When the Bough Breaks - 167

Bud is preparing to return to JAG. He routinely Emails Coats, still aboard the carrier Seahawk with Singer, standing up "for practice." Ht, still worried about B "overdoing it," whined to Meredith about it when she was visiting Chegwidden. So Meredith came up with "sit down" busy work to coerce C into coercing B to do: reading 6 major volumes of work by Shakespeare. C was very concerned not to make B feel like his own choice of reading (comic books, star trek stuff) wasn't "good enough" but Meredith persisted. B was able to rapidly return the books because he said he "already knew the stories." Macbeth was "Dagger of the mind," Tempest was "Requiem for Methuselah" and Hamlet was "conscience of the King" all Star Trek episodes. He said that he was writing a fan fiction story himself for a web magazine based on Richard the Third called "Picard the Third."

Singer had wanted to become indispensable to the Captain by studying continually. "All work and no play makes Lauren a dull girl," Coates told Mac. Her vomiting, "sea sickness," had subsided and she since has been eating ravenously such that she had her uniform let out at the waist. She was watching on the catwalk when an arresting cable snapped killing a Boatswains mate trying to remove some FOD from the deck prior to a Hornet landing. After her heavy handed interviews she wanted to court-martial "all men that had a hand in putting those men in that position," seven in all including the Air Boss, LSO and Pri Fly lens operator. Captain Johnson was astounded and requested a "second opinion" from C. And, after S got light headed on the bridge he ordered her to sick bay, found that she was pregnant and filed conduct charges against her. So C sent H to give the second opinion and M to investigate S.

M talked to many people and couldn't find anyone who even liked her "let alone …." But S refused to give any information about the father except that the incident occurred about 3 1/2 months ago before she came aboard the ship. Her refusal to talk made M suspicious but when she could find absolutely no one who might be the father she had to drop the case. H called Manetti and asked her to "nose around" about S telling her "you'll know what your looking for when you find it." Manetti found that the barman at Benzinger's recognized S as a "tag along" with those JAG people who seemed to not really want her along. He also saw her with a "nondescript, sandy haired man" acting very happy and sitting in the back booth for a long time shortly before she left. Harm thought it was Sergei but didn't say anything to M. On the way back to JAG, H told S that he thought it was Sergei and she said nothing except that she was going to have an abortion.

All the men refused to talk to H about the incident because S had "turned all your witnesses into suspects." S said that her shock at witnessing the death had nothing to do with the report she filed. She thought rules were black and white and didn't understand why the captain wouldn't take her word. H told her that he was sticking to the rules like she always did. When H told the captain that the men's silence spoke to a cover-up and charges being appropriately filed, Johnson became very upset thinking he was "loosing it." He made mistake jumping to conclusion S was guilty and then that his men were innocent so he said he was resigning. After that everyone started to talk to H. He called everyone together in a "show" to convince Johnson not to retire. A Tomcat made a heavy and off center landing but the LSO PO wrote it up as normal. The F18 "Super" Hornet landed but Pri-Fly misdialed for a Hornet, 8,000# lighter. It "added" the equivalent of 15 traps to the wire but it still was within navy guidelines. Chief Kaufenhaus realized excessive run out on prior landing to 184" but reg's don’t call for in depth inspection until 185". Technically ALL were responsible but no ONE person was to blame. He said he was filing an amended report and Johnson asked "who the show was for." H said he shouldn't resign and he replied that he found "arguing with attorneys was rarely a winning proposition." M stayed onboard to replace S for 2 weeks until reaching Norfolk.