“I’m what?” Kyle stared in shock at Soranik.
“I’ve checked the results multiple times,” the doctor said, reading her construct medical scanner again. “The fainting, the nausea, the irritability … all standard symptoms for a human. And every scan I’ve run confirms it.” She looked up at him and smiled. “You are pregnant.”
On the other side of the room, Guy snorted. He was hunched over on a chair, tears rolling down his cheeks as he tried to suppress his laughter.
“This isn’t funny, Guy!” Kyle shouted. Then he looked up at the man standing next to the bed. Hal had his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide in horror. Of all the terrifying things that Hal Jordan had faced in his life, impending fatherhood was apparently among the worst.
Kyle looked back at Soranik. “How could this happen?” he asked weakly.
She sighed. “To be honest, it defies every logical and scientific explanation. It’s not parthenogenesis. There are two contributing sets of DNA—yours and Hal’s. As for the actual mechanics of how it happened …” Soranik shook her head and shrugged. “I still haven’t figured that out. The only explanation I can come up with so far is the virus you were exposed to on the planet where the life-forms were a single sex. There are still traces of it in your blood. The virus must be an aid in their reproduction and apparently it can affect human males in some way that makes conception and pregnancy possible.”
“But Hal and Guy were exposed to the virus, too!” Kyle said. “Why am I the only one who gets pregnant?”
Guy coughed and wiped his eyes. “Well, some of us haven’t been getting ‘contributions of DNA’ from anyone,” he said smugly.
Kyle frowned. “But Hal has!”
They all looked at Hal. He now looked even more terrified than before. “No.” He shook his head and held up his hands. “No, it’s not possible. I haven’t been feeling sick!”
Soranik pointed her scanner at Hal. “You don’t always get obvious symptoms,” she said. She looked over the readouts, lips pursed and brows furrowed. Then she looked up at Hal and gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Shit.” Hal went pale and sat heavily on the bed next to Kyle. “Now I feel sick.”
“Wait! Are you saying they knocked each other up?” Guy laughed so hard he fell off his chair.