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Bone measurements were taken. Circumferences, too.
“And the heartbeat?” Winston actually seemed to be directing the test, though she knew that wasn’t true.
The monitor on her belly lifted, settled, moved, lifted, settled again. “There.”
What there? She saw nothing different about the blurs of black and white, shadow and light, she’d been staring at all along. And then she heard it. The faint thumping. When the technician reached over, turned a button, it grew louder. Much louder.
“It’s so fast,” she said, frowning up from her supine position.
“It’s supposed to be,” Winston’s voice came more strongly to her than the medical professional’s who was right beside her. Not because it was louder. It was just what she heard.
“Babies’ heart rates are faster than ours,” the technician clarified, and then asked, over her shoulder, to Winston, “You a doctor of some kind?”
“No. I’m a soldier.”
“I have to hand it to you, then. You’re probably the most knowledgeable first-time dad I’ve ever had.”
“I did some reading.”
He had? When?
Could the technician tell that Emily’s heart rate had just increased? Would that be sounding on the screen next?
“Okay, let’s see if we can get this little one to move enough for us to tell whether we’ve got a boy or a girl...”
Emily stared at the screen off to her right, her heart searching for Winston. Wanting to hold his hand. The monitor on her stomach moved, lifted, pushed, slid, lifted. Until finally, the technician sighed. “Looks like you’ve got yourselves a stubborn one,” she said. “I’ve taken screenshots that I’ll share with my colleague, but I can’t get this little one to move enough to give us a clear look.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Winston. “Do you have a preference?” she asked him. “A boy or a girl?”
“No.”
“How about you?” She looked at Emily, smiling.
She’d been kind of thinking, when she’d first inseminated, that she’d have a boy, someone to take after his father. But now... “Nope. I just want a healthy baby.”
And a loving home in which to raise it.
“Well, you’ve got that,” she said, turning things off and wiping the gel from Emily’s belly. She gave them a couple of instructions—where to collect the video the clinic would be providing to them, who to see on their way out. Emily wasn’t seeing the doctor that day, so they were done.
She paused in the doorway as Emily sat up and started to right her shirt. “Your baby’s a lucky one, to have a father as dedicated as you.”
“I’m only here to make certain that I know the parameters of Emily’s pregnancy so that I can plan for any possible eventualities,” he said.
If Emily’s entire emotional being hadn’t just dropped from the words alone, they would have when she saw the shocked look that crossed the technician’s face before the twentysomething hightailed it out of there.
Wow. After they’d just seen their baby move. Heard their baby’s heartbeat...
Winston hadn’t lost his memory, like she’d momentarily feared in their office the other night. No, he seemed to have lost something far more critical. His heart.
* * *
He had to find a way to factor the rapid thadump, thadump, thadump of a minuscule cardiac organ into his mission. He’d heard the indisputable fact.
Had caught himself grinning for a second there.
Grinning. Him, a man who’d lived in the middle of bloody carnage, had been...moved. He didn’t know what to make of that, either.
How did an emotionally aware guy like himself, one who knew that the illusion of love was as make-believe as Santa Claus, at least where his own capabilities were concerned, get moved by shadows on a screen?
