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“Are you sure?” he asked, needing to pull himself together.
“I’m sure. You go.”
He kissed her and left the room to make the call.
“He’s had enough excitement for one day,” she said, her gut leading her. “I’ll tell him if there’s anything more to tell.”
The doctor spent a long time looking at it and taking measurements, and then at the baby’s heart and did some more looking around. She looked at Katrina’s last name, a common Acadian name, but she remembered her saying at the first appointment that her mother was a pediatrician. “Isn’t your mother Jessie Blanchard?”
“She was,” Katrina said. “She’s been gone a couple of years.”
“I’m so sorry. She was my pediatric cardiology attending during my residency.”
Back to the exam, for the next ten minutes, the doctor explained what she was looking for, measurements that meant certain things, and everything looked good until she got to the back of the baby’s neck.
“This area right here, can you see where I’m pointing?” She made some measurements again while Katrina looked on, terrified. “This area is a little thicker than we want it to be. It’s a fluid-filled space that usually goes away by the time you’re thirteen weeks, which is why we like to do the ultrasound in the first trimester.”
“What does it mean?”
Her heart thumped in her chest.Bang, bang, bang. She was so glad Dave wasn’t in the room. The doctor looked at her with concern, raising anguish in Katrina that made her want to scream.
“It could indicate a chromosomal issue. Trisomy 21. We’ll do more testing to be sure.”
“Is there anything you can do about it?”
“Oh no, nothing like that.”
“Well, I don’t want to know, then,” she said, her voice one octave away from shrill. “I’m not going to terminate. You saw the father. He’s in love with this baby already.”
“Of course, it’s entirely up to you. Everything else looks great. His heart is fine; the length of his femur is okay. He’s tiny, but he’s proportionate. We’ll do another ultrasound again in a few months.”
“Can things change? Could he develop a heart issue later?”
“His heart was developed by eight weeks. The heart looks great.”
“Well, I don’t want another ultrasound, then. If he’s got something wrong that we can’t fix, what’s the point of knowing?” Katrina lost the battle to stay calm but didn’t want to get shrill in case Dave came back into the exam room. “I’d make myself nuts.”
The doctor ended the ultrasound, wiping the gel off Katrina with a tissue and then offering her an arm to pull herself up.
“There’s no reason to do any further testing if you don’t want to. In a few months we do standard blood work and that will tell us definitively so you and Dave can prepare. No matter what, you’ll get ready for your baby. They all need the same thing. You’re doing a great job, Katrina. I’m sorry you’re upset.”
“I’ll live,” she said, giving her standard answer.
The ride back to Cypress Cove was a study in self-control for Katrina. Her goal at that moment was in service to Dave. She would do what she had to, to protect him, to support him, to help him in any way she could. And then when the final verdict was confirmed on the baby’s condition, she’d share the news with him.
That night in bed, her hands over her belly, she thought of the little baby boy inside her. Self-control also made it possible for her not to obsess regarding the baby’s condition. And Dave was over the moon. He called everyone in his circle that she knew, and some she didn’t know, to tell them the news. He was going to be a father to a boy. A son.
Like a miracle, a flutter inside her got her attention, a yet unfamiliar butterfly-wing feeling.
“Dave,” she whispered, “are you sleeping yet?”
“I’m awake,” he said, rolling over to face her.
“Give me your hand.”
He offered it and she placed it over her belly. On cue, there it was again, a little tap, tap from within.
“Wow, that’s so cool! He’s moving around already.”
