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Today, she was not alone or with family bodyguards. Instead, she and Olcan were headed to the doctor’s clinic for her first ultrasound. Though he had manually felt around during previous visits and guessed at how many babies were there, this would be the first chance she had to see them and get an idea of what to expect, though it was still too early on to be sure.
“All right, kids. Are we ready for this?” Doctor Kelly asked.
“Beyond ready,” Olcan told him, standing by her and holding her hand while she waited for the exam.
“Let’s see what we’ve got then, shall we?” he asked Niamh.
The tech came over and moved up Niamh’s shirt, smearing her belly with a bit of cold goo and placing a weird-looking sensor object on it. She flipped on a nearby monitor and began moving the probe around until images began to pop up on the screen beside them.
“Looks like you ate some beans and they swelled,” Olcan quipped as small images began to appear on the screen.
“That explains everything,” she replied, not taking her eyes off the images as they came into focus. “Of course. It was the beans.”
“There we are, not a whole lot to see just yet, but I count three bean pods,” the doctor said as he looked on, letting the tech handle the maneuvering and take measurements of some sort. When she was done, she handed Dr. Kelly the form she’d been writing on and he thanked her. She handed Niamh a cloth to wipe off her belly and left the room.
“All right, let’s go down to my office and have a chat,” Dr. Kelly told them.
Olcan helped her off the exam table and they followed him down to his office, waiting for him to take a seat and pull up something on a computer screen on his desk. He glanced back and forth between the form the tech had given him and the screen before addressing them. Niamh could feel herself trembling with anticipation and Olcan apparently could too. He reached for her hand and held it while they waited.
The doctor finally spoke, smiling broadly. “Everything looks good so far. I’ve been keeping a close eye on things to see if there will be any issues from prior damage to the cervix or birth canal and I don’t see any reason why you can’t complete this pregnancy without any problems whatsoever.”
Niamh could see Olcan looking at her, but she didn’t dare look back at him. Instead, he interrupted the doctor, “I’m sorry, what damage?” he finally asked.
“Oh. I assumed—well, from a medical standpoint, it’s not an issue, so I’m going to leave the discussion of that to be handled at home between the two of you. What you need to know from me is that Mom here appears healthy, the babies appear healthy. Unless one is hiding among them, it looks like three, though I can’t yet give you a sex on any of them. You can decide if that’s something you need to know further down the road.”
“Thank you, Doctor Kelly,” Niamh told him, knowing she’d have a lot of explaining to do once she and Olcan left. She knew she should have told him before he found out this way, but it was just so hard to discuss, especially with him.
They rode for a while in silence, the air tense around them. She kept trying to think of a way to broach the subject, but nothing seemed right and, down deep, she knew she just didn’t want to talk about it. She’d spent a long time now burying the painful memory of what she’d endured the same night she’d buried her husband. Much to her surprise though, he didn’t ask. Instead, he was quite understanding, finally breaking the silence himself.
“Listen, if you can’t talk about whatever the doctor referenced, I’m not going to force you to tell me. I just need to know that it’s not a problem for the pregnancy that I need to know about, and the doctor said it wasn’t. If you want to talk about it, I’m here, and I will listen whenever you are up to it.”
“Thank you,” she said, leaving it at that, but later that night, she told him the full story about what Sorley and his men did to her. She could see the anger flash in his eyes, but he kept his calm, instead just holding her while she cried. It was the first time she’d really let go of the pain, and it felt good to begin to move past it, finally.
“I’m glad I was the one who killed him, and if I ever find the others, I will kill them too,” he told her. “I promise you that.”
Niamh knew that this was the part where she should say she didn’t want them dead, that she had forgiven them and it was in the past, but she didn’t believe any of that. What they had done to her had been vile and disgusting and beyond cruel. If they would do it to her, how many more women out there might suffer at their hands. If the opportunity arose, she’d be happy to kill them herself for what they had done to her.
