“You think you’re about ten weeks along?”
The OB/GYN peers over her glasses at the monitor, scanning my chart. I’d spent fifteen minutes in the waiting room, surrounded by other women in various stages of pregnancy, filling out page after page of questions. Yet she asks me the same ones I’d already answered.
“Around there.”
The doctor’s gaze slides from the screen to me. “How long have you known?” she asks. The way she’s assessing me says there’s a right way and a wrong way to answer, and I don’t know which is which.
“I think I was about seven or eight weeks? Maybe a little less?”
The doctor’s mouth purses, and she looks at me over her glasses the same way she did my chart. “You’re supposed to come in at seven weeks so we can make sure everything looks good with the pregnancy, that it isn’t tubal, and to start vitamins. I assume you’re not taking prenatals?”
One thin brow arches, and I want to snap, of course I am.
Except I’m not.
“No.”
The look the doctor gives me says she didn’t think so, and she turns her attention back to the computer. She types notes into my chart slowly and deliberately.
“I’ve been busy.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, but the excuse sounds as lame coming out as it had in my head. I didn’t want to tell her the real reason, that I’ve been trying my best to pretend I’m not pregnant at all, that the sickness in the afternoon is stress. Maybe if I ignored the problem, it would go away. And I certainly can’t tell her the baby’s father is a Russian mob boss, or that I waited until he was out of town to go to the doctor so he wouldn’t find out.
Except now the morning sickness I thought was mild is ramping up. It’s so bad in the middle of the afternoon that I have to tell Evgeny not to disturb me so I can throw my guts up in private for an hour.
Alona knows. I’m sure of it. She brings me tea and crackers daily, silent as I heave up the little I’ve eaten. Both help settle my stomach so I can go on pretending I’m okay for the rest of the day. And I’m pretty sure the older woman hasn’t told a soul. Yet, anyway.
I don’t know how much longer I can keep this a secret.
The OB/GYN gets up from her stool and crosses the room to retrieve a rolling cart with an instrument and a small monitor.“We’re going to do an ultrasound to check the baby and make sure everything looks good.”
“Okay.”
“And then I’ll give you a prescription for prenatals, although you can take whatever brand you want as long as it contains folic acid and not a lot of sugar, and order blood tests for you. Have you ever had genetic testing done?”
“No.”
The rush of information whirls around my head as the doctor has me lie back on the upright end of the exam table and lift my shirt.
“This is going to be cold,” she warns, but I barely feel it as she squirts gel onto my still-flat stomach.
My mind is still stuck on the genetic testing question. Do I need to get it done? Does Evgeny need it, with known issues in his family’s imperial history?
Jesus, this kid is half Evgeny and three-quarters Russian, with ties to the last Russian dynasty and Queen Victoria herself. Never mind their father’s occupation, both legal and illicit.
What the hell am I doing bringing a kid with all that on their shoulders into the world?
“Okay. Let’s see what we see.”
I gulp as the doctor sets the wand on my abdomen. At first I hear a soft whooshing, like ocean waves, followed by a steady pulse.
“Is that?—”
“The baby.”
The doctor smiles for the first time since she walked into the room, and a sense of wonder creeps in with the fear.
There really is a baby in there, a growing being I can hear.
