Another Time, Another Place

[JesusTrekkie 0]

The secrecy was draining Elaine. She was working diligently to keep her grades up and was still working as Ji’s research assistant on the weekends. He had become cold towards her as of late, reminding her of her mother’s emotionless demeanor. He had even gone so far as to express second thoughts about ever having gotten married.

 

One Saturday morning, as she was eating her breakfast alone, she sat sipping at a cup of coffee. Perhaps Ji is right, pondered Elaine. I should have exhibited more wisdom and not returned his affections. It is all my fault; I should have never put him in this situation.

 

As Ji entered the room, Elaine blurted out, “You do not want me or this baby, do you?”

 

Ji, without turning away from the replicator, hesitated, then began, “Well…”

 

After a moment of not finishing his sentence, Elaine realized that he did not plan on doing so. She choked out a sob and stood up so quickly that she knocked over her chair. Fleeing from the house, she ran blindly down the steep incline of his drive way. She tripped and, before she could catch herself, was tumbling down to the end of the drive with a thud.

 

Later, she sat on a biobed in the local hospital, clutching her wrist. A doctor walked up to her, smiling grimly. “Miss, are you aware that you are pregnant?”

 

Elaine nodded, looking a bit alarmed. “Yes, is my baby okay?”

 

“Well,” he coughed, “I regret to inform you, but the baby appears to be miscarrying. I’m sorry…”

 

When she was released from the hospital that evening, she went straight to Ji’s house. Elaine stood at the door for a moment and Ji answered the door when she finally rang the chime.

 

“Elaine, where have you been? I required your assistance today and could not find you anywhere,” Ji said, obviously irritated.

 

She stood just inside the door staring at him numbly.

 

”I lost the baby.”

 

He sighed as she went on to explain that had she gone into the doctor’s sooner they would have decided that her genetic make-up would cause it to be difficult to carry the child, and that with treatment earlier on she might have been able to carry it… him… to term.

 

Looking condescendingly, he patted her on the shoulder. “Perhaps it’s better this way.”

 

It felt to her as though he had reached inside her and ripped the child from her womb himself. How could he be so heartless, she wondered? Her child, something that had lived inside her, was now dead. Gone. And he stood before her discussing how it would be easier to get a divorce now. She would be able to be assigned to a ship after graduation and he would continue his Heebleek’iis disease research. After all, they would not have been able to stay together forever. “It will be much better this way. I think you’ll realize that, once you’ve had time to think about it.” Ji seemed quite pleased that everything worked out so well.

 

She looked up at him. “Yes... yes, I see what you mean,” Elaine told him, even though she did not. But she did understand one thing: she would rather run to a ship and fly far away than to stay here and continue research with this selfish pig.

 

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Elaine thought to herself that he looked quite smug in the corresponding photograph from the interview, sitting with his two year old son and an obviously pregnant Mrs. Qiao. She regonized Mrs. Qiao as a professor she had at Starfleet Medical.

 

She stopped pacing through Sickbay and looked around. Red alert, the area bustling with nurses preparing for any possible wounded, Dr. Johnson to one side buried in whatever he was always so buried in… this is all she had ever wanted. So why, she wondered, was she even giving Ji another thought? He obviously had not given her another thought. Besides, she could only imagine the personal hell had she remained a moment longer in that relationship. That was another time, another place… she needed to move on.

 

"One problem with gazing too frequently into the past is that we may turn around to find the future has run out on us." --Michael Cibenko