Chapter 6: Heartbeat

"If you squeeze my hand any harder, I'll need an X-ray," Wren said.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just warn me before the next one."

It was the fifteenth of April, and I was seven weeks pregnant.

I lay on a paper-covered table in a dim room, with my shirt pushed up and cold gel on my stomach.

Wren stood at my shoulder in her scrubs, because she had come straight from a night shift and would not go home first.

The technician was a young man with kind hands and a soft voice.

"Okay," he said. "Let's see who's in there."

The screen was black and gray, and I could not make sense of it.

I had seen so many screens in four years.

I had seen empty ones, and ones with a shadow that turned out to be nothing.

"There," he said, and tapped a spot with his cursor. "That's your baby."

It was small and round, and a tiny light inside it flickered.

"And that," he said, "is the heartbeat."

He turned up the sound.

It was fast and soft and steady.

I put my other hand over my mouth.

Wren let out a hiccup of a sob and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand.

"It's a hundred and fifty-four," the technician said. "That's right where it should be."

"Is it real?" I said.

I had to ask, even though I could hear it.

"It's real," he said. "It's very real."

Wren sat down hard on the stool in the corner.

"I'm going to be an aunt," she said. "I'm going to be the best aunt this town has ever seen."

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