Didn't Expect You (Against All Odds #2) - Claudia Burgoa Page 0,75
I can’t say anything.
I’ll find a way to repay him for everything that he’s spending. I get it. He has money, but I can pay my way through this rough patch.
A couple of minutes later there’s a knock on the door. The technician and Nate enter. He approaches and whispers, “I didn’t ask if it’s okay to stay with you.”
We didn’t discuss this before, but I truly assumed he’d be by my side, just the way he has been since this journey started.
“Can you stay?” I ask. My heart is pounding, and I’m not sure why I am so nervous about this. “It’s…overwhelming.” And you always make everything bearable.
“I’m here for you,” he whispers, brushing my hair to the side. His blue piercing eyes stare at me tenderly. “I like it when you wear your hair down.”
“Good afternoon,” the technician greets us. “I’m Stella, and I’m here to introduce you to your little one. Are you ready?”
I nod, watching her take a seat, grabbing a wand that looks like a thin dildo and placing a condom on it. “It’s going to feel slightly uncomfortable, but this is the best way to get an image of the baby since he or she is too small for a regular sonogram.
“Here we are, our little passenger,” the tech says. “Say hi to Mom and Dad.”
“What’s that noise?” I ask, confused.
Nate smiles, “Is that the heartbeat?”
The technician nods. “Yes. It’s beating pretty fast, almost 170 beats per minute. That little one is already moving. She’s almost an inch long.”
“It’s a girl?” I ask.
“No, we can’t know that until the baby is about fourteen to sixteen weeks,” she says, taking some screen shots. “That should be around five to seven weeks from now. According to the sonogram, your due date is on April tenth.”
“See, the baby is not coming on a Monday. She’s arriving on Saturday,” Nate whispers.
The brightness and excitement in his eyes are just as thrilling as the sound of my baby’s heartbeat through the speakers.
The silhouette of the baby is more like a peanut, a tadpole, or a bean held by a thread. It’s strange how I feel attached to her…or him. Tears stream down my face, and it’s not sadness but the many emotions that suddenly explode inside me.
Nate kisses my forehead and says, “You okay?”
“I’m going to be a Mom,” I whisper between sniffs. “Look at her. She’s so little.”
He smiles and nods while cleaning my tears. “It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?”
“I can’t even describe what I’m feeling. It’s…this is the best thing ever,” I say.
“Wait until you hold her. That’ll be the best moment of your life.”
He kisses my forehead and says, “Thank you for letting me meet the little blueberry demon.”
A gasp sob escapes me because this moment would’ve been so much more perfect if I had shared it with the man I loved. But it’s okay because at least I have Nate, don’t I?
Thirty
Nate
As we leave the imaging offices, I’m emotionally exhausted or…I can’t explain what just happened in that room. One moment I’m there to give emotional support to Nyx, and the next, my heart is pulsing just as fast as the baby’s heart. My stomach roils at the memory of the first time I heard Wyatt’s heartbeat.
That’s the moment when I realized he was a person and not some unexpected news. Now, something I wasn’t ready for during today’s sonogram was Nyx. Well, her reaction and everything that transpired in that room. I witnessed the exact moment when the baby stopped being her new project, and she fell in love with her child. I felt sucker punched. Nothing had ever prepared me to witness such a powerful moment.
What concerns me most is that I think there was some bizarre exchange of hearts, souls, and shit going on inside that room, and I’m not sure what it is that I have inside me. There’s a lightness and yet a heaviness inside my chest. Addressing anything would be stupid because Nyx was extremely vulnerable after what just happened.
Trying to add a lightness to what I witnessed, I grab one of the grainy pictures the technician gave us out of the plastic folder and study it.
“This isn’t a blueberry,” I protest as we make our way outside the building, and I’m trying to figure out exactly what we can call the baby based on this image. “A peanut, maybe?”
“We’re not calling her Peanut.”
“Thumper?” I ask. “That heart was beating pretty fast.”