Page 69 of Volunteer 4711

She looks at me with a confused look. “I’d never leave you for an Imperial. I love you, which is why I want to have a child with you.”

“I love you too,” I say. I hold her for a while, and then I let go. I turn off the computer, “You should not be working. I want you to just relax.”

“If I do nothing, our dead baby is all I think about.”

I realize that she has nothing to distract her mind. I open the comms and have one of my officers bring a tablet to my quarters with the most famous books from the Home Planet on them. I help her into her pajamas and then give her the tablet when she is in bed. “These will distract your mind. I will speak to the doctor and then go back to the bridge. We will discuss this more later. Please, for your own health, rest.”

My wife looks up at me with her big brown eyes, and I wonder what she’s really thinking. I cannot tell. I hold both of her cheeks and lightly touch my lips to hers; when I pull away, I see tears welling up again in her eyes.

I feel like she wishes she were married to a Water man now, and then she would have children. I feel inadequate as a husband. I cannot imagine what it must have felt like to know that there was a strange genetic mix of an unviable child in her. I say nothing more, though, and leave her to rest.

I go directly to sickbay, and the doctor is not surprised to see me. We talk in his private office. He explains what’s happened.

“What now?” I ask.

“Her body will expel the fetus. I have given her medicine. She understands how it will work.”

“You couldn’t have just removed it quickly here?” I ask, not wanting her to endure more pain than necessary.

“It’s not necessary for me to start poking around inside of an alien female. I’m a good doctor for our people, not for aliens. The last thing I want to do is make a mistake because of my ignorance about her physiology.”

I understand his logic, but my emotions are running high. Not only am I disappointed for the loss of what might have been a son or daughter, but the pain my wife has to endure, even if it is short-lived.

“What about an Imperial doctor? Would they be better suited to help us conceive a healthy child?”

“Most likely, but where will you find an Imperial doctor willing to help? If I were you, I would say you would have better luck convincing a geneticist from the Home Planet to come here,” the doctor says.

“We are rendezvousing with an Imperial ship soon. If I can convince one of their doctors to help, would you be willing to work with him?”

“You mean to share our medical knowledge for this?”

“Yes,” I say, not mincing words. “You would be financially rewarded.”

“Of course, I want the money,” he says. “But I will also do it for scientific research as I would learn something too. Maybe the Imperials are on to something with these Water people we haven’t realized.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s how they are diversifying their gene pool. Maybe there’s something the Water people have that is advantageous to introduce to our own population.”

This is news to me. “But I thought….” I trail off. I do not know what I thought before, but it does not matter. It’s none of my business. What concerns me is getting a child to keep my wife. “Can you please send me the requirements of what would need to be done from our side?”

“I will do it this afternoon.”

I leave sickbay feeling a little better about the whole situation because I am at least trying.

* * *

Two days later, I am in my prep room off the bridge with my wife out of sight so that I can talk with the Imperial doctor I have set up a meeting with.

“Doctor,” I say when his grey Imperial face appears.

“May the gods guide us with their light,” he says in typical Imperial fashion. The Empire is a very religious place.

“Have you received my request?”

“I have,” he says, looking down at what I suppose is a medical tablet with my requests.

“Would you be able to perform the procedure?”

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