One Moment Please (Wait With Me #3) - Amy Daws Page 0,29
don’t need to think about this right now. You have work to do.
And hell, maybe Lynsey’s lying. Maybe it’s not my baby, and she’s trying to trap me because I’m a doctor and she thinks that would make me a good father. It’s been three months since we slept together. Surely, she’s had sex with someone since then.
Even though I haven’t.
Never mind.
Work now, deal with Lynsey later.
I come out of a patient room and catch sight of the ultrasound tech wheeling her mobile machine into Lynsey’s room. I wait about three minutes before I duck in to join them.
The tech tosses me an odd expression. “Doctor?”
I clear my throat, glancing at Lynsey nervously as I move to stand on the opposite side of her where a prospective father might stand. “Carry on, I’m just here to observe.”
The woman scowls as she drapes a blanket over Lynsey’s lap. She lifts her gown to just under her breasts and squirts ultrasound gel all over her belly, and then brings the probe over to the area just below her belly button. When she pushes the wand onto Lynsey’s small stomach, my heart sinks when a fetus appears on the screen.
Lynsey gasps.
I hold my breath.
“Oh, the baby is wide-awake right now,” the tech says happily as she moves the probe and takes measurements. “This little one is going to make it hard for me to hear the heartbeat, but you can see the flutter right there in his or her chest. Looks good and strong.”
I drop onto the stool and prop my hands on the bed as I stare in shock at the screen.
Lynsey’s voice croaks, “That’s…a baby?”
The woman laughs. “I know they look like tiny aliens at this stage, but this little one will grow into its head. Don’t you worry.”
Lynsey’s breath comes fast and hard, and her belly shakes as she cries. “I’m pregnant?”
The woman’s eyes widen on me and then move to her. “You didn’t know?”
Lynsey shakes her head.
“Oh goodness, I’m so sorry. I assumed you knew.” The tech zeroes in on a measurement and adds, “This baby looks to be about thirteen weeks old.”
“Thirteen weeks?” Lynsey sobs and turns to look at me. “How? I don’t…It wasn’t thirteen weeks ago that—”
“I…you…” I stammer, all the years of education I’ve had in the medical field apparently disappearing in my muddled brain.
The tech’s voice interrupts, turning our attention back to her, “Well, you can’t even test positive on a pregnancy test until you’re about four or five weeks along. Let me input these measurements into my system, and I can tell you a conception date and a due date.”
My mouth gapes as my body attempts to process this information. Numbness overtakes me. This whole scenario is like it’s not even happening to me. It feels as though I’m a bystander while someone else finds out they’re going to be a parent. Not me. I was never going to have kids.
Blinking slowly, I focus on the tech as she types numbers on the screen. A sob from Lynsey breaks through my cloud of denial, and my eyes turn to see she’s slipping into full-on hysterics. Good God, she really had no idea.
Taking hold of her hand, I know I’m crossing a patient-doctor boundary, but I can’t even give a fuck, because, right now, she’s not my patient. She’s the woman I put in this situation.
Her hand tightens on mine as she continues to shake her head in complete disbelief. I stare at our joined hands, and a tremble runs through my body. This is it. We’re in this together now.
“November 22nd, or thereabouts is when the baby was conceived,” the sonographer says with a forced smile. “It has a day or two variance because sperm can live inside the vagina for up to five days and a follicle can live up to three days. So it just depends on when those two crazy kids decide to meet up.”
“I get it,” Lynsey says, defeatedly. “I’m pregnant. I…am pregnant. There’s a baby—inside me.”
The woman smiles. “Would you like to hear the heartbeat?”
We turn wide eyes to the tech as she twists a knob on her machine and a rapid fluttering heart rate echoes in the room. We soak it in for a good thirty seconds. I have to remind myself to breathe.
“Nice and strong. Perfectly normal.”
“So the baby is…okay?” Lynsey asks nervously. “I shot myself with an EpiPen a couple of hours ago. Is that bad?”