was awake. He was coming to tell her what had happened. She swallowed: the only movement she could really make, fighting a wave of physical and mental nausea, as she quested gropingly around for the feel of Trip’s mind—before the doctor could come and tell her he was no longer there. There. He was there. Her brain handclasped Trip’s suddenly in a grip of glad, overwrought recognition. And she was gratified at the immediate, responsive rush of elated thoughts that tumbled over and around her, as Trip felt the touch of her mind and realised she was awake. However, T’Pol’s attention was immediately distracted by the shocking realisation that another presence existed there, apart from Trip’s…and it was the same as from before. She hardly recognised it from the shrieking, primal sound it had been whilst she was out in space; now, it merely rested: simple, and growing, and alive. Of that much she was sure—even in her clouded state. She vaguely recalled Phlox’s face swimming before her eyes earlier: “It appears you are a mother, T’Pol. Congratulations.” The doctor really was speaking to her. She reluctantly tore her concentration from the strange things her bruised short-term memory and telepathic mind were showing her, and tried to focus on the wide, beaming presence of the real Phlox as he stood above her, trying to gain her attention. “Yes…yes,” she finally replied, to his repetition of her name. “Excellent,” Phlox approved, as she turned her head slightly and rasped out the response. “Do you remember why you are here?” “I suspect the ionic debris cloud had something to do with it,” she managed weakly, though her voice cut out partway through the word ‘something’, and she finished in a whisper. At her dry tone, Phlox chuckled, “You’re certainly lucid enough,” he affirmed, reaching for a hypospray. “Let’s see if we can’t do something about that hangover, hmm?” He loaded the hypo with a carpule he had prepared earlier: more radiation-treatment serum, antiemetic, a heavy dose of analgesic, along with a gentle stimulant that would allow her to wake up more fully and meet her new family. Using his most expert technique, he pressed it deeply into her neck and infiltrated her tissues with the large measure of helpful fluids. T’Pol breathed deeply, closing her eyes and allowing the medication to work. She again let her mental fingers quest, will-o’-the-wisp-like, over to Trip’s area of the room, and held herself quietly within Trip’s emotional, turbulent mind, trying to concentrate herself sufficiently to see the large shape he was looking at with such inner tumult. The tank. She sat up. Phlox put two restraining arms out to steady his patient as she smoothly rose. He marvelled inwardly at the Vulcan woman’s resilience. Not eighteen hours ago, he had virtually reconstructed a large portion of her lower abdomen, including muscle, flesh, organs, and circulatory vessels. Though he had used his advanced surgical techniques and a stint in the powerful imaging chamber to render her tissues virtually healed, there was always a lashback when one rent and mended flesh. Chemotaxin was angered by such things, and stiffness on a grand scale was the end result. However, T’Pol evinced no outward pain above and beyond the haggard stamp of recent trauma and stress that her visage already bore. She turned to face her physician, her eyes stormy: as if she expected him to argue and was ready for the fight. “I want to see them,” she said. Her voice was still barely above a whisper, but the force behind it was redoubtable. Phlox assented readily, surprising her. In his opinion, surgical patient or no, she had been separated from her newborns for long enough. He quickly gathered the few things he would need to move her. In doubt as to how much she knew about the babies, he cursed for the nth time the English language that didn’t have the logic (as both Vulcan and Denobulan did) of providing several choices of pluralized pronouns, so there was never any confusion. But aware now of her telepathic powers of divination with regards to the chief engineer, Phlox had to wonder if by ‘them’, T’Pol had meant ‘Trip and the baby’, or ‘Trip and the triplets’. Phlox winced even as his mental tongue innocently formed the latter phrase, and he found himself sincerely hoping the Tuckers never entered musical performance of any type. At any rate, she would know soon enough. While he mused thus busily to himself, he noticed Amanda Cole quietly enter the room, two minutes late for her usual Thursday night shift. He nodded across at her as she guiltily smiled and waved a hand. Without comment, Phlox gently handed T’Pol down into a waiting mobile chair. He tucked her in with a thin, thermal blanket, and circled around to the back of the chair to push it smoothly forward towards the darkened alcove where her new family awaited her. Usually loathe to allow herself to be trundled about in such a fashion, she almost didn’t even notice the chair, so intent was she upon somehow crossing the room. Instead, T’Pol, thin blanket held tight around her small shoulders, was focusing somewhat unsuccessfully on modulating her breathing—through a hot, flustered excitement—as she approached Trip and their child. Still here. It was still here. Illogical and impossible. Her mind spun from the strain of her recent exhaustion, and she withdrew her thoughts temporarily from Trip’s chaotic ones, waiting impatiently for Phlox to push the chair all the way to the end of the room. The momentary mental respite from Trip’s noisy brain allowed her to notice that the small, forceful presence by his side had a strangely flickering quality to it, one that she did not recognise. She hoped it was simply due to the child’s hybrid nature and not some damage the tiny person might have received during her span of time out gallivanting on the hull. Now that she knew her unborn child was apparently destined to survive, T’Pol was appalled that she had taken such a risk. However, it seemed, from Trip’s semi-coherent and undirected internal mental ravings, that the radiation was possibly the very thing that had allowed the baby to live? Most curious, she thought to herself in her best Vulcan fashion…in order to quell the sudden thumping of her heartbeat and thrill of adrenaline streaking down her inner arms—as they passed through the wide doorway into the dim alcove occupied by Trip and the large cistern of amniotic replacement. Phlox stopped the chair in the centre of the small room, and Trip rose from his numb knee, where he’d been scrutinizing his children hungrily for the last ten minutes, waiting for the doctor to bring their mother in. He stood and looked across at T’Pol, whom he now realized he’d fallen even more violently in love with, since Phlox had shown him the children she’d unintentionally made for them. He crossed the few steps to the chair she sat upon and stood above her momentarily, only so that she would have to tip her face up to see him. He put one hand on her neck where it met her shoulder and gently dropped a firm, quiet kiss on her forehead. “Hi,” he said. She didn’t flinch at this semi-public display, simply gazing back up at him with a tense ball of shivery anticipation in her gut, the likes of which she had never experienced before. Being untrained in the naming of emotions, she wasn’t even sure if it was a happy feeling or a distressing one. Or both. Both. It felt like both. “Perhaps, you would like to introduce your children to their mother,” Phlox said quietly to Trip from his standing position behind T’Pol’s chair. T’Pol’s head twisted smoothly, intensely ‘round, and she looked up at her physician, while repeating, “Children?” Her voice cracked again: the word a bright, sceptical whisper. She swivelled back as Phlox pushed her forward until she was nearly knee-to-knee with the device that safely housed her offspring. She stared in total shock at the three babies that gently bumped into one another, kicking their feet and waving their hands with the strange semi-vigorous fetal moments that look as strong and weak as feathers in milk. Her hands went swiftly to the armrests of the chair as if she planned to push herself up and out of the thing to inspect more closely the illogical marvel before her. “And if you get up out of that chair,” Phlox intoned professionally and blandly, “I will have Medic Cole come in and sedate you.” Even as T’Pol shot him a balefully obedient glare, resettling in her seat and resuming her vigil, the older man smiled fondly down at the strange little family; finally united. When they’d arrived in his Sickbay, he had held absolutely no real hope for any of them, Phlox realised with some surprise. He passed Commander Tucker a utilitarian step-stool to sit on (in order that he shouldn‘t have to perform a meniscus repair on top of everything) and then finally left them all alone in the privacy of the alcove, while he went to greet his newly-arrived assistant. * * * Cole stuck her chin in the air and shook her long hair back, gathering the thick mass up into a quick, tidy ponytail, and securing it with a black fabric elastic. She went down on one knee to sip at a water bottle, tuck it into her small regulation-blue knapsack, and place the bag out of sight in a cupboard. Phlox approached from across the room, and she grinned at him, standing and rising up on her toes to crane her gaze across the large, sterile space. She’d seen him wheel Commander T’Pol away somewhere and no one else was visible. Her brow crooked somewhat as she addressed the portly physician she hadn’t seen since he’d sent her straight to bed the night before. “Hey Phlox…where are they? How’d everyone do?” Phlox smiled at the young woman’s abiding concern for her patients. “You really do have the makings of a fine medic, I must say again,” he replied approvingly, before he relieved her curiosity. Turning to face the direction he’d come from, he bent slightly and pointed toward the small private area across the main bay. “They’re all in there. And they’re all fine.” “All of ‘em?” Amanda repeated, with a spontaneous grin. Unknowingly, she adopted the doctor’s stance, hunching confidentially as she stood next to him, staring across the room at the dim doorway and the invisible presence of the three tiny babies and their blessed, fluky parents. Phlox spoke again without turning to meet her eye. “Both of the commanders are extremely grateful for your assistance. Neither even really realise its full import.” Amanda turned to regard the man standing near to her. His strange, speckled, vibrant skin and ridged face seemed oddly familiar to her now that she had known him for so long. She realised she’d miss him if she did leave Enterprise. Phlox didn’t look back at her, but simply continued to stare in the direction of the Tuckers (she figured she could safely begin to call them that now). “Thanks, doc,” Amanda said somewhat softly. “But, I mean—I just did what anyone would have done.” “That is true,” Phlox allowed. In his queer, natural bashfulness, he still pretended not to notice that she’d turned her gaze upon him. “However, I think most others would have found themselves unequal to the task. Level-headed thinking in a crisis like that one is a skill not many would possess. Even among the preselected talent of Starfleet and MACO personnel.” Amanda was glad that Phlox didn’t see the pleased embarrassment that coloured her neck and cheeks, and she changed the subject. “Three babies. Man, what are they gonna do? I don‘t think I could handle it,” she said rhetorically. “Ah,” Phlox scoffed, “you would do better than you think, I suspect. It also helps when you have a committed partner. On a totally unrelated note, I do expect that you went straight to bed last night and avoided your workout? I noticed young Kenter’s name up on the gym schedule, and I do know how you two like to exercise together.” Wondering how much he was implying, Cole looked sidewise at her physician, who had turned and was now rummaging in a drawer for a PADD. “Actually, I did go straight to bed,” she replied. “Seems working a double-shift and then draining myself of half my vital fluids was workout enough for one night.” “Speaking of which, I should do a quick scan of you sometime this evening to make sure you are recovering nicely from your donation. A booster dose of some helpful biological molecules might not be out of place, hmmm? Why don’t you read this first,” he indicated the PADD he was uploading information to, “and then afterward, you can write up a recipe for a stimulating tonic concoction, and we’ll inject you with it!” His natural enthusiasm for medicine and instruction came through his words clearly, and Amanda grimaced. “Great,” she replied, grudgingly appreciating the fact that, since they would be injecting her with whatever she came up with, she would be likely to do her research thoroughly. A clever teaching tool. “And can I go to the gym tonight?” Phlox glanced up at her once, shrewdly, and continued tapping away at the PADD he was readying. “Yes; it has been nearly a day since your donation; you should be fine. Drink plenty of fluids, and take it easy on your arms to prevent bruising at the sites. And if you are planning on any…activities later, be sure to have me give you a progestiphyl injection before you leave tonight.” His tone was utterly professional, the subject functional; it was an appropriate enough reminder from her physician (she was one to forget about things like that). She had, in fact, been planning to broach the subject at the end of her shift. And yet Amanda had trouble avoiding the red flush that coloured her cheeks. What was wrong with her today? “You’re assuming a lot,” she replied defensively, simply to counter the fact that he was spot-on. “Ah, my mistake,” Phlox assented gamely and absently, still scrolling through files on the main computer that he wanted to add to her little reading assignment. Amanda pulled a damp, anti-microbial tissue out of a nearby dispenser and silently used it to wipe some faint dust off of the sample-processing unit she stood in front of. Darn it. “Yeah, I guess maybe y’better give me some,” she muttered, reddening more, and polishing thoroughly the curved, complicated tubes of the milkshake-machine-sized equipment she was dusting, rather than meeting her physician’s eye. “Mm-hmm,” Phlox responded vaguely, barely deigning to glance in the direction in which he reached. Opening a small nearby drawer, he pulled out one of dozens of individually prepared single-doses. Momentarily putting down the PADD, he stripped off the plastic steri-wrap, efficiently pressed the pain-free infiltrator against the thin skin at the base of Cole’s neck, and injected her. He dropped the used injector into the recycler and wordlessly picked up his PADD again. Cole didn’t flinch as she felt the injection penetrate, simply grateful for the portly physician’s circumspection. Slowly, she continued dusting her way along the countertop. “Thanks,” she said after a minute. Phlox glanced at her briefly. “Not at all. Who knows? One of these days, you may not want it.” At this, she smiled widely. “Right,” she laughed. Phlox smiled his funny, pursed smile and continued his work. Though she was serious in her jest: she wasn’t ready for children yet, who knew? Perhaps it wasn’t so crazy to talk about Simon Kenter and babies in the same conversation; although that part could certainly wait a few more years. Considering the responsibilities of parenthood, she thought about the Trip Tucker she had once gotten to know slightly intimately. Though, on the surface, he seemed the type to pass up marriage and children for a life in space, she suspected that there were not-so-deeply-buried levels of paternity and domesticity within the friendly engineer. T’Pol was more of an enigma. Rumour was, she had already been married once to a Vulcan man. Clearly, on the past Enterprise, she had chosen to parent Lorian with the handsome young human man who did seem to harbour a perpetual, palpable, and subliminal worship for the slim, youthful-seeming Vulcan with the pointed ears and purportedly advanced years. Guesses ranged wildly. Amanda had placed her own wager on sixty-eight, though the smart money was apparently in the late fifties. Hoshi was running the unobtrusive open-ended pool, and all reports were she stood to make a killing if the information ever surfaced. “What lifespan do you predict for the babies?” Amanda asked, thinking of Vulcan age. Phlox had wondered about this himself. “Probably around 150 Earth years,” he hypothesized, “but more research will be needed. Their cellular growth patterns are fascinating to observe right now. Makes me regret quite acutely the fact that I never branched out into fractal atomic medicine. If only my colleague Brysix was here, oh, we would see some laboratory research then!” Amanda smiled to herself at Phlox’s ever-bubbling and easy-to-rise zeal, and tangentially wondered what he was like drunk. “And Trip’s heart?” she asked, suddenly vividly recalling the sick fear she had experienced at watching a colleague die before her. It was strange…death by firefight never seemed as scary as sterile, procedural, medical death. An odd thing to consider: that she could better stomach seeing a man shot down, than watch his metered heart stop beeping. “Commander Tucker’s cardiac organ is doing just fine now. He is a healthy young man and should recover nicely. Thanks to you. In fact,” Phlox finished rather dryly, finally turning to hand her the heavily-loaded PADD he‘d prepared, “That particular cardiac, obstetrical, surgical circus act shall go down in medical history as soon as I am able to follow up sufficiently to write a meaningful article on this growth phenomenon. What a paper!” “That’s always assuming Commander T’Pol will sign off the rights to you,” the medic quipped, taking the PADD and scrolling through its lengthy table of contents. His medical fervour fired by thoughts of well-deserved interstellar medical accolades and the scientific, career-developing possibilities implied thereto, he was more than deflated at Amanda’s sudden, semi-humorous remark. She wasn’t even aware of the Pon Farr aspect of the issue, either. Cole was simply noting that the odds of the very private Vulcan commander voluntarily applauding Phlox’s efforts to publish details of her freakish, one-day, hybrid-triplet pregnancy and its gorily successful surgical delivery—were slim, at best. Phlox’s face fell further when he mentally added those difficult-to-conceal reasons for the unprepared pregnancy, and his estimated chances of convincing the lady to share her experiences fell to zero. The case-history could hardly be discussed anonymously. Gloomily, he left Amanda to study the preliminary PADD before they began the day’s lesson, and he finally got down to some of the backlog of regular work he been neglecting since this whole maelstrom had descended upon his usually-calm domicile. Unlatching and opening the lid of a large, clear, plastic tub on one of the countertops, he took a short silver stick not unlike a pen out of his pocket, and extended it telescopically to form a long, thin, silver rod with a blunted tip. Poking down gently at some Nefaarian cockroaches with the wand, he glumly noted on a PADD held in his other hand that their number had just doubled. Clearly one of the pods had burst in the night. More than just three shared birthdays, he mused. Thoughts of the non-cockroach-babies’ future birthdays, (to which he hopefully would be invited) made him realise that the secret would be out soon enough. Certainly he should be able to persuade T’Pol to allow him to publish, once everyone already knew of the children’s existence and the hubbub died down. Thus mollified, he swiftly began to mentally prepare an outline for the nice, detailed paper he planned to have ready, oh say, in two or three years’ time. Yes. By 2159, both parents certainly should be adequately and chronically sleep-deprived and time-starved enough to agree to anything. Chuckling internally and somewhat evilly at the vertical learning curve the young Tuckers (he figured he could safely begin to call them that now) were about to scale as new parents, he reminisced fondly of the births of all of his—thankfully singleton—children. Nevertheless, he also had intimate knowledge of the rigors of multiple births always thrust parents into (especially unexpected ones—a rarity these days). His first wife’s third sister-spouse through Jaysen. Those two certainly hadn’t anticipated their fertility treatments would be quite that successful. However, among the family-centred polygamous citizens of Denobula, even a litter of babies came into a family with plenty of support. Many parents were not up to the task of single-handedly parenting multiples, and needed large amounts of help. Even so, Nezri always said that, except for hibernation, Jaysen and Lestra didn’t get more than two hours’ sleep for years. He was glad that Jaysen had only ever impregnated Nezri with one child. A fine daughter, whom Phlox was proud to name among his many, many step-children. Phlox divined that the Tuckers (he certainly admired the way the name rolled off the tongue) would be of the small minority who would try to insist on doing everything themselves—much to the detriment of their sleep-centres, which, especially in Commander Tucker’s case (the male one; this was getting confusing) could take years to get back on track, if ever. As Phlox pondered the insomnia that occasionally dogged the chief engineer, he recollected the conception of their peculiar relationship, and how, in fact, he probably could take the credit for instigating the whole thing—what with his crafty, yet professionally defensible, recommendation that the two comely young commanders regularly get together in private and remove large portions of their clothing for purposes of intimate pressure-point massage therapy. An audible snort issued from Phlox’s nostrils as he considered his own genius in orchestrating that particular piece of brilliance and he wondered if—he poked at another couple of cockroaches, trying to flip them over so he could identify and log their genders—if he could somehow add the highly-influential and efficacious neuropressure sessions to the comprehensive paper he planned. He suddenly envisioned T’Pol’s face upon finding that during her careful revision of his to-be-published work. No. Ah, well. Perhaps he could insert it in an appendix for posthumous publication. Surely the lady would take pity on him once he was thoroughly deceased. Phlox harrumphed to himself in somewhat crotchety irritation, as he snapped the lid back on the tank and made some rapid notes on his PADD before moving on to the miniature thumb-fisted swine marsupials that lived next door to the cockroaches. * * * “How did this happen?” was the first breathless thing that surfaced its way to her lips. T’Pol’s voice was laryngital: cracking into existence every few syllables, but mostly a splintered whisper. She stared into the tank as spellbound as if all the answers in the universe floated within it. Ironically, there were more burning questions in that tall container than she had ever had or needed to consider before in her entire existence. “Damned if I know,” Trip replied, smiling over at T’Pol’s total engrossment with the three children. She, like he, had immediately placed her hands against the warm glass and leaned in, so far that she didn’t even notice slightly flattening the tip of her nose, in an effort to see more clearly the face of the baby nearest her, on the bottom of the tank. Trip closed his eyes and inhaled in sudden astonishment, as his connection with his children was fully restored to potency by the presence of their mother’s bridging mind. While she had been asleep, he had been aware of the babies only as a sort of background hum, but now that T’Pol was here again—warm and alive beside him—the triplets’ brains were able to grab at his own, as simply and innocently as an older baby would grab the face of its parent in worshipful curiosity. Trip could also feel the congenial presence of T’Pol’s restored psyche soaking back into his soul, reaffirming his strange, sudden, certain feelings for her. T’Pol’s own shock had not yet had time dissipate enough for Trip’s warm emotions to penetrate through to her. She was purely, simply stunned by the presence of three children. Of course that was what the flickering quality had been: not one mind, but three. Three powerful, basic, but ever-thickening consciousnesses. The obviousness of the fact caught at her breath now. She simply had not entertained the possibility of such an outlandish notion. Even Trip’s thoughts (he had inexpertly—but mostly successfully—tried to hold back, until she could see them for herself) had been of the multiple babies, she could see now. But, not looking for it, she had simply perceived the impressions as unfocussed, rather than crystalline and triplicate. Her pale, cool cheeks and the tips of her ears suddenly burned with illogical remorse, creating a strange, mottled feeling of heat and cold in her flesh. She turned to Trip, tried to speak, but her voice issued hiss-like, even after she coughed. She switched to her mental tongue and spoke clearly and with total wretched honesty into his mind. I am sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. When I came to you, I never thought…. Her words smeared away into basic thoughtpaint as she looked into Trip’s familiar face. He had trusted her and helped her and now she had gone and changed his entire short life. That certainly hadn’t been her plan Tuesday morning. “Hey,” Trip said seriously, looking over at her. “None of that. Life happens. Don’t go apologizing for it. Triplets happen. Unless you secretly colluded with Phlox on this one, I really don’t see any way I can ‘blame’ you.” His mind stoutly told the same tale. Sure…his life-plan had absolutely never included triplet hybrid Vulcan babies. But it sure as hell hadn’t included his pregnancy either, nor fatally and unknowingly harvesting his own clone’s brain tissue, meeting his never-to-be born centenarian son, or seeing two Elizabeths die within months of one another. And yet…. “That’s life,” Trip said. “Y’can’t necessarily dictate what’s going to happen. And now that it has happened…” Trip paused, struggling to frame his self-surprising thoughts coherently, “I don’t think I could change it, y’know?” T’Pol blinked at him, beginning to understand. “Even if Daniels showed up and started waving his time-changin’ stuff everywhere.” Trip’s voice took on an ever-so-slightly hysterical edge: “I mean, I know! It’s crazy: what the hell are we going to do with three babies?” But his face and tone softened as he looked at their brood, and gestured vaguely. “I mean…which one would you pick?” he finally asked—leaving his meaning implied, rather than spelled out. They both looked at the babies. One of the girls was nearer the top of the container, introspectively putting a thumb into her mouth and removing it. The other two slept face-to-face on the slightly silty floor of the unit: limbs and foreheads gently touching. T’Pol glanced back at Trip, loving his face unexpectedly and joltingly in the dim, reddish light cast by the machines that were keeping their latest children alive. He turned and smiled at her thoughts and into her eyes and they both knew that this time, it would somehow turn out all right, whatever happened. T’Pol sighed, finally leaning back in her chair to rest and examine her children from a maternal distance. They were large enough now that the two lower babies mostly filled the bottom of their habitat, and if the pointy-eared girlchild slumbered and drifted lower, she would land on top of her haystack of siblings. As if on cue, she began to slowly descend in her twitchy movements, wafting gently downward with the faint, but near-neutral gravity of the circulated liquid she breathed…gently bumping to rest, face-up, atop the paired heads of her brother and sister. The three slept deeply: a litter of buoyant, wet puppies. After many silent, quieting minutes, T’Pol looked over again at Trip, who sat on his short stool, elbows on his knees, chin cupped in his palms, gazing at more babies than you could shake a stick at. Though he hadn’t seen it coming, and now his whole life was assuredly turned upside down, some genetic, nature-plus-nurture-type force was kicking into gear within his very brainstem and he was falling violently and biologically in love with his amphibious litter even as he stared sleepily at them through slow-blinking lids. T’Pol felt a mirroring evolutionary urge within her own breast quietly, but fundamentally, demanding she find a way to integrate these strange children into her life. Oddly, she felt that, had this been a simple, straightforward, unplanned, single pregnancy, she would perhaps have been much more reluctant to assume the role of mother. However: three at once, and of Trip’s body, and in such a fashion as they had arrived—it really left very little room for self-concerned thoughts of career and logistics. Clearly, she was a mother. Everything else would come along in its turn. It left any hard-done-to sense quickly behind, in the face of the numerous new decisions and thoughts and actions and tasks and feelings that had directly to be executed, in order that the train she rode might jump its track at smoothly as possible. T’Pol was vaguely startled at the Earthish metaphor that popped into her mind as she leant her weary head into the tall back of her seat and gazed quietly over at the man who had accidentally fathered her brood. His own mind was resting for a brief moment, drifting semi-rapt upon a strikingly similar ocean of notions and dreams to hers, as he stared at-and-through the three now-sleeping babies before him. T’Pol recollected his similar devotion to watching over another of their surprise children. Though Lorian was technically born earlier, she was the first baby. Elizabeth. As one still unused to the emotions she was trying, ever so haltingly, to assimilate into her existence, T’Pol marvelled inwardly at the difference in the atmosphere of the two different Sickbays. Separated only by a short span of time, the two infant vigils she shared with Trip Tucker could not have been more different. She recalled the crushing, sealing doom that had settled slowly over each person in the room, as it became critically apparent that Elizabeth’s time was fast approaching. Illogically, each person longed to see the small girl survive another breath, and yet each knew that the sooner her soul took flight, the sooner she would be assured of bliss. However, none had been more fully entombed by the cement sarcophagus of despair as herself: the child‘s mother. Even Trip, who suffered the loss as keenly, who was as wholeheartedly invested in the child, had an easier time, due to his lifelong experience with emotion—and his own particular recent acquaintance with horrific, personal loss. T’Pol alone had felt the despair of one who possessed no way of stopping the relentless onslaught of grief and misery and also no way of naming it or sorting it into any type of healing process. Instead she had held herself wrapt as tightly as she could, for as long as she could—until the threshing whips of agony that flayed at her heart (in the moments she was so foolish as to open up) could disintegrate away over time into the tattered shreds that now flapped uselessly in the empty wind of her soul, cold as ashes and clammily, intermittently bumping her heart with their now-impotent, blood-soaked stubs. Trip was what brought these morbid musings to an end. Shaking his own momentary torpor away, he focused on the dreamy eyes of his fleetingly-distracted mate, and noting the somewhat blackly doomish aspect of her post-partum mind, he reached out with his warm, real hands and picked her smaller, icy ones up in his large grasp. Her coffee eyes flicked back into this reality and she looked down strongly into Trip’s tipped-up face as he chafed her pale fingers and palms with his own. As she burned within the still-novel phenomenon of a locked gaze with her newly-canonized lover, a wave of emotional thought drenched T’Pol’s breast and set her heart knocking against her sternum. Her mouth worked momentarily as, with effort, she expertly held the import of her firing neurons high over the general weal of their minds, like a waiter skirting a crowd with a precarious tray elevated above chattering heads, in order that Trip might not catch wind of it until she spoke her thoughts aloud. “Trip,” she said. And though her voice was gravelly, it didn’t break this time: but sounded strongly in the small space of the room. He looked up into her serious eyes and, divining her ardour, if not yet her actual intent, moved his low seat, placing it and turning her chair so that he could sit right in front of her, between her feet. Resuming the stool, he picked up her chilly hands again. He inspected them, and then again rubbing them as if he hadn’t paused in his warming motions, he answered in his quiet, Southern voice: “Yes?” T’Pol unknowingly clenched her teeth, looking down slightly at Trip on his short seat, his head bent for the moment to the task of breathing on her hands. They were warming steadily under his ministrations and she didn’t pull them away, but simply waited, holding herself|mind silently, watching his sandy hair, until he looked up again into her suddenly warm, energized eyes. Like magnets, their mutual gaze again stiffened into something heated and binding. T’Pol allowed herself to breathe slightly more quickly as she drank in the sight of her mate’s devoted face. It was only rarely in life that one got to action a long burning desire with such sudden surety and effortlessness. She leaned forward in her chair and placed a light kiss upon Trip’s wide, human forehead. Lowering her chin, she looked deeply and closely into his eyes, and touched her mind down into his own, gently, as a finger dips into water. will you marry me?, she whispered quietly, aloud and throughout their minds. He was unable to respond before his right hand instinctively clasped the back of her warm neck and pulled her to for the longest, gentlest kiss they had ever shared, despite their semi-public location. Relief poured around them both as they smoothed one another’s cheeks and hair and shoulders and tasted one another’s lips and tried to simply shrug away lifetimes of expectations and assumptions about the future. It was easier than either would have ever imagined. And neither could say who thought it first, but both realised that though life had just become infinitely more complicated, certain large, important things would now be simpler than either had ever hoped. Trip finally broke their connection, panting slightly. He still sat lower than her upon his large, utilitarian, Sickbay step-stool, and though he longed to stand and take her in his arms, he was cognisant of the fact that now was not the time or the place for such things. The kiss alone had left both convalescents reeling somewhat, and they rested their foreheads together momentarily, eyes closed, listening to themselves and the primal, muted chatter of the dreaming minds they sat next to. Yes, Trip replied. |
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