Page 76 of Slapshot Baby

I follow her into a room that's even more cheerful than the waiting area. She takes my blood pressure and leaves me alone with a paper gown.

Dr. Fernandez enters a few minutes later. She's petite with cropped silver hair and reading glasses on a chain around her neck.

She moves the ultrasound wand across my stomach. On the screen, a grainy, pulsing shape appears. It looks less like a baby and more like a stubborn little ghost refusing to come into focus.

"Everything looks good structurally. Measuring right on track. Strong heartbeat," she says.

That flicker is a heartbeat inside me.

My hand moves to my stomach. Hot and fierce warmth blooms behind my ribs.

I’m having a baby.

"There is one thing we need to discuss." She pulls up results on her tablet. The shift in her voice is subtle but unmistakable. "Your blood work flagged something."

The word flagged puts me on alert.

"You're Rh-negative," she says.

"Okay. Is that bad?"

"Not on its own. But your antibody screen found anti-D antibodies already present in your blood. For a first pregnancy, that's unusual."

I sit up straighter. "Unusual as in it’s not a big deal, or unusual as in brace yourself?"

She sets the tablet aside and faces me.

"Sometimes early in a first pregnancy, a small amount of the baby's blood crosses into the mother's circulation. A tiny bleed. Nothing you'd notice because there are no symptoms at all. But when the baby is Rh-positive and the mother is Rh-negative, that exposure triggers the mother's immune system to produce antibodies."

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"That your body has produced antibodies against your baby's red blood cells."

The room tilts.

"My body is attacking my baby?"

"Not actively. Not yet." She holds my gaze. "But those antibodies can cross the placenta. Since your body has already produced them this early, the baby is most likely Rh-positive, which means the baby inherited it from the father.”

I inhale to steady myself. Of course, Kai had to somehow be inserted in this.

“If the antibody levels rise, they can target the baby's red blood cells and destroy them. That causes fetal anemia."

"How bad can it get?" I ask.

"It ranges. In mild cases, we monitor and manage. In more severe cases, the baby may need blood transfusions before birth."

Before birth.

My baby might need transfusions before it's even born.

The clinical details keep coming. Monitoring schedules. Antibody titer checks. A maternal-fetal medicine specialist she wants to refer me to.

I hear maybe half of it because the other half of my brain is screaming into a void.

I want to crack a joke, but my mouth won't cooperate. It's too busy trying not to tremble.

"Ava, is the father involved?" Dr. Fernandez asks.