AllFreeNovel
Share Us
And yet I wouldn’t mind having someone to yell at right now.
A polite knock comes from the door behind me and I turn around to see a small Middle Eastern lady smiling at us. She introduces herself as the doctor on duty and asks if she can examine Landry. I begin to back away, but Landry grabs my hand.
“No... stay,” she asks me.
I glance at the doctor, and she nods agreeably.
“Won’t take too long,” she smiles rationally. “We just want to make sure that mother and baby are all right.”
Baby?
My breath stalls in my chest. Landry squeezes my hand and when our eyes meet, her expression is unmistakable. She knows she’s pregnant. She’s been trying to tell me. She’s been waiting for the right time. I guess that time is now.
A technician arrives, pushing a large machine to the foot of the bed. She plugs it in and sets it up, shaking a plastic bottle in her free hand. The doctor helps Landry raise her gown over her belly, and I see it now. There is a subtle swelling, just a thickening between her bony hips. I wouldn’t have even noticed it if I hadn’t been looking for it.
A grainy image jolts back and forth on the small screen as the technician drags the plastic wand back and forth over Landry’s belly. All four of us stare intently at the tiny screen, trying to make sense of the alien images there. Whooshing white noise comes through the speaker. It sort of sounds like windshield wipers underwater.
After a little while, the whooshing white noise becomes more regular, quick and steady. Landry’s eyes widen.
“Okay, yes, there is the heartbeat,” the doctor announces with a smile.
Concentrating, the technician blindly moves the wind, centimeter by centimeter, searching for some magical combination of position and pressure that will change the image on the screen. She gets to one spot and stops, then sweeps the device all the way back to Landry’s other hip. It seems to take forever, but finally there is something. A trapezoidal shape in the middle, filled with a jerking blob that’s bigger on one side than the other. Inside the blob is a perforated line on one side, and jumping forms on the other.
The doctor reaches out and taps the screen. “Right there. That’s the heart,” she announces.
With a keyboard stroke, the technician freezes the image, then uses a mouse to circle various parts, apparently measuring them against each other. If I squint, it does sort of look like a misshapen head on one side, and a much smaller, even more misshapen body on the other.
Actually, it looks like she’s going to be giving birth to a gummy bear.
“Okay! This looks good!” the doctor finally affirms.
“Is it… all right? Is my baby all right?” Landry asks in a trembling voice.
The sound startles me. My baby. Is that really what she said? Is it already so settled in her mind?
“Well, you’re still quite early along. But everything looks very normal to me,” the doctor smiles, squeezing Landry’s hand sympathetically. “You’re right at thirteen weeks. You have a regular doctor? Midwife?”
Landry nods. Another surprise. She’s been going to an obstetrician? What else has she been keeping from me?
The technician switches off the machine and Landry pulls her gown back down. The doctor marks on the clipboard and hangs it on the back of the bed.
“The nurse will be in to talk to you shortly,” she explains. “I don’t see any reason we need to keep you here. If you’re feeling all right, you can go home tonight, if you like?”
Landry nods enthusiastically. “Yes, my sister’s here. She’ll take care of me.”
“All right then. I’ll get your paperwork finished right away.”
When the door closes, Landry finally looks up at me.
“I’m so sorry,” she begins to whisper.
“Well, no way!” I cut her off. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Nothing at all. Please don’t do that. Everything is going to be okay, Landry, okay? Everything. It will be all right.”
Landry’s eyes flicker down and I see that the ultrasound technician left her a small piece of paper with a printout of the grainy image from the machine. I don’t entirely understand what she’s looking at, but Landry is looking at it with such intensity it is startling. She looks completely in love. She looks like she is really committed to this.
“I don’t have any reception in here,” I explain softly, glancing at my cell phone. “I’m going to go out to the lobby and see about getting us a Lyft or a taxi, okay?”
She nods, not taking her eyes off the ultrasound picture. I just take a deep breath and head out, following the blue line back to where we came from. Nurses and visitors all offer me the same cautious, sympathetic smile. You never know why you are seeing someone in a hospital. Could be tragic. Could be a near miss. Could be anything.
