Chapter 10: One Hundred and Forty-One

On Wednesday morning I went to my first ultrasound by myself.

Megan had a double shift, and she had offered to trade it away three times.

I told her no each time.

The clinic was a small gray building with a waiting room full of couples.

I sat in the corner with my bag on my lap and looked at the fish tank.

A man across from me held his wife's coat over his arm, and every few minutes he patted the pocket to check for the car keys.

The technician called my name.

"Is anyone with you today?" she asked.

"No."

"That's fine, we'll take good care of you."

She squeezed warm gel onto my stomach and turned the screen away while she measured.

Then she turned it back.

"There," she said. "See that flicker?"

I looked.

A small white pulse went on and off in the center of a dark shape, fast and steady.

"That's the heartbeat," she said. "One hundred and forty-one. Right where we want it."

I couldn't say anything.

I had read the word six weeks on a lab report five days ago, and I had held it as a fact.

This was not a fact.

This was a small, busy life that did not care at all what its father had done on a lounge chair in Florida.

"Do you want a picture?" the technician asked.

"Yes," I said, and my voice cracked on it.

She printed two and put them in an envelope.

"Due date is June fourteenth."

I thanked her.

I walked out to my car and sat with the envelope in my lap and cried until my face hurt.

Then I wiped it with a napkin from the glove box, sent Megan a text that said "Heartbeat is perfect," and drove to Hillsborough Street.