Beginnings

The slow day was here.

Joe Carey was here.

And, he realised with a start, someone else was here too.

Joe froze as he heard the sob coming from behind one of the tall plant incubators. Ignoring his better judgement and not leaving immediately, he instead walked around behind the incubators. A blond woman in a sciences uniform was sitting on the floor, knees hugged up tight to her body and head resting on them, sobbing heavily. The engineer racked his brains and eventually came up with a name - Samantha Wildman. He didn't often cross paths with the science officers, as he spent a lot of his time in Engineering, but he'd seen her occasionally off-duty in Sandrine's and in the mess hall. He knew that she had a family of some sort back home, like many people on Voyager - like Carey himself.

"Samantha?" he asked, crouching down and touching her gently on the shoulder.

Her head shot up, revealing eyes that were puffy and red from crying, and tears stained her cheeks. Carey immediately felt sorry for her.

"What do you want?" she asked angrily, although the effect was somewhat ruined by the stifled sobs that she was unable to stop.

Carey backed up a little, holding his hands up in mock surrender. "Sorry. I - I just wanted to see if anything was wrong," he explained hesitantly.

She wiped a hand across her eyes, not improving her looks at all. "I didn't mean to snap. Sorry. It's just..."

"You can tell me," Carey assured her.

"The Doctor just told me I'm pregnant," she burst out, the tears starting afresh.

"Wh-how?" Carey asked, immediately realising how dumb the question sounded. "I mean... is it someone on the ship?" Why did nothing seem to come out today? "I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No, no, it's alright. It's my husband's child... we'd been trying for months... He's Ktaran, that's why we didn't notice until now," she explained tearfully. Carey paled at the thought of the possibly dangerous missions and situations she'd been exposed to in the past few months, and how she was probably regretting them all now.

"Well, congratulations," Carey said awkwardly. "I remember when my wife was pregnant with her first child, she was on a deep space mission. I missed the birth and our baby's first few months. After that we were posted to a Galaxy class, so we could stay together."

"My husband's going to miss this baby's first seventy years," Sam pointed out mournfully. "I never knew you were married," she added as an afterthought.

"You learn something new every day," Joe offered with a shrug of his shoulders.

Sam managed a weak smile in return. 2Yeah. I guess you do."

"Uh, look, Samantha... nothing's going to be accomplished by sitting around crying. Now that you've got it out of your system, don't you think you ought to tell the Captain or Commander Chakotay? There must be a lot to arrange."

"What am I going to do when he grows up? It's not much of a life here. It's so dangerous. What if something happened to me?" Sam asked, distraught.

"Then I'm sure someone would take care of him. None of us are alone out here, Samantha, even if it feels that way sometimes," Carey soothed her. "We all have to pull together to help. I'm great with kids; I'm willing to baby-sit when you need me to."

"Thanks," Sam whispered appreciatively, and Carey put an awkward arm around her shoulders.

"How about we go and have a game of pool in Sandrine's this evening?" Joe suggested. "Then you can go and explain the situation to the Captain. She's a woman; she'll understand how you feel."

He offered her his hand and helped her back onto her feet. Slowly she stood, her cheeks still tearstained, but a small watery smile on her face. "I'll - I'll see you tonight then, Lieutenant."

"Nineteen-hundred. And you can call me Joe."

"Only if you call me Sam," she shot back instantly. "Nineteen-hundred it is." With that, she left hurriedly, leaving Joe to fix the status display and look forward to that night.