She shakes her head. “No.”
“That’s good, right? How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” she says. “Just nauseated. And tired.”
I release her. I take a seat on one of the chairs, opposite the exam table. I can see on Lily’s face that she’s tired. I heard her this morning in the bathroom. She was throwing up. It’s not that I want Lily to be sick, but it had come as a relief at the time, as if her being nauseated meant that everything was okay with the baby. It’s not a guarantee, because a few hours later, when we were both at work, she saw blood. And last time, even after she miscarried, Lily continued to have morning sickness because of the hormones still in her body. It was a double whammy. As if the miscarriage or the morning sickness wasn’t bad enough on its own, she had both.
I feel relieved to see Lily. She looks better than I imagined, and I think if the amount of blood on her underpants this morning was anything like times before, she’d look worse than this.
There’s a knock on the door. The doctor comes in. The doctor is a woman. Lily likes her, a lot. I do too. She’s been through quite a bit with us and wants us to have a baby almost as much as Lily and I want to have a baby. The last miscarriage, she cried. When we came back months later, pregnant again, she looked about as split as I felt. What were we doing? At what point did we just give up and quit?
The doctor says hi to me, but she focuses her attention on Lily. Today she wants to first try and listen to the baby’s heartbeat with a fetal Doppler. The last time we were here, a couple weeks ago, we heard it with the transvaginal ultrasound, which we can do again if necessary, but the Doppler might pick it up and save Lily the discomfort. “Ten weeks is about the soonest a heartbeat can be detected with the fetal Doppler,” the doctor says, “so please don’t panic if we don’t hear it at first.”
She has Lily lie flat on the table. I rise from my chair and go to stand beside Lily, at her head, holding on to her hand.
I smile benevolently at Lily as the doctor lifts the hem of her shirt to her ribs. Lily’s abdomen is flat and it’s hard to believe there could be another life in there, a life that we made. The doctor spreads a glob of gel on her lower abdomen. She turns the volume on the Doppler to high, and then runs the probe across Lily’s skin. I hold my breath. Everyone in the room holds their breath. The heartbeat is supposed to sound something like the clippety-clop of horse hooves. I don’t hear it. As the seconds go by, the air leaves the room. It gets harder and harder to breathe.
I want to ask questions. I want to ask what’s taking so long. But I don’t want to speak because then we won’t hear the heartbeat when the probe passes over it. Lily’s grip grows tighter on mine. I reflect on the events of the week. It’s been a hell of a week, and it’s not surprising that we’re now here, in this position. I should have anticipated this.
After a minute, the doctor says, “Let’s try this,” as she asks Lily to move to the end of the table, setting the fetal Doppler aside. She helps guide Lily’s feet into the stirrups, moving the paper sheet so that Lily is laid bare on the table. Lily’s eyes are skittish as the doctor covers the transducer with a condom and gel before guiding it inside her. Lily looks up, her eyes searching for mine. I try and be calm for Lily’s sake. I lean in close, stroking her hair. But I’m not calm. I find Lily’s hand again—I don’t remember letting go—and whisper into her ear, “It’s okay,” and maybe it is. The doctor just told us this fetal Doppler was a shot in the dark. We shouldn’t be surprised it didn’t work, and I’m almost resentful she tried.
It doesn’t take long this time to find. It’s a magical thing.
I exhale. I thank God. Lily’s whole body relaxes. She sinks into the table, the tension fading away. The doctor smiles. The mood in the room is completely changed.
An image transmits to the TV monitor. A baby takes shape, undeveloped but there, with a beating heart, a head half the size of its body, and growing nubs for arms and legs.
“There it is,” the doctor says, of the heartbeat.
There it is. Our baby.
“Looks like she has your head,” Lily jokes because of how huge the head is in comparison to the rest of the body. I laugh. Lily is always teasing me about the size of my forehead.
“It must mean she’s going to be incredibly smart.”
“Everything looks good,” the doctor says as she removes the transducer from between Lily’s legs and tells her she can go ahead and sit up. “Spotting sometimes happens during the first trimester. It’s scary but is generally not cause for alarm. What matters is that your baby is fine,” she assures us, her eyes going from Lily’s to mine. “I’ll give you some privacy so that you can go ahead and get dressed.”
The doctor steps from the room. Lily lowers herself from the end of the exam table to the floor. I hand her her clothes, which were sitting on the empty chair beside me. “What a relief,” she says, taking them from me and stepping into her underpants.
She finishes getting dressed. I hold the printout of the ultrasound in my hand. I can’t take my eyes off it. But I can’t stop thinking: What if this is the closest I get to holding my baby?
We walk out quietly through reception. We’re in the elevator now.
“I thought...” Lily says, but she can’t bring herself to say the rest, to put those words—babyanddead—into the same sentence.
“I know,” I say, as the doors close. It’s with mixed emotions because, just because it hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it still can’t. “I thought so too.”
I reach forward to press the button for the lobby, feeling the floor beneath us give as we descend.
Evenings are supposed to be relaxing. Before any of this happened, Lily and I would spend our evenings after work watching TV together or reading. She loves to read. I haven’t seen her pick up a book this week. It’s because of Jake, and because her attention has been diverted. Like me, she can’t focus enough to actually read a book or do much of anything for that matter that requires any sort of mental acuity.
I convince Lily not to grade math homework tonight, but to come sit on the couch with me and relax. She and I nestle side by side on the center cushion. I spread a blanket over our laps. Lily lays her legs on me. She gets comfortable. “This is nice, isn’t it?” I say, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me. Lily says that it is. I turn the TV on, wanting more than anything to unwind and to stop thinking about Jake or everything else we’ve been through this week. I make a concerted effort to think about something else, anything else but him and what Lily did to him.
I’m not so lucky.
We get maybe an hour of peace. But then, during a commercial break, there’s a quick plug for the ten o’clock news. It takes my breath away. Neither Lily nor I speak though Lily chokes on her water and it comes back up, through her nose. She presses her hand to it. I offer my sleeve.
The image they show on the TV is of extensive treetops. It’s taken from the air, as if from a helicopter or drone.