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The mission was not going according to plan. Hell, Trip's life wasn't going according to plan. Sure, he was Chief Engineer on the Enterprise NX-01, making contact with new worlds and weird aliens. The ship's engine was holding up real well, only a few console buttons had broken this week, and he had figured out how to upgrade the power converters. But damn if he wasn't craving some hush puppies right now, and he didn't dare go ask Chef to whip some up. He still wasn't used to the stares and whispers that followed him whenever he left his quarters. He couldn't blame people for their curiosity. It wasn't every day they saw a pregnant fella.
Getting knocked up had changed everything and nothing. He still had his career, his family, his friends… but all his plans for the future had been thrown in disarray when that Xyrillian woman had, without his knowledge, transferred her DNA into him. He didn't know a thing about raising a human child, never mind a Xyrillian one. He didn't know anything about Xyrillian development, diet, or environmental needs, and there was no one to ask because the Xyrillians were nowhere to be found and the Vulcans didn't know a darn thing about interspecies reproduction and Trip wanted a plate of deep-fried home-cooked food so much. Over the short course of his pregnancy he had come to deeply empathize with his mother, who had borne three children. One pregnancy was more than enough, in Trip's opinion.
His stomach grumbled and the thing growing in his side stirred. He could feel it gliding under his stretched skin, a large uneven lump over his ribs. Not a thing, he reminded himself. A baby, and it had no fault in this. He shifted on his cot and considered the dull gray metal walls of his quarters. An angry growl twisted his gut. Fine. He sat up, holding his left hand carefully to his aching side to support the baby. What kind of species had babies that grew so close to the ribs? Wrong place for a baby, that was for sure. No room there, nothing that could move around to make space for a growing one. Probably the Xyrillian body was better set up for this kind of thing, but Trip was stuck in a human body, and the asymmetric lump threw off his balance and frequently sent bolts of pain through the distorted skin that was the only layer of protection between it and the outside world.
He peeked into the corridor. Empty. Most people would be at their stations right now, and the mess hall would probably be pretty deserted. He tugged his jacket to better shield the baby bump and, with a deep breath to steel himself, briskly walked out toward the mess hall. He passed four crewmen on the way, and nodded to them when they stopped to watch him. The mess hall was, as he'd hoped, mostly empty except for a few scattered crewmen taking their breaks, and Hoshi, who was eating a piece of cake while she stared at her universal translator. Hoshi was a safe bet, he decided as he slid open the pastry case, and saw three pieces of fluffy white cake and four slices of pecan pie. Immediately he snatched up two pie slices. They were as close to home as he was likely to get at the moment.
"I see you found the pie," Hoshi greeted him as he approached her table. "Chef's been making it just for you."
Trip paused, his hefty forkful of gooey, nutty goodness hovering just above his plate. "Really? No one told me. I'll be sure to thank him."
The pie burst into sweetness in his mouth, the cloying sugar balanced out by a thick layer of baked pecans. The crust crumbled into flaky bits that melted on his tongue. Perfect. He would have to pick up a gift for Chef next time they docked.
Hoshi lowered her translator. "I thought the Doctor put you on bed rest." Her dark eyes flicked down to his middle, then, with clear effort, back up to his face.
Trip shrugged. "I was hungry."
Hoshi cut a sliver of cake. "At least the station will have much better food than this. They don't use replicated food as much."
Trip swallowed. "Station?"
She froze. The pie suddenly felt dry in his throat.
"Hoshi?"
"I – I'm sorry. I thought you knew?" Her face flushed pink as she looked everywhere but at him.
His heartbeat was speeding up. He could feel it pulsing, every beat drumming out wrong, wrong, wrong. The baby shifted, as if it too was upset. "Hoshi. What station?"
"Mercury station," Hoshi said in a small voice. "To drop you off."
The pie left on his plate no longer looked appetizing. If anything, he felt a little sick. "Excuse me."
Mercury station! He fumed as he stalked out of the mess hall. Were they just going to leave him? Drop him off like luggage without even telling him? Pregnant or not, he was an officer and the Chief Engineer, and he deserved some respect, dammit, not to be treated like this. And for what? Some pregnancy that he didn't even want! The only reason he'd kept it was because he'd thought they would find the Xyrillians, but then a week had gone by without a hint of the aliens and the Captain had started arguing that the point of the mission was to learn about new species and that this pregnancy was a unique learning opportunity. By then the whole crew knew of the situation and word of it had passed to Command, and Trip had found himself well and truly stuck.
The Captain wasn't in his quarters so Trip strode to the bridge. The bridge would be occupied, he knew. They would stare at him with curiosity and revulsion, same as they had been doing for the past three weeks. His crewmates were, it turned out, bad at hiding their feelings. Well, let them stare. He wasn't gonna disappear without a fight.
"A word, Captain?" He barked as soon as his boots clanged onto the bridge. The Captain and Mayweather jumped. Malcolm looked up from his station and cringed slightly. T'Pol, as usual, appeared completely unaffected; he was grateful for her stoicism.
Captain Archer nodded. "You have the bridge, Sub-Commander."
Trip barely managed to hold his tongue until the door to Archer's office slid shut, then he whirled on the Captain. "Mercury station, Captain?! You're kicking me off the ship?"
Archer held up his hands, palms out like he was trying to calm a feral animal. "You know the ship doesn't have the resources to care for this baby. This isn't a freighter built to contain whole families. At the station you'll be taken care of by a Medical team, and Starfleet's xenobiology specialists can figure out the baby's needs."
"So you're handing me over to be a research project," Trip clarified. No matter how the Captain phrased it, it was clear Starfleet wanted to keep an eye on him. He was the first known case of human male pregnancy, as well as the first case of human-alien reproduction, but the idea still rubbed him the wrong way.
"Of course not!" Archer snapped. "We can't take care of you on the ship. You'll be safe, I swear it. Both of you."
"Then why didn't you tell –" Sharp pain speared his side. The baby twisted, and Trip pressed his hand to the bump and doubled over as another spike of pain stabbed him. He was vaguely aware of Archer trying to hold him upright, a lost cause as the floor tilted beneath him. His legs gave way and the Captain gently lowered him to the ground.
"Hurts, Captain." Trip mumbled.
Black spots blotted out his vision as the pain increased. He was being torn from the inside out. This baby was going to kill him! The Captain cradled him, and the last thing Trip was aware of was the Captain calling his name.
Everything was real bright. Trip squinted into the light. If this was heaven it was pretty disappointing. He blinked and the brightness resolved into a set of circular lights inset into a plain white ceiling. Sickbay. His whole body felt thick and heavy, and something pressed against his middle.
"Welcome back, Commander." Dr. Phlox's smiling face swam into view. Trip couldn't think of a response. His mouth was dry, his lips and tongue divorced from the rest of him. "You're on quite the cocktail, Commander. You'll feel better after you get some rest."
A weight pressed against his shoulder. With monumental effort Trip turned his head. The Captain stood at his bedside, his hand resting on Trip's shoulder. Another hospital cot was set up behind the Captain, and a tiny white-swaddled bundle rested on the thin mattress. The Captain squeezed Trip's shoulder, an action that Trip's dazed brain registered only after Archer had removed his hand and stepped away.
"Get some sleep, Trip."
Captain's orders. Trip closed his eyes, and slept.
When he awoke again the first thing he noticed was a muted pain radiating from his side. A thin sheet had been pulled up to his chest, and he pushed the fabric away and carefully rested his palm against his side. Instead of an uneven bump he found a thick pad of gauze wrapped around his torso. Aside from the gauze he was wearing only his pants and socks. His movement must have alerted Phlox, because a moment later the doctor bustled over. "Ah, Commander. You're awake! Here, some water will help you feel more like yourself."
As soon Phlox maneuvered a straw into his mouth, Trip became immediately how thirsty he was. When he had drunk a whole glass Phlox set the empty glass aside and helped Trip sit up, fluffing the pillow in a maternal manner until Trip was adequately supported. "Now that you're feeling better, would you like to see your little one?"
Phlox didn't wait for an answer. He wheeled the other cot, the one with the white bundle, closer, and fussed with the white cloth until Trip could see a flat, brown, scaled face. Of course he had no way to know what a newborn Xyrillian looked like, but this one didn't look right to him. Aside from the odd flattened features and the plated skin, its eyes were closed and slightly sunken, and its face was thin, lacking the glowing chubbiness of healthy human babies.
"Is it… supposed to look like that?" He ventured.
Phlox considered the newborn silently for a few seconds then sighed heavily. "No, I don't believe so. I think she… came out too early, and of course she wasn't carried by a member of her own species so her development may have been…" He sighed again. "Well, her breathing is irregular and her eyes appear to be severely underdeveloped. Her fingers and toes are webbed, though that may be normal for her species."
"Huh." What was he supposed to say to that? The creature on the cot wasn't human, certainly didn't look human, and the only thing he felt for it at the moment was a sort of morbid fascination. The baby had been lying still, but now she squirmed, her tiny mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
"She must be hungry," Phlox noted. "Your arm, please, Commander."
The weird growths on his arm, which were supposedly nipples, were another effect of the pregnancy that Trip had actively avoided thinking about. Unfortunately the doctor's command left him little choice and he begrudgingly held out his arm. Phlox rotated it so that the nipples on the forearm aligned with the baby's lipless mouth, and Trip, nauseated by the alien changes to his body, looked away.
Nothing happened. The baby didn't clamp down on his arm, and no unexpected substances leaked out of him. His arm felt completely normal. Phlox released his arm. "Hmmm. Perhaps the ducts associated with the nipples never formed. Your human physiology couldn't accommodate it."
Thank goodness for small mercies. Phlox hurried across the room and drew a pan from a small freezer that was bursting with tubes and petri dishes. "You said the Xyrillians gave you ice. This is my own formula. It's as similar as I could make it to what a reptilian humanoid species might need. Would you like to try feeding her?"
Phlox held out the pan. White cubes glistened in the bright Sickbay lights. The infant squirmed weakly. Though logically he knew the child came from his body, at the moment Trip couldn't imagine anything more alien-looking, and frankly the last thing he wanted was to hold it and feed it.
Phlox correctly took his silence as refusal. "Probably for the best. Holding her could be tricky for you. Her scales are very soft right now, though I imagine they'll harden as time goes on."
The baby didn't eat much. Dr. Phlox, lips pressed tensely together, finally left Trip and the infant alone. He offered to bring food back from the mess hall but Trip wasn't hungry. Alone in Sickbay, he eyed the baby warily. He leaned over, wincing at a dart of pain from the healing wound in his side, and studied the tiny face. The scales plating the face were thin, with a pale ruby sheen in the bright lighting. He tried to find something beautiful in the pattern of the plating and in the smooth bump of barely-there nose. Plenty of people had children that looked different, and they loved and cared for those children, so why couldn't Trip? Was it simply that the baby was overtly alien, or was something wrong with him? He should care more, he was sure of it. Some sort of parental affection should have awakened in him. The baby, if it lived, deserved that.
He slept on and off for the rest of the day. Phlox came at intervals to attempt to feed the baby and to check on Trip's wound. The Captain and Hoshi dropped in and offered awkward congratulations. As night according to the Sickbay clocks approached, Phlox administered more medication and Trip spent the night in dreamless sleep. The next morning he woke slowly, and when he had struggled to full wakefulness he found T'Pol sitting at his bedside.
"Don't congratulate me," he warned. His words slurred with sleepiness and lingering medication.
T'Pol blinked. "I didn't plan to."
She looked at the baby. "What's her name?"
The pregnancy had been so unexpected and so fast, only a month long, and even now it felt like a dream. For much of the past month he had been fighting bouts of fever as his immune system kicked up repeated fusses about the alien cells in his body, and when he hadn't been laid out with illness he had distracted himself with engineering projects,reading, exercising… anything to keep from fixating on what was forming inside him. Baby-centric activities like making lists of possible names or building a crib were out of the question. "I don't know."
T'Pol was silent. Her implacable face betrayed no judgment or pity or disgust. That was nice, Trip decided sleepily. T'Pol was nice. "Hey, T'Pol?"
"Commander."
"Do you want kids someday?"
She tilted her head, her gaze steady on the sleeping infant. "When I'm married and have settled on Vulcan, it would be logical to continue my family line."
He supposed that was a yes. "Yeah. I guess I always thought I'd like to be a father, but not like this. I thought I'd love my kids."
"On Vulcan… " T'Pol began. "Kolinahr is a complete purging of one's emotions. It is the primary objective for many who follow the teachings of Surak. Vulcan parents who are studying Kolinahr occasionally have difficulty forming emotional connections to their offspring. I have heard that it's helpful to hold the child and chant a meditation hymn to it."
"You've got an answer for everything, don't you?"
"No. Not everything."
In that case she had done a damn good job of hiding whatever it was she didn't know. It was comforting to know that even Sub-Commander T'Pol didn't have all the answers. Like the rest of them she was fumbling her way through the dark, trying to make the best of what was handed to her.
Half an hour later Dr. Phlox came by with coffee for Trip and frozen formula cubes for the infant. Trip watched the doctor slowly lift the infant from the cot, then Trip held out his arms before he could change his mind.
"Here. I'll try."
Phlox's eyes sparkled with delight as he gently deposited the baby into Trip's waiting arms. It – She – was even tinier than he'd realized. Without the swaddling cloths she would probably fit neatly in his two hands. While pregnant he had been sure she was larger, large enough to force a space inside his body, rearranging the pattern of him so that there would always be a place for her under his skin. Funny how something so small could feel so overpowering.
Since T'Pol's visit he had been thinking of names that would fit human conventions but would still recall the name of Ah'len, the Xyrillian who had given her genetics to the baby. It was time to make the best of the situation, and the most logical place to start was to follow the guidance of Vulcans. At any rate the baby deserved the dignity of a name, and that was the least Trip could offer. He shifted the baby to the crook of his right arm. "Alright, Adrienne. Let's give this a shot."
"A lovely name," beamed Dr. Phlox "I'll be feeding my own little ones right over there if you need me." The doctor hurried off to feed his bat and birds and insects, and Trip selected a formula cube.
"I don't know any meditation hymns and I'm not the best at singing," he warned the baby. She yawned. Her eyelids remained clamped shut; she couldn't open her eyes at all, he realized. She was fumbling around in the dark more literally than he was.
"Now what was that old song…?" Trip strained to remember what his mom had sung to him when he was little, when the Florida sun had streamed into his nursery and there had been nothing better in the galaxy than his mama's arms around him. "'You are my sunshine'? No, that's a sad song. We don't want a sad song." Besides, he was nowhere near being able to say "You make me happy" to Adrienne, even if it was just a song lyric. Try as might to recall another tune, the simple melody, once he had thought of it, wouldn't leave him be. "Well, I guess I'll stick to humming."
So he hummed, accompanied by the occasional gentle beeps of instruments and analyzers. After he had hummed a verse and a chorus Phlox joined in, a higher thinner pitch over Trip's low timbre. Outside, though they couldn't see it from Sickbay, stars were streaking by. Out there were lifeforms stranger and more mysterious than the girl in his arms. Xyrillia was somewhere among those stars, and Ah'len, and Mercury station which was looming closer every hour. They would dock soon… and then?
He had no clue. No use getting worked up about the unknown, and he was too tired to fret. He closed his eyes and leaned against his pillow, focusing on the here and now: the scratchy infirmary bedding, the minute vibrations of humming in his throat, the coldness of the melting formula cube, the near-weightless bundle cradled against his chest.