Page 74 of Omega’s Forward

“Oh my god, he’s still there. I’m going to take that as good amazing then.”

I hope it is. I’m still not sure. Whatever is between us is too fragile to name right now.

“But that’s not why I called. The clinic called to say that they have photographers camped out front. It seems they’ve got a celebrity coming this afternoon and someone leaked her appointment time. They’re suggesting you go in through the side entrance. Apparently, it’s a circus out there.”

“Thanks, we’ll do that.”

“We? I think I better upgrade that amazing to incredible.”

“Maybe,” I say. “Thanks, Priya.”

There’s a pause. “He flew out to you in the middle of the season, Everett,” she says. “Even I know what that means, and I find hockey as pointless as you do.” Then she’s gone, before I have to answer that.

*

I’m not sure that anyone here would recognize Brody Callahan but we take the side entrance anyway. Neither of us are in the mood to walk past the crowd of photographers out front.

In the waiting room he folds himself onto a chair built for smaller men and picks up a pregnancy magazine.

An older woman across the room keeps glancing at him. I watch her try to place him, wondering if he is the reported celebrity and give up. She then turns her attention to me, but looks away with disinterest far too quickly for my ego.

“Mr. Rourke?” The sonographer is brisk and Scottish and completely uninterested in who either of us might be.

We follow her down the hallway and into a small room. I get myself up onto the bed and lift my shirt.

The gel is cold. Brody stands beside me, looking far too nervous for an alpha the size of a small truck. It’s weirdly endearing.

She presses the wand down and the room fills with the sound of my baby’s heartbeat: fast, urgent, absurdly loud, a horse at full gallop through static.

Brody doesn’t move. He stares at the screen — the curled shape in the dark, the flicker at the middle of it — then he reaches down without looking and finds my hand.

“That’s the heart,” the sonographer says, to the enormous silent man, taking pity. “Good and strong. Baby’s measuring right on schedule.”

“Okay,” he says, hoarse.

Then, because he has apparently been saving them up since the airport, the questions arrive.

Is the heart rate supposed to be that fast? Is travel a problem, later, if the baby needed to fly. Does stress reach the baby. And whether stairs — he does not look at me — whether six flights of stairs, daily, would be a concern.

“Exercise is fine,” the sonographer says. “Stairs included.”

I have never liked a medical professional more in my life. Brody grunts, nods, and types something into his phone.

“Do you want to know the sex? We can usually tell at this stage.”

“No,” we say, together, and then look at each other.

It’s the first thing we’ve agreed on.

She prints the pictures. Brody asks for his own copy before she’s finished offering, and I watch him open his wallet and fold the picture into the slot behind his player ID, where the leather has already shaped itself to the card. Then he puts his hand back on my shoulder and leaves it there while I wipe the gel off.

*

He waits until we’re back in the flat to give me the paper.

“Before I forget,” he says, which is a lie. He’s been checking his inside pocket since the clinic. He puts a folded document on the kitchen counter and slides it across.

“What is it?”