AllFreeNovel
Share Us
EPILOGUE
ROSIE—THREE YEARS LATER
“Hello Ms Zanetti. My name is Fiona, and I’m your sonographer for today. Get yourself comfortable.”
I waddled to the bed, Tom assisting me in swinging my legs onto the end. “Hi, thank you.”
“And are you the father or a relative here to support Ms Zanetti?”
“I’m Tom, the dad.” Tom proudly puffed out his chest, pointing at me, or rather my huge belly, with a grin. “It’s twins. I did that.”
The sonographer flicked me a bemused look, and I smiled with a roll of my eyes.
“This is your twenty-eight-week scan, I see. Congratulations on the twins, by the way.”
I grimaced. “Thanks.”
I felt like a whale. Two beached whales.
“Why don’t you take a seat on the other side of the bed, Tom, while I get my equipment ready and apply the gel on Ms Zanetti’s stomach?”
Tom trotted around to the other side of the bed and clutched my hand. “They’re boys,” he blurted. “Decided to find out during the last scan.” He beamed again, threading his fingers through mine.
Tom was so excited. I was a mix of excitement and terror—I mean twins, what the heck—and felt like crap.
I couldn’t stand the smell of steak or lamb, an occupational hazard dating a sheep farmer. I craved smoked oysters and made Tom drive to the general store at eleven o’clock one night to knock on Li the owner’s door and sell him every can he had in stock. Luckily, Li was an understanding man.
Carrying two growing babies was hard work, on top of the vineyard and wombat surveys in the park.
“Ready for the gel, Rosie?” Fiona asked softly, folding my top up to reveal the bump. I nodded and flinched when the cold gel spurted on my belly. “Always cold this stuff. Apologies. Okay, let’s get started and see what your little boys are up to in there.”
I sucked in a breath. There was always that moment of thought that something might be wrong and I’ll see it on the screen, even though the images were so fuzzy and—
“Ohhhh,” I breathed. There was one clear skull, and then another.
“Huh. Looks like they’re having a cuddle in the womb. I’ll get some pictures you can take with you.”
Fiona swished the wand back and forth across my belly, pressing and releasing, and clicked the computer keyboard several times.
I let out a shuddering breath and risked looking at Tom.
He was silently crying. “My boys,” he whispered. “Amazing.”
“Huh.” Fiona clicked several times, frowning slightly at the screen.
“Is everything okay?” Tom squeezed my hand tight.
“Just checking on these images,” Fiona answered in a businesslike tone, before she glanced at me. “And then we can get you cleaned up.”
“What is it?” I craned my neck to see the screen.
Fiona clicked one more time, swivelled the screen our way and then sat back on her stool.
The image was one that scanned blood flow. That much I knew. It looked like how the alien inThePredatorsaw the heat of its prey.
Tom and I stared at the screen, our faces blank.
“This—” Fiona pointed to a blob. “That’s one baby, and this is another. And this—” She pointed to a third blob that looked like it was peeking out behind the second. “That’s a third.”
