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I flicked my gaze from the wall, where the paint remained intact, to the clock on the wall that read one thirty-seven in the afternoon. Shifting my attention to the exam room showed the white paper they had stretched over the chair appeared unwrinkled. Un-sat in.
What had happened?
Nothing?
Though the phantom touch of cold hands still chilled my skin, I cleared my throat and gave a nod.
No. I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been okay in weeks.
Hallucinations had become commonplace throughout my day, but mostly at night, which was why I needed to confirm the pregnancy.Because what if that was a hallucination, too?
Once inside the room, Blondie directed me to a scale, where she noted my weight–about fifteen pounds lighter in recent weeks. Following other vitals, she handed me a urine cup to fill, and took some blood. The horrid paper gown sat folded on the exam chair when I returned from the bathroom, and I inwardly groaned at the thought of having to wrestle with the damn thing.
A nervous quiet settled over me when she finally exited the room, and I changed out of my clothes and into the dreaded gown to wait for the doc. Not even the paintings of the ocean, or the pastel blue of the room could temper my anxiety. Medical visits had always made me nervous, but more so then. The world didn’t feel right or normal to me anymore. It felt upside down and spinning too fast. All I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and sleep, or stare out the window, as I’d done on so many days since having returned from Nightshade.As I waited, I mindlessly toyed with the locket at my neck—the one from my father that Jericho had returned to me.
A knock at the door had my spine snapping straight, and I cleared my throat, “Come in.”
Doctor Shein was a white middle-aged man, with a white shirt under his white lab coat, and tufts of graying hair slicked back to make him look like an aging Ken doll. By his appearance alone, I had a sense the man was the type to question anything outside of his pristine education. Which meant I wouldn’t be bringing up the strange hallucination with his nurse and whatever that was she’d breathed into my mouth.
“Miss Ravenshaw,” he began. “I’ve a pretty tight schedule today, so I’m gonna have you lie back so we can get the ultrasound done.”
“Ultrasound? Already?”
“Your urine came back negative. I’d like to have a look inside the uterus.”
It took every muscle in my face to keep from frowning at what sounded completely invasive. Did all docs talk like that?
The snap of his gloves had my stomach lurching, as I settled back into the chair. Another knock and Blondie appeared again with her iPad at the ready. Feet propped in the stirrups, I watched Doc Shein prep the transducer that looked like something out of a sex toy shop, adding a condom-like sheath over it, and with hardly a hello, he pushed my knees aside and slipped the object up into me. Fingers curled around the edge of the chair bed, I cleared my throat, thighs trembling. Blondie pushed a monitor closer to him, while I tried to ignore the slimy glide of the instrument and the way he moved it around inside of me.
While he watched the screen, I watched his brows lower, his head tip. He leaned closer to the monitor, then sat back. After a twitch of the object inside of me, he leaned in closer, frowning again.
The screen itself made no sense to me. Nothing but a quarter arc of dark streaks and static noise like something out ofPoltergeist. He curved the wand to the left in a slightly uncomfortable angle and held it there a moment, studying the screen again. He moved the wand again, but returned to that same angle studying it. Scowling. Staring. A series of unnerving expressions that repeated at least three more times. “Jenny, can you grab the other transducer for me, please?”
At his request, the blonde shuffled out of the room, returning about a minute, or two, later and handing off a second transducer.
Doctor Shein pulled the first out of me on a cold glide, prepped the second, and quickly inserted it, picking up where he’d left off with his scowling and staring and prodding that damn thing like he was jousting with my womb.
“This is … very strange.”
At that, the blonde tipped her head, brows lowered just like his. She sauntered over to him, and after a moment of staring at the monitor, her brows lifted, as in surprise.
Shit. They know. They know.
I didn’t even want to ask because I knew they knew. The pregnancy wasn’t normal. It wasn’t human.
“It isn’t there,” he said, interrupting my agonizing thoughts.
“What?”
The screen flickered and made an electrical zapping sound, and I felt the wand unceremoniously slip out of me again. A cracking boom echoed in the room.
Startled, I accidentally kicked Doctor Shein. Before I could apologize, the lights flickered out and the sound of his wheels rolling over the tiles was the only warning before he knocked into the stirrups. The buzzing of electricity died out, and the lights flickered back on to show confusion plastered on the doc’s and his assistant’s face.
“What the hell was that?”
Hell is right.His question mirrored my thoughts, as I turned to see a dark shadow slide across the ultrasound screen. A fluttering tickle in my stomach had me clutching myself there on a gasped breath, and I silently prayed that what I’d seen was nothing more than the glitchy static noise being glitchier.
Without a word, Doctor Shein shook his head and pushed up from his chair, removing his gloves as he made his way to the sink.
