Chapter 19: The Next Scan

The twenty-week scan was on a Friday, and I texted Harrison the address myself.

That was the term, and I kept it: doctor visits by text.

He was in the waiting room twenty minutes early, in a gray coat, holding a paper cup of ginger tea he had not drunk.

Eileen met us at the door of the ultrasound room in her scrubs.

"I'm off in ten," she said. "I'm staying. Nobody argue."

Nobody did.

The room was dim and warm, and the technician spread cold gel across my stomach without looking up.

Harrison sat on the stool at my left shoulder, and he kept both hands on his knees.

"Do you want to know what you're having?" the technician asked.

"Yes," I said, at the same moment Harrison said, "Only if she does."

I looked at him.

"I do."

The screen filled with a gray shape that moved.

An arm, a curled fist, the long line of a spine, and then the heartbeat, quick and certain, filling the room.

I heard Harrison breathe in and not breathe out.

"There," the technician said, tilting the wand. "Right there. That's a girl."

A girl.

I put my hand over my mouth.

I felt something warm hit the back of my wrist and realized it was my own face.

"Thea," Harrison said, hoarse.

I did not answer.

He was holding out his hand, palm up, an inch from mine on the bed, not touching.

He was asking.

I turned my hand over and laid it in his.

His fingers closed carefully, and then not carefully, and his thumb moved over my knuckles.

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