A Love Beyond the Stars – Signs and Portents
Oh yes we'll keep on trying
Hey tread that fine line
Yeah we'll keep on smiling yeah
And whatever will be - will be
We'll just keep on trying
We'll just keep on trying
Till the end of time
Till the end of time
Chapter Three
The Ragged Edge
“Can you believe how stupid your momma Willow has been?” Willow asked her baby daughter in a funny voice. “Not at all prepared for a bumpy ride and then falling on her funny little face?”
Not understanding a word but nevertheless liking the voice of her mother, Hope giggled happily and tried to get hold of some of Willow’s now longer red hair with her tiny little hands.
Tara however, standing near the sideboard, rolled her eyes, “Will you give it a rest?!” she said annoyed. “It’s been five weeks since your hurt your knee!”
“But I should’ve known better Tara,” Willow said miserably. “Always a hand for the ship, that’s one of the most basic rules aboard any ship in the force. Especially when you’re in a combat situation or if the ship is making a run from the shockwave of a nova.”
“But that’s in the past! And nothing you’re telling now will change a thing!” Tara said, her voice getting a bit louder now.
“It just annoys me that I made such a stupid mistake!” Willow began again.
“Cut it out Willow!” Tara yelled and Hope looked alarmed into her direction. “You know, I have it up till here with you moaning constantly about this stupid accident!”
With that Tara turned on her heels and stormed out of their living quarters.
Flabbergasted Willow started at the opposite wall, totally surprised by her wife’s sudden emotional outburst.
She then looked down at Hope who was now reaching for her mother’s dog tags dangling in front of her.
“What’d you mean? Has Momma been a little bit whiney in the past days?” she asked Hope.
“I say you certainly have been, Mayor.”
Willow head snapped around to see Kathryn Pulaski standing in the doorway through which Tara had just left.
“May I come in?” The elderly physician asked politely. Not waiting for an answer she stepped in and closed the massive bulkhead behind herself.
“Doctor Pulaski!” Willow said surprised.
“And I thought we were on first name basis,” Kathryn Pulaski wondered while making the beeline for the chair opposite her patient.
“Of course we are,” Willow said sheepishly. “But in my defense it’s been a while since we last met. Speaking of which, have you already met our daughter?”
She held Hope up so Kathryn Pulaski could see her.
“May I introduce you to Hope Alexandra Maclay,” she said and right on cue Hope giggled happily at seeing a new face.
“You wanna hold her?”
“Oh yes please!” Kate beamed and walked around the table to sit down right next to Willow on the sofa. “It’s been a while since I last held a baby,” she said thoughtfully. “My youngest grandchild is twelve; she and her mother are on the Rising Star.”
She felt silent for a bit before she went on, more quiet now. “If only my son and his family had been out in space by the time of the attacks.”
Seeing Kathryn Pulaski sit there with Hope in her arms, Willow realized how Hope would grow up without grandparents or an uncle for that matter. Though given that Willow was an only child and Tara’s brother and father had cast her out for her being a lesbian, she might not known them in any case.
Still, it was a thought that made her quiet sad.
At least Hope wouldn’t be an only child, though Willow and Tara had not yet decided on when to “initiate” Willow’s pregnancy.
After a view minutes Kate handed Hope back to Willow, who carefully laid her now sleeping daughter into her cradle.
“Now back to the reason for my visit,” Pulaski said and got her briefcase. “Sorry I couldn’t manage to see you sooner but I have been rather busy over at the Geminon Exxpress.”
“No problem,” Willow assured her physician, though she had started to wonder why she hadn’t heard from her until now.
She also had been unable to contact Pulaski herself, since these days it was still quiet hard to find out where people had gone after the second exodus.
“Anyway,” Kate Pulaski broke Willow’s train of thoughts. “For the past few hours, I’ve been going over your case notes with Doctor Cottle. Though mind you, half the time I spend on fighting to keep him from lighting cigarettes all the time!
“I mean, did I survive all of this just to die of secondhand smoking?”
Dr. Pulaski extracted some papers from her briefcase, including a set of x-rays, presumably both sets taken from the day of the accident as well as the control pictures, taken only yesterday.
“As you know Willow,” Kate began, “Cottle decided to have the swelling reduced first, before we decided on further treatment.
“With the knee that much swollen, it was hard to precisely deduce how much damage your knee had suffered. And that’s of course the reason why it had to be immobilized.” She pointed at the brace that kept Willow’s knee from bending.
Willow too looked at her knee now; she certainly didn’t need to be reminded of what her knee had gone through on Kobol what with the crash and that bullet she took from a Cylon Centurion. It had taken such a long time to get back on her feet and walking again…
Of course it wouldn’t have taken as long if she hadn’t gone completely to pieces over the loss of her flight status.
She turned her attention back to Kate Pulaski who was holding an x-ray up to the light.
“I will be honest with you Willow,” she said solemnly, “it looks bad. Falling onto the already injured knee joint has damaged it even further and I’m afraid, no conventional surgery will able to put it back together without you losing even more mobility in your knee. It might even be rendered completely unbendable.”
Whatever little hope Willow had sustained over the past weeks fell to pieces. She had gotten used to walking supported by a cane and the slight limp that came with it. But at least she had been able to move relatively freely but what if she lost even more mobility?
Willow’s mood darkened even further as she started to imagine what further consequences her continuing disability would have.
However at that moment her mind pointed out a particular thing Pulaski had said to her.
“You said,” she began slowly, “that no ‘conventional’ surgery could save my knee.”
Kate nodded and placed the x-rays in front of her on the table. “Yes, conventional in terms of reconstruction surgery, since your knee joint is so badly damaged.” She paused for a bit before she continued. “What we can do however, is to replace your knee joint with an artificial one.”
“But, but, but…” Willow stammered, sounding remarkable like a chicken. “But back then, I mean after Kobol, you told me that it could not be replaced, because there was no such thing anywhere left in the fleet.”
Another detail forced itself into Willow’s mind. “You also told me that there was no… no… well no specialist ether to build such a ragged thingy!
“So are you now about to tell me that you actually have found such a specialist after all?”
“No I haven’t,” Dr. Pulaski shook her head.
“Then why are we talking about this?!” Willow yelled, startling little Hope who started to cry. “Sorry Hope,” Willow said and gently lifted the crying baby out of the cradle.
“There, there,” she said musingly and caressed Hope’s cheek who soon stopped crying and to Kate Pulaski she said. “Sorry for going ballistic on you Kate.
“It’s just…” she let out a sigh. “It had been so hard losing my flight status and needing a cane for support and now my knee is even more damaged.” She took a calming breath.
“So Doctor Pulaski Kate, how can you replace my knee joint when there’s no one to make the artificial one?”
“Believe me I understand how you’re feeling,” Pulaski assured her. “We’ve all been under a lot of pressure lately, well ever since this all began.” She shook her head, as if she needed to clear her mind from all the bad memories she had gathered.
“Now,” she began anew, “I couldn’t find a specialist to build the necessary spare parts to get you going again.”
That earned her a wicked half grin from her patient and a sarcastic: “It really cheers me up if you speak of me like a broken car that needs fixing. And I don’t need spare parts! Only one!”
“Now I talked about your case with some people on my ship and I think we can make this work,” Kate explained.“
“What people?” Willow asked carefully, no longer sure were this conversation was leading.
“Daniel Briggs, he’s a precision engineer.
“Jennifer Doronkien, a dental technician.
“And Emil Steinberger…”
At this point Willow refused to be surprised anymore then she already was, however her face belied her effort when Kate concluded.
“… a master watch maker.”
Willow’s chin dropped to her breast and her eyes went as big as a saucers, “You’ve got to be kidding,” she eventually pressed out in a hoarse voice. “That sounds to me like the start of a bad joke, you know like ‘an engineer, a technician and a watch maker meet in a bar…”
“Really, I don’t know this one, how does it go?”
“This isn’t funny!”
“No, it isn’t,” Pulaski said calmly. “But I’m serious about what I said. All these persons are specialists when it comes to building small and delicate objects. In addition Doronkien is a expert at working with the kind of materials we intent on using.”
“So you have these people… experts to do it” Willow said, “and what about the materials?”
“We’re still working on that one,” Pulaski answered. “You see the standard materials we need aren’t around, so we’re looking into alternatives that could be expected to perform to the parameters that are set for an artificial knee joint.”
“You’re not doing a really good job here Kate, convincing me that this is a good idea,” Willow said doubtfully.
“I assure you Willow we are doing our best.”
Willow sighed. “Just promise me you don’t equip me with some Mark II Viper spare parts will you.”
“Mark VII?”
“Okay!”
Again both women laughed.
“So do you have some old blueprints you can use on me?” Willow asked next.
“Not exactly blueprints, no,” Pulaski explained. “I have found some books on the subject and I also managed to find very useful information on Galactica’s educational database.
“I’m telling you; who ever set up this database did a very god job.”
“That would be Tara,” Willow said.
“Did she?”
Willow nodded proudly.
“Then tell her that I really appreciate what she did here.”
“I will,” Willow said. ‘Provided she’ll ever talk to me again,’ she added in her mind.
“So what we are going to do, if you decided to go with this procedure,” Pulaski continued, “is to make some additional x-rays and also a session with the MRI, the Magnetic Resonance Imaging. From that we’ll construct and build that new knee joint.
“Once we made sure that it is working properly, we can do the replacement surgery.”
“Sounds all pretty straight forward to me,” Willow said.
Pulaski slowly nodded her white haired head, “basically it is. Medically speaking it is a quite common procedure.
“Of course there are always risks, like the long hours of anaesthesia and some other risks I’ll be telling you about later on. However, as you very well know, these are no longer common times so it will take much longer until you will actually undergo the procedure.
“We need to construct your knee joint from scratch, as well as search out alternative materials we can use and that means additional testing before we can think about transplanting it.”
“So what does that mean for me here and now?” Willow asked, looking at her splinted leg.
“First of all, that you have to be patient,” Pulaski said kindly. “We’re talking about several months here.”
“Several months,” Willow cried out. “What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“For one, you need to think about the two options I’ve laid out to you here – after all you can still decide against this rather risky procedure.” Pulaski then explained some of the other risks involved with the procedure.
“You’re right,” Willow said, after Kate had finished. “That certainly gives me something to think about while you are building me that new knee joint.”
“Of course it is also important for you to continue to work out and stay in top form, for the operation and the following convalescence.
“But there’s an even more important task that you have to undertake in the coming weeks,” Pulaski said and got to her feet.
“And what’s that?” Willow wondered.
“Spend as much time with you angel baby girl here as you can.” She gently stroke Hope’s cheek. “And now you must excuse me Willow but I have some more patients to see aboard Galactica.”
And with that she left Willow alone. Alone with a cat who had started chasing a gummy ball through the living room, a soundly sleeping baby and one of the most important decisions she ever would have to make in her life.
***
Willow found herself in the middle of a green field under the dark night sky, a single full moon hanging in the sky illuminating the earth beneath it.
Willow turned slowly around; there were nothing but grassy fields surrounding her. She started to walk down the hill she had been standing on and only then she started to feel the grass beneath her feet. Looking down at her bare feet she also noticed that she wasn’t wearing her uniform anymore but a sort of rudimentary dress, made from a primitive woven fabric.
In the meantime, having walked up another hill, Willow found herself looking down into a valley.
It was covered with some tress and without thinking about it, Willow made her way down the hill and towards a small fire that was burning in midst an opening surrounded by the tress.
Sitting around the fire, Willow could make out some people, with another two standing as sentries.
As the sentries became aware of Willow approach, they turned towards her raising, what looked like, primitive spears.
By now some of those on the ground stood as well and they too had spears.
Willow didn’t feel alarmed at all but raised her own spear in greeting, which only now she realised she was carrying in the first place.
The night darkened, as some clouds hid the moon. [“Where have you put it?!”]
In the distance some animal was howling.
A baby was crying.
Hope was crying.
Willow sat herself up on the sofa, on which she had fallen asleep.
The dream still very present, it took her a moment to fully come to her senses.
It had felt so real that even now she believed to be still feeling the soft grass beneath her feet. She glanced quickly at her watch – it was well past 1900 hours!
Tara had been gone for several hours now!
Crying even harder Hope demanded her mother’s immediate attention and Willow leaned over the cradle to see what her daughter was in need of.
“Hope you don’t mind I let myself in?” came a cheerful voice from the bulkhead and Willow turned around to see Buffy Summers standing on the threshold.
Still wearing her flight suit, ‘Slayer’ obviously came right from flying cap.
“Oh good you’re here,” Willow said relieved. “Tara isn’t back yet and Hope needs a change.”
This announcement produced an immediate reaction in ‘Slayer’, who with a hint of panic on her face turned around, to leave again – fast!
Unfortunately, while still holding onto to the handle, in turning around Buffy closed the bulkhead in front of her and walked right into it, hitting the metal surface - hard!
“Didn’t that hurt?” Willow wondered, as Buffy closed the bulkhead for good, then turning around pretending like nothing had just happened.
“Na.”
“And what was this sudden change of direction when I needed aid anyway. If I didn’t know better I would say you were trying to run away.”
Buffy’s features, slightly marked by her close encounter with the bulkhead, turned uneasy again.
“Don’t tell me,” Willow laughed and lifted Hope from the cradle, who calmed down a bit. “Captain Buffy Anne Summers, who fights Cylons in ship to ship combat and hand to hand if she needs to, is afraid of changing the diapers of a little baby.”
“Well, in my defence… a Viper is much more robust than a baby!” Buffy protested.
“Oh come on, I’ll talk you through it ‘Slayer’!” Willow said lightly. “Don’t make me pull ranks Captain!”
“”You wouldn’t dare Mayor!”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“Perhaps you would at least try,” Buffy said wriggly, “okay, what must I do?”
In no time Hope was changed and soon sat happily on her Aunty Buffy’s lap, playing with Buffy’s dog-tags.
“Saw your wife by the way…” Buffy said casually.
“Tara?”
“Of course or do you have any other wives I should know of?”
“Ha, ha, very funny,” Willow said with a pout and then asked. “Where have you seen Tara?”
“Down at Joe's Bar.“
“Our new ship’s pub?“
“Yes, unless there’s another one. “
“Oh cut it out!“ Willow said and gave her daughters godmother a wry laugh. “So how was she?”
“Tara?” Buffy asked back, “oh she really looked to me like she really needed to blow of some steam. You know drinking, flirting…”
“But she’s married!” Willow burst out, “I mean she’s still breast feeding, so she can’t drink!”
“Relax Will,” Buffy laughed. “You know she would never do one or the other.” She shook her head. “You know she really only needed a break and get out of these four walls for a change, have a drink of juice and talk a bit with your friend Jessica.”
“I know,” Willow said ruefully. “I’ve been a real pain in her back lately.”
“I imagine as much,” Buffy said. “I’ve offered her to sleep in my bunk for this night, by the way.”
“You’ve what?!”
“Relax, she’s not breaking up with you or anything like it,” Buffy assured her best friend. “She just wants one night on her own and then she’ll be back again first thing in the morning.”
“On her own,” Willow repeated doubtfully, “surrounded by lots of hot young female pilots.”
“Only one or two, the others are flying the nightshift.”
“So!” Buffy went on, startling Willow. “Mind if I bunk with you tonight?”
Willow gave her a critical all over look.
“Okay,” she said, “but I’m telling you, if you start snoring you’ll find yourself sleeping on the couch right away!”