I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Alright, where should we go to get this over with?” Katie asked. “No heartbeat today right?”
“It depends on how far along you are. When’s the last time it was your time of the month?” he inquired as he waved at us to follow.
When Dante and Cade stood, I pulled at my neck. “You both better sit the fuck down. I’m not playing. Don’t you dare follow us.”
“Guessing he’s the father,” the doc whispered to Katie, and she giggled as she walked through the door he’d opened.
I followed close behind. I didn’t say a word to him, just sat down on the plush loveseat set up in the stark white room. A small square screen was attached to devices I knew nothing about.
The doc washed his hands in the sink in the corner of the room and slipped on latex gloves. “We can start with an abdominal scan if you’d like. Or go right to the transvaginal scan. I recommend the abdominal scan first if you haven’t emptied your bladder lately, Katalina.”
She shrugged. “Okay, abdominal scan first. You need me to strip?”
Katie was never shy with her body. I had to chuckle at her boldness. I hated and loved it about her.
“You can keep the clothes on for now,” the doctor said as he motioned for her to lie down on the long medical chair near the screen and devices.
She looked at me while she did, an uncertainty suddenly there in her eyes. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“Or maybe it’s something,” I said and snaked my hand into hers. She fisted it unconsciously, like a nervousness had wrapped her up and tensed her body.
“I have here a conductive gel that allows for me to rub the scanner over your stomach. It uses sound waves—”
I stopped him. “That going to be a health hazard to her or the baby?”
She sighed. “Rome, he’s the doc. He’s not going to put me at risk.”
I didn’t even glance down at her. I kept my stare on him, the stare that most of the time had grown men begging me for mercy.
The doctor’s eyes darted toward the door and his hand shook a little. “Of course it’s safe. I stake my profession on doing what’s best for the patient and the baby.”
We all sat in silence, like Katie and the doctor knew I needed a moment to process the information, process how much I trusted him. His degrees were on the wall of the room, I’d seen a few pictures of family in his home, and Cade had run background checks.
Beyond that, my gut leaned toward trusting him. He didn’t sweat with fear. The man was old and maybe a little jumpy because of who we were, but not leaping from the ground at the slightest sound. He didn’t hold any guilt in his eyes.
“Go ahead.” I nodded toward the scanner he held in one hand and the gel in the other.
He explained it would be warm and that there would only be a little bit of pressure.
Katie nodded, her voice gone. She was holding her breath as he put the scanner onto her body for the first time.
“It’s okay to breathe, Katalina,” I murmured, then wondered if that was true. “Right, Doc?”
“Yup. Breathe away.” He rolled the scanner up and down her body and explained, “Sometimes, if we’re too early in the pregnancy, we can’t find a heartbeat this way and will have to go the transvaginal route.”
“Or maybe we just didn’t think it through,” she told him.
“Well, of course you did. You took pregnancy tests, right?” he asked.
“Yes, but I know there are false positives.” She glared at me. “He’s making this out to be something it probably isn’t… This is probably…”
“Ah, a father’s intuition.” The doc stopped Katie from saying anything further. “You see that star on my screen right now?”
The doctor turned his 12-inch standing screen toward us. We saw the small-ass shape of a bean-like body. In the middle of it, a small star twinkled brighter than all the darkness around it.
I rubbed my thumb in Katie’s palm as she gasped and asked, “What is that?”