Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

should—”
    “I can walk. I'm pregnant, not crippled.”
    She sounded mad. Was she supposed to sound mad? Who was she mad at?
    Uh-oh.
    “Can I—is there anything—”
    “No, Tom, you've already done
everything
you could possibly do to me. Sorry—
for
me.”
    “Aw, come on,” he implored, daring to take her elbow. “You wanted this, didn't you? It's a little late to change your mind, isn't it?”
    “I haven't changed my mind. I don't want to be pregnant anymore. I can't eat, I can't breathe, I can't walk, I can't fight, and I feel like a damned Trill. And don't touch me.”
    For somebody who couldn't breathe, she was doing a good job talking. Not touching her was hard—he wanted to help, guide, lead—
something.
All she would let him do was open the turbolift a second before she got there so she didn't have to break her stride.
    Two decks seemed like twenty. Then came the long corridor to sickbay. Paris felt as if they were crossing a tundra.
    The Doctor was saucily stoic as Paris more or less herded B'Elanna into sickbay. “Right here, please,” he said, indicating his favorite diagnostic couch. “So, Miss Torres, you believe you're ready to deliver this parcel?”
    “I'm ready,” she said on a little gasp. “I'm beyond ready. I'm—”
    “No talking, please.” As B'Elanna struggled to lie back on the clamshell, the Doctor studied her from shoulders to knees with his medical scanner and was done damnably fast.
    “Well?” Paris urged. “Any minute now, right? Can you hurry it up somehow?”
    The Doctor ignored him and doubled his scan. Finally he clicked the device off and cryptically said, “You're going to have a very healthy baby. But not tonight.”
    “Tell me you're joking!” B'Elanna grumped.
    “You're experiencing false labor, Lieutenant.”
    “Again?” Paris blurted.
    “As I explained the last time, it's a common occurrence, especially among Klingons—”
    B'Elanna struck the sides of the couch with her sharp fists. “I want this thing out of me!”
    “Misdirected rage,” the Doctor commented. “Another common occurrence among Klingons.”
    Paris felt as if his face were about to fall off. He rubbed it and moaned, “Can't you induce?”
    “I wouldn't recommend it.”
    “If this keeps happening, we'll never get any sleep.”
    “You think it's bad now?”
    Paris exchanged a contemplative gaze with his wife, who looked every bit as dismayed as angry. Well, she could be as angry as she wanted to, couldn't she? This one little person was the only creature in the galaxy who didn't particularly care how much she ranted. The baby was in charge.
    * * *
    Captain Janeway was glad of the interruption when Chakotay streamed into her ready room and rescued her from having to scan the power ratio reports from belowdecks. During these long periods of busy work—which really did have to be done for the sakes of preparedness and conservation—she always tried to remind herself that the boring times in space were offset by truly dangerous and ghastly adventures. Still, during one she often craved the other.
    “It happened again,” Chakotay mentioned right off. His strong features and gentle charming eyes brightened the ready room and set off a competition between stars passing outside the viewport.
    Janeway stretched back and smiled. “That baby's leading us on. When did it happen?”
    “Oh four hundred.”
    She winced in empathy for Paris and B'Elanna. Another night's sleep ruined. “How many false alarms does this make?”
    “Three. That we know of.”
    “That baby's as stubborn as her mother.”
    Chakotay smiled. “Harry's starting a pool to see who can guess the actual date and time of birth.”
    “Tell him to put me down for next Friday, twenty-three hundred hours. Anything else?”
    Chakotay shrugged lightly, every bit as bored as she was. Technically he was in command now, and he almost never bothered her during her off-watch hours for anything other than two good reasons—acute danger to the ship, or acute boredom for the first officer.
    “Crewman Chell's asked about taking over in the mess hall full time.”
    Whew—they really were scraping the bottom of the barrel. A flash of reality struck Janeway that on a ship of the line, the captain and first officer would never even hear about who was handling the mess hall. The whole structure of running a ship simply prevented the minute details of life belowdecks from filtering up so high. This was more like silly