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“I knew something was up. Something was different. You look different.” He smiles.
“I made a doctor’s appointment,” I tell him. “They’ll tell us how far along I am. I think I’m at least five weeks along. You want to come?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Let’s not tell Knox yet. Not until we know everything is okay,” I tell him.
***
“Are you nervous?” J.R. asks. He’s sitting in a chair across from me in the examination room at my doctor’s office.
I’m not nervous. I’m uncomfortable. I’m in a paper gown, laid up on this table, and trying to be patient. Waiting for a doctor is not my favorite pastime. I actually don’t enjoy waiting at all, but I’m more apt to get agitated in a doctor’s office. Especially when I’m nude beneath a flimsy gown.
“No. Are you?” I ask him.
“Little bit.”
“Well, when the doctor comes in, you won’t want to be sitting there. With that view, you’ll see parts of me that you will wish had stayed a mystery.” I laugh. Life is easier for men, I think.
“Thank you for the warning,” J.R. says with a smile, and he moves to my side.
Finally, there’s a knock on the door, and the doctor comes in. He’s a young guy, and I think he can’t have been doing this long. It makes me a little nervous. I definitely don’t care to be a novice doctor’s guinea pig.
J.R. greets the doctor. “Dr. Tyler, I’m J.R.”
“Nice to meet you.” Dr. Tyler shakes J.R.’s outstretched hand, and then he turns to me. “You must be Rachel.”
“None other,” I say with a nervous smile.
J.R. moves back to my side while the doctor babbles on about something. I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. This isn’t my first rodeo, so I would rather just get on with it already.
These types of exams are always humiliating; but I’m pregnant, and in nine months, this doctor is going to see my body do strange things. So, in full surrender, I drop my knees, and I stare up at the ceiling. Staring at a dot in the ceiling tile above my head seems to be the only way I can distract myself from what the doctor is doing down there.
After the exam, I get dressed, and we wait a little longer for the doctor to return for the sonogram.
“You are definitely pregnant,” Dr. Tyler says as he enters the room, and I can only assume that he’s just been given the results from my pee test.
“Yep,” I say, unsure of anything else to add. J.R. has been quiet since my exam, and I would hope that it’s because he gained a whole new respect for women in general.
I raise my shirt over my belly and then grimace as the doctor squirts cold jelly on my skin. He moves what I call “the wand” over my stomach, and we watch the screen in front of us waiting for a baby to appear.
“There’s your baby,” Dr. Tyler says, pointing to a tiny bean-looking thing on the screen.
J.R. leans in. “Where?” he looks confused. Understandably so. I’m still not sure I ever fully saw Knox in her sonogram images.
“Looks like a peanut,” Dr. Tyler says. “See?”
I look up at J.R., grinning as I find myself amused at his confused and wrinkled face.
“That little thing right there is a baby?” he asks.
“Believe it or not,” Dr. Tyler says. “We all looked like that once. Isn’t that funny?”
I try to imagine J.R. as a tiny peanut.
“Let’s see if we can hear the heartbeat.” The doctor moves a different wand over my stomach, but this time a little slower.
I close my eyes again, hoping we hear something. I think I’ve even stopped my own heart to listen. Finally, through the silence, we hear it. Of course, it doesn’t sound like a normal heartbeat. It’s more like the sound aliens make in movies. Still, I feel relief, knowing that I now have two hearts beating in my body.
