Chapter Text
Starfleet Academy, c. 2256
Cadet Kirk was heading back to his apartment with a long evening of homework ahead of him, when he saw his neighbor Nellie Finney standing on the curb with a suitcase. Since she was 8 months pregnant, this was alarming enough to warrant him stopping to ask what was up. “Early labor,” she admitted. “And Ben’s at Jupiter Station with his students. I called and he’s trying to get back, but meanwhile the midwife says I need to go straight to the maternity center. I’m waiting for a cab, now.” She was putting on a brave front, but the quaver in her voice was as good as shouting I’m 0.02 seconds away from completely losing it.
Naturally, Jim blurted out, “I’ll come and sit with you until Ben gets there.”
In the cab, she began to ramble nervously about how she hadn’t even had lunch yet today and Ben just had to be away, stupid Starfleet schedules, and it was nearly a month before her due date, anyway. That one, Jim could try to be reassuring about. “I was born 5 weeks early during a starship evacuation,” he offered, “And I’m fine, aren’t I?”
Nellie gave him a pointed look and said, “I believe that’s a subject of some debate, Jimmy. To hear your friend McCoy tell it, you’re practically held together with duct tape and curses.”
“Don’t believe a word of it,” Jim said with his best charming smile. “I’m fine. I was only born early because I was eager to get the party started.”
Once they arrived, there was admissions paperwork and taking of vitals and Nellie’s needing to get changed into a gown for an examination. Jim hovered in the waiting room. He comm’d Ben with the update and got back “ETA 2 hours. Can you stay with her?” He sent back a yes, and moments later, Nellie’s midwife was waving him into the room.
Whatever the midwife had done during that exam, it had made Nellie go pale. She looked up from bed and said, “Jim, they say I’m already 9cm dilated.”
Jim looked at the midwife in surprise. “Uh, forgive my ignorance, but doesn’t that usually take a long time?”
Nellie sheepishly admitted, “I’ve been hoping since last night that this was all just practice contractions.”
Jim took only a split-second to process that (he’d have to tell his professor the next time he had an assignment designed to evaluate coping under pressure). Then he said, “Right. Well. Do we have at least 2 hours? The father of the baby is returning from Jupiter.”
The midwife gave him a slightly long-winded answer that was probably intended to be reassuring, yet amounted to: maybe. Or maybe not.
“What can I do to help you, Nellie?” was his next question.
The answers to that included “call my mother for me” and “talk to me about literally anything else” and “remind me that I actually wanted this because I love my kid” and “hold my hand” and “get me some morphine if possible”, all of which carried them through ninety minutes and the final centimeter of progress. When push came to shove, Jim found himself wondering what idiot put Jupiter station so far away from Earth, as well as who knew Nellie could scream this loudly?
Ben finally arrived when his daughter was fifteen minutes old. Even as he was apologizing and asking if his wife was all right and swearing to never go farther than the moon again as long as he lived, Nellie was saying, “It’s fine! We’re fine! I think we’d better name her ‘Jame,’ though, in honor of her godfather getting us both through this.”
And that was how Jim Kirk acquired godchild #1.