Another Argument With a Friend

 Month 16 Day 6

1039 Hours

Drake MacGregor

 As soon as the alarm on his bed started to beep, Smitty tapped the button to turn it off, then turned on the dim light in the top of his bunk. Drake forced his eyes open and saw the engineer head for the bathroom. He'd been waiting for Smitty to wake up, and had nearly fallen asleep himself. If I didn't need to get this talk with him over with, I wouldn't have made an effort to stay awake. It's been a long time since I've worked the A shift.

Drake drug himself out of his bed without turning on any more lights, and followed Smitty to the bathroom. He blinked in the bright light as he entered. Smitty was adjusting the controls on the shower, and turned to see who had come in.

"Do you mind, Drake?"

"No, I don't mind," he answered. "And this is a barracks bathroom, Smitty."

"Yes, alright," he stated and turned back to his shower.

"We need to talk," Drake told his friend.

Smitty gave him a brief look of confusion. "About what?"

Drake paused to lock the bathroom door, which wasn't usually done for a barracks bathroom, but he was hoping to keep their conversation private. "We've narrowed down when Mac got pregnant."

Smitty scowled. "Sometime in the last 6 weeks. Yes. I was there."

"You didn't stick around for all of our discussion," Drake pointed out. "The machine says about 6 weeks, because that's about the right timing for the size the fetus is. But the first 1 to 3 weeks of that timeline is the female's body getting ready to be pregnant, if an egg gets fertilized."

"I've been through that class, MacGregor." The engineer sounded impatient.

"Well, Mac knows exactly when it happened, because it's the only night she's ever had sex."

Smitty stopped lathering up and turned his head to stare at him. "She says it's my child?"

Don't like the stubborn look he's got in his eyes. Has he been down this road before, with another woman who claimed her child was his? Not in the time I've known him, but there's years before that. "She says it happened the night before you two were to be married. She further says that you're the only man she's ever been with. Sexually."

"Oh. Well, if she says it, that must make it true," Smitty said tightly.

Blast, he's in full-blown denial. Drake stepped closer to the showers. "Smitty, have you ever had sex with her?"

Smitty frowned at him. "Yes," he finally admitted.

"And was it on the eve of the day you two were going to get married?"

Smitty turned off the shower and grabbed his towel. "Yes," he admitted again. "But... I don't know who she was with before she came to my quarters."

Full-blown denial. But why? When he proposed to her, he already thought she was pregnant! "Why does it matter, Smitty? When you proposed, you thought she was pregnant, and you didn't seem to care."

"I didn't," he admitted. "But I told her that any other children born to our marriage would be mine! And now, here she is, trying to pass this one off as mine, just so I'll marry her!"

"Smitty, she called off the marriage," Drake reminded him. He was gratified that Smitty stopped drying himself, at least momentarily. Maybe that got through to him, a little, at least. "Maybe she didn't like something you said that night. Like believing the stupid rumors that she was pregnant. Which she wasn't."

"Well, she is now." He wrapped the towel around himself. "And claiming it's mine. So, are we done here?"

Okay, then, if he's going to be stubborn, then it's on to Plan B. He stood up straighter and smiled. "Yeah, I guess we are. Thank you, Smitty. Now I can propose to her!"

"You!"

"Why not?" he asked. "I've been divorced a number of years. About time I settled down, try not to make the same mistakes again."

"You've never mentioned wanting to get married!"

"Well, neither did you, before you suddenly proposed to Mac. Doesn't mean I've never thought about it. I'm getting a little old to be gallivanting around the galaxy. I could ask to be transferred to any planet-side hospital, or even a space station. Surely the Fleet could use an engineer with her talents in that kind of environment, and she wouldn't need to be completely sidelined for 18 years while the child grew up."

"She's the same age as your daughter!"

He gave Smitty a pained look. "Well, I'm not quite that old. No, she's a few years older than my daughter. Maybe they could be friends." He smiled even more broadly. "Yeah, I like that idea. Assuming we're not somewhere halfway across the galaxy or something.

"You can't marry her!" Smitty declared. "She agreed to marry me!"

"And then she cancelled that agreement," Drake reminded him again. "Which didn't seem to please you at the time, I admit. But you can't have it both ways, Smitty. If you don't want her—and from what you've said, the way you're behaving, it certainly seems like you don't—then you can't keep her from accepting somebody else. Like me." He unlocked the bathroom door and left, returned to the bed next to where Smitty had been sleeping, and turned in, his back turned to the dim light coming from Smitty's bed.

Well, now I've done it, I suppose. If Smitty stubbornly decides he's not going to be 'trapped' into marriage, then I'll have to propose to her. And what's wrong with that? It would certainly solve her immediate problem. All of what I told Smitty was true, except I was thinking of asking for the transfer in another 5 years or so. No, seems to me there's a lot more positives to this plan than there are negatives.

Smitty came from the bathroom and went to his bed to get dressed. Several times, he sighed, and once, Drake felt Smitty staring at his back, as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't think what. Eventually, the bed light went out, Smitty left, and Drake settled into sleep.