It was fully dark and Casey was sitting in the command outbuilding looking at his formal report. Sweat dripped down his temple, and he ran a hand through his wet hair. The physical irritation barely registered to his subconscious. It was always stifling hot in August.
He really didn’t know what to write to his commanding officer. Duty said he should report the young woman’s acquisition, but Casey knew what that would entail: her immediate removal from his camp because of her very obvious pregnancy. Earlier that morning he’d decided to keep her close and wait for the right time to send her back to the city, so he didn’t want to report her presence just yet.
Casey’s new team just arrived at base last week, and moving the woman would require a team of four dispatched to St. Louis as an escort. At this juncture of the team’s development, a detachment of four would compromise the working relationships he needed to do his job right.
Besides, he reminded himself, he wanted to be there with the escort. It was clear she was a flight risk and frankly, he didn’t trust anyone to do the transport properly. Not only could his current rotation not handle her flight risk status correctly, he really didn’t think she’d make it back to St. Louis without delivering her baby.
He grumbled something intelligible and reached for a field training manual. Checking the index, Casey flipped to the correct passage. He ran his finger along the text searching for anything relevant. Eventually, he found a section about determining due dates based on abdomen size.
Casey let his mind drift back to when he studied her naked form at the river. He had forced her to bathe nude for several reasons, one of which was to remove the smell of stale sweat from her body. Another, of course, had been to gauge her belly size. Casey didn’t want to ponder the third reason too deeply. He pushed the disquieting thought aside and returned his focus to the paragraph in the book.
Apparently, if he measured from pubic bone to navel, her measurement in centimeters indicated her fetus’s developmental week.
Casey looked at his fingers and spread them until he figured his reach spanned forty centimeters.
He shook his head.
In his imagination, he placed his hands on her abdomen. He could envision his reach spanning her whole belly. She had to be a week—no more than two—away from delivery.
Groaning, he went back to the index at the back of the book. Casey was looking for the chapter about labor and delivery. He would need to read up on how to do a non-surgical fetal extraction. He flipped to the chapter and started to read.
He was a few pages into the chapter when a knock sounded at his door.
“Case?” Lincoln poked his head into the command center.
Casey grunted in response.
“You send that report yet?”
“Yeah,” Casey replied, and looked up from the book when Lincoln didn’t retreat right away. “You need something? She running?”
“No, nothing like that.” Lincoln looked back outside. “It’s almost shift change. Wu and Teo want to know if they should continue to guard her or go rest for their watch later tonight.”
Casey rubbed his face. He’d forgotten Wu and Teo were on runaway duty while she rested in his tent. “I’ll be right there. I need to quit for the night anyway.”
“What are you reading up on?”
“Labor and delivery. Looks like we might be handling one in the immediate future.”
“You think she’s that far along,” Lincoln asked. “I thought maybe a month. Enough time to ship her back, at least.”
“No that’s too long,” Casey grumbled. “I estimate a week. No more than two.” He turned to the communications device and clicked the power key to wake it. His report stared back at him. Unsent.
“I thought you said you sent it?”
With a suppressed sigh, Casey submitted his report before Lincoln could read over his shoulder. In the end, he reaffirmed his decision not to inform his commanding officer about the woman's presence. He would wait to see what happened with the chick over the next few weeks.
“I thought I had,” Casey lied.
Standing up from his desk, he powered down the equipment. The solar battery that ran the army issued device couldn’t sustain more than a few electronics at a time, and not for very long. Casey preferred not to test the battery’s limits. At least not with that glorified Morse code machine that he was required to use for official documentation. The army might investigate if they didn’t receive weekly correspondence from him, and that was one intervention he didn’t want to face while disobeying direct orders and housing the girl.
Casey joined Lincoln at the door. He turned off the one light in the small room and left the building, locking it behind him.
“Good night.” He said to Lincoln, as he pocketed the key and strode toward his tent for some well-deserved rest.
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