Posted by Ensign Chloe Harland (Nurse) in Happy Thanksgiving and Welcome to the Family…Baby Harland

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The spinal block had worked its magic and it was the magic bullet for labor and delivery. While not at long-lasting as the epidural, it provided immediate relief instead of the ten to twenty minutes an epidural could take to set in. She would take the chance that the baby would not be born in that amount of time to worry about a labor pain setting in. Now that Chloe no longer had to work on dividing her attention between trying to not have the baby in her living room and trying to talk to Nathan she could share the weight that had been crushing her for months. The monitors continued to beep, hum, and whistle but only in reaction to her blood pressure, heart rate, and that of the baby’s heart rate. Chloe closed her fingers around his hand holding it tightly. Her mind raced with how to start with what she wanted to say. She had rehearsed it numerous times, preparing for every possible response from Nathan yet there was no more guessing or rehearsing. Nathan would be free to say and do what he felt.

Chloe looked up at him meeting his gaze. It was intense and scrutinizing but due to confusion instead of anger. “It’s been so long since you looked at me like this,” she bit her lip to stop it from quivering. Whether it was the emotions or her body reacting to the impending labor didn’t matter. She needed Nate to focus on her instead of what was going on. “I missed it. A lot.” Letting out a long breath to gather her thoughts, her free hand moved to her belly patting it gently. The baby was not only a blessing but the one thing that had gotten Chloe back on her feet. People say God does things for a reason and while she would never understand why he found it time to take Maddie from them, he did give them hope by this child.

“Well… throwing Ben off a balcony really helped me get past a lot of anger and resentment… we should do that more often… I wonder what that sniveling dung beetle is put to… nothing good, no one from Perkin’s bloodline has ever been more than a crap stain on humanity… I pity the girl who falls for his lines… I kinda wonder if he has any scars…” Nathan seemed to be trailing off a bit with a large smile as he remembered the day he had tossed the man whom she had cheated on him with off the balcony. It was shortly after Maddie’s death, a time they all hurt and the first and most likely only time the pair had been seen out in public since the ordeals had plagued them.

Chloe let out a small laugh and then bit her lip. She talked casually about the event but in truth, it shocked her more than she ever let on. Nathan had a darker side that both aroused her and scared her at times. She had seen a side of him on Cestus that few if anyone else was aware of. That was the side that came out when Nathan tossed Ben over the rail not wasting a second on contemplating the repercussions of the incident. Nathan had made up his mind about doing something and he did it. This was also the side that bonded Chloe to him tighter. Nathan’s confidence bordered on arrogance in some situations but it also instilled faith and trust like nothing else. It was why he could calm down the most terrified patient or lead men into battle. “Is that a solid form or therapy or,” she cut off her words as she felt the pressure building as the baby continued to progress towards being born.

Snapping out of the memory Nathan couldn’t help but smile widely at Chloe. Everything felt wrong and somehow right all at the same time. There were wounds in their marriage, his brooding nature often left him unable to show the love he felt for her. He had been more attentive lately than he had for a long time. It’s easy to blame her for everything, but he could have acted like he cared about her more than he had. It’s awfully easy to feel alone and alienated when someone tried to get into Nathan’s life, a lifetime of trauma lead to a man who felt cynical and angry at the galaxy for injustices that he often had little right to feel so strongly against. Self-righteous indignation was not a trait that often could endear someone to him. Yet Chloe was here, seeing past his fears and past his sorrows and seeing that deep down Nathan cared, more than many.

There was no sane reason why she was pregnant. From January to February, Chloe had lived in a valium-induced stupor, moving like a zombie doing only the most basic things in life. Nathan had tried his best even taking her to Boston on Valentine’s Day trying to establish some stable ground on which to rebuild their tattered life. The night however was a disaster. Halfway to the restaurant, Chloe had a panic attack hyper-focusing on the fact she was no longer six feet from Mara and Logan. At the restaurant, she barely touched her food, responding to his attempts at conversation with nods and barely murmurs. By the time they had reached the hotel room he had rented, the mood slide from amorous to angry. How that night ended up with her pregnant proved that miracles happened when you expected them the least.

“I am sorry I broke us,” Chloe blurted out. Her throat tightened and her eyes began to burn. She had to move this conversation along even if it was the last thing she wanted to think about in the moment.

“Don’t…” Nathan said as he tried to stop her train of thought, he wanted nothing of this right now.

“Stop…you have to let me finish,” she put her fingertips to his lips muffling the sounds coming from his lips.

Nathan smirked slightly as her fingers brushed over his lips. This was one of her favorite moves to get him to pay attention. It worked, that and saying Patapsco was two clear cut was to get him to listen. She had Pavolved him with these responses.

“I did it. It was me. I broke us with the affair. I broke us when I chose to fight with you instead of spending time with the kids. I broke our family when I filed for divorce.” Chloe felt the tears slide over her lashes and down her cheeks. Some of the emotions were due to her hormone levels being off the chart but most of it was the guilt she had carried for the past nine months.

“I never made it easy… and I could have. I hated my father for always putting things first instead of me and I went down that same route… but I forgave you a long time ago.” Nathan said softly, and for the most part, he did mean it. There was a wound, but it wasn’t festering. They had found the right anti-biotics to stop the infection and it was beginning to scab and heal. The real test would be to find if the wound left a scar, deep down that was something Nathan felt would always be the case… but he was a surgeon, he knew scars could be removed.

“You say you forgive me but you never will because I broke the life we created. The day months ago when I called you you said we would never be whole again and it’s true.” She sniffed back her nose running pulling her hand from his to run to wipe her eyes and then running her fingers through her hair. It was a habit she did when she was nervous or scared. “No matter what happens next or where we go we will never be whole again. You were right and I wish I could fix it. It was why I filed for divorce, why I move the kids to the edge of the galaxy not telling you. Why I thought about not having this baby.” Chloe felt nausea well up in her body as she choked back the urge to vomit. Until now she had never mentioned how she contemplated ending the pregnancy and not telling him.

“But I couldn’t lose any more of us,” she felt embarrassment and shame uttering the words she had never spoken until this moment. Somehow saying it out loud hurt more than any fleeting thought in her mind.

“I didn’t know… but it doesn’t matter. I know we have things to finish in our lives, things to piece back together like those puzzles we always love to put together… but I will get those edges for you… I will put this back together I swear.” Nathan felt a wave of anger in the pit of his stomach, there were parts of him that wondered if this was all lip service, but he couldn’t help but fight for that belief. He had almost lost her, and somehow this wasn’t the first time. She had retreated quite a few times in their marriage, often when Nathan had ignored her the most for work. These moments were scars too, maybe smaller, but he caused them.

“I don’t doubt you but I doubt me,” she confessed. “I feel lost like in a fog. Every step I take is not in the right direction and maybe it is because I was not walking with you.”

“How can I do this,” she looked at him. “I don’t know how to fix what I have broken but I can’t have a life that doesn’t involve you. You are a good dad,” she took his hand, “but I am scared to have this baby because I can’t lose you again. I need to know in my heart you are not here because of the baby but because of me. Losing Maddie broke me. Losing you would kill me,” she sat up in the bed putting her arms around him.

“I am going not going anywhere… my life is here. I love our family, our kids… but I love you most… you are the one I promised to spend my life with, not the Afterlife program for the Borg children, not my practice… I didn’t even promise to spend my life with our kids… I only promised it to you… and you are the one I will be gray old and carving new puzzle pieces when they don’t fit in our nursing home when we are 150.” Nathan said into her shoulder as he held onto her tightly. He needed her to hear these words, they were his soul mending and fitting back into place with hers.

Nathan was probably dismissing most of what she said thinking she was just overly emotional due to the stress of family, the holidays, and giving birth but it was more than that. Chloe had never asked for his forgiveness. Nathan had told her over and over in the past months it wasn’t her fault but he had never been given the chance to forgive her. Holding onto him, Nathan could feel her body shake and tremble but it was far more violently than her just being upset. The baby was ready to come. The monitors were all signaling she was in active labor and ready to deliver but Chloe was ignoring all of it. “I don’t know why God gave us this baby but I can’t do it without you,” she said into the collar of his shirt. The dirty laundry of their marriage had been aired to the universe for so long, those a part of it could play he said, she said games all day long. Nathan left to give them a second start but it didn’t explain the days of no contact when Chloe needed him the most. Her dependency on anti-depressants was not solely used to get her over the death of Maddie. It was to calm her nerves as to why Nathan at times seemed to ghost her at times. Their families had assumed they planned to be on the outpost together but the truth was, she and Nathan arrived there independent of each other’s knowledge. Chloe was always going to live in the dark with the light of Maddie extinguished but being forced into it through their actions and lies to each other was something she could no longer do. “You left me and then I left you. I can’t go through that again. I can’t have this baby without you.
Please don’t ever go away again.”

Chloe

Nathan pulled back, his eyes wet as he took a deep breath, “It’s going to have to take God himself to pry me away from you…” Nathan said as he leaned in and kissed her deeply, letting the emotions flow into that kiss as he felt everything clicking.

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Meanwhile…

“Yes sir, she’s awake.” came the voice from the white-coated man as he stared through the two-way glass. “Should we contact Mr. Harland?” he asked as he turned around to face the holovid.

Facing the man, an image of Aedan Teller could be seen as he nodded. “He’s waited long enough for results I would say, I will contact him on the outpost… run some small tests before he arrives… I don’t want him to have false hope.” Teller said as the man nodded before the projection blinked off. Turning from the observation room he walked past the door of the patient which had a square window slit. Under the slit, a name could be seen, M. Harland.

Harland, CNS

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Sabre Sick Bay

“Or me,” Dr. Harrison Jones entered the room no longer caring what the parents wanted or the time they claimed they needed. Sliding between Chloe’s stirruped legs, he began to run a tricorder and prepare for the birth of the baby. “The fetal heart rate is starting to fluctuate. The kiddo is ready to take this world by storm so let’s get ready to meet them whatcha think?”

Chloe looked up at Nate and nodded before letting the nurse adjust the pillows propping her up to push. She was only able to push once before Nathan’s personal communicator began to trill adding more sounds to the room. Glancing up at Nathan she scowled. She wanted to rant about how her parents could never give them a moment’s peace but the baby was taking all her energy and concentration. While she was experiencing little to no pain due to the nerve block, her body was still experiencing the birth as evidenced by her increased heart rate, shortness of breath, and sweat dampening her brow.

“Ignore it… there isn’t anywhere I need to be than right here.” Nathan said as he held tightly to her hand as kissed down on top of her head.

Unknown

“He isn’t picking up…” the white-coated man said as he looked over at the Bolian colleague as the shared pensive stares. “I am not going in there… Nathan made it clear from before he didn’t want anyone in there but him if she woke up… and Doctor Harland scares me a bit. For a counselor… he comes off intense.” the Bolian said as he shook his head. He didn’t like this at all.

“Look, someone has to get in, maybe Doctor Reagor can go, she has been second for this project since Doctor Harland took over, she knows the story better than anyone.” the first man said, as he ran his hands through his blonde mousey hair. “Get her, and I will keep trying to get Doctor Harland.

Sabre

“Okay Chloe I need you to really push for me,” Dr. Jones coached his patient glancing up at the nurse and then Nathan. There was no reason for the baby to be taking this long to be born except by lack of effort on the mother’s part. It was as if she was holding back the best she could to prevent the baby from coming. “You got this. Push with the contraction and hold it for me. You know the drill Chloe,” Jones began to count. It was no secret that the couple had their share of marital and family problems but childbirth was not something you could half participate in. The baby was going to come whether Chloe made it easier or harder.

“Nathan,” Chloe’s hand tightened around his squeezing as hard as she could turning his finger a weird redish purple. “Don’t let go,” she said almost in a pleading tone. The second this baby was born, life would change again but which direction was the only thing on Chloe’s mind. Nathan was a good father if not slightly a work a holic. Once this baby was born the only connection she would have to him was the children. Chloe did not want that connection as easily severed as the umbilical cord.

Chloe

“Baby, I am not going anywhere… just push… we are almost there… and then we have our whole lives to be together… with our newest family,” Nathan said as he helped her focus, he needed her to see he was all in. So much had changed, but his love of her, while cracked and dented at times, had never broken or shattered. Even at their worst, he still loved her.

Nathan Harland