Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 119476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 597(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 398(@300wpm)
He glances toward Scarlet, who is giving us as much privacy as the hallway allows, and then back to me. “Come hell or high water, I’m with you. No matter what happens, Pip, I’ve got you.”
“Okay.” I squeeze his hand and nod. “Let’s do this.”
“If you want to have a seat here,” Scarlet says, gesturing toward a little alcove, “I’ll take some vitals and get your chart started.”
I know she’s waiting on me, but my feet are rooted, my eyes pinging back and forth between the chair and Atlas.
She sighs dramatically before taking mercy on me. “You can take a seat, too.”
Atlas presses a hand to the small of my back and we follow her into the recess, with me taking the chair closest to the desk.
“All right, you already told me you don’t remember the first day of your last period.” Scarlet wastes no time jumping right into everything. Her straightforwardness miraculously sets my mind at ease. “Which means we’ll need to do an ultrasound to determine gestation. Before that, though, I’m going to check your blood pressure, iron, weight, and get a urine sample. These are things we’ll do at most appointments.”
My insides are rolling like a stormy sea, my nerves cresting higher and higher with each wave.
I look to Atlas for reassurance and he nods, his soft smile instantly calming me. It’s wild to me, the way he’s able to so effortlessly set me at ease.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Scarlet flies through my work-up so quickly I hardly have time to think about all of the what-ifs. According to her, my urinalysis says I’m definitely pregnant, I need to gain some weight, my blood pressure is fine, and my iron is, unsurprisingly, low.
After mentioning a few foods to help with my iron, she stands and steps out into the hallway. “If y’all want to follow me, I’ll be doing your ultrasound before you see the doctor. You should be far enough along for us to do a pelvic ultrasound.”
She leads us into a dimly lit room two doors down. “If you’ll hop up there, lift your shirt, and recline back that’d be great.”
“Everything’s going to be fine, Pip,” Atlas says as he helps me get situated just right. “Promise.” He presses a soft kiss to my temple before lowering himself into the chair next to me.
“This might be cold,” Scarlet says apologetically before squirting a blob of gel onto my belly.
I brace, expecting the worst, but the goo is pleasantly warm.
As she uses some kind of wand to spread the goop around my lower stomach, the black screen flares to life. Well, sort of. Mostly it just looks like static to me.
“Okay, Nora, the first thing I’m going to do is look for the heartbeat.” She rolls the wand over my belly, pressing harder in some spots than others.
The room is deathly still—the kind of silence that makes your ears ring. It’s so quiet, I swear I can hear my own heart beating outside of my chest.
It feels like eons pass, though it’s probably only seconds, before a whooshing sound fills the room.
My eyes flit from the screen to Scarlet and back again. “Is that—” My voice trembles with a mixture of hope and fear.
She nods. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat. Strong and steady at 150 beats per minute.”
Tears fill my eyes as I listen to the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.
“That’s not too fast?” Atlas asks, interlacing his fingers with mine. The feeling of his palm pressing into mine grounds me in the moment.
I’m free. I’m safe. My baby is okay. This is all real.
Scarlet glances at our joined hands but—thankfully—doesn’t comment on it. “Perfectly normal. As the pregnancy progresses, the heart rate will slow some. If you give me just a minute, I’ll take some measurements, and we can narrow down your due date.”
I watch with rapt attention as she clicks around on the screen, trying—and failing—to understand exactly what I’m looking at.
“According to my measurements, baby is right around thirteen weeks, so the end of the first trimester. We’ll probably do a few additional scans to monitor baby’s growth so we can be sure on the timing and progression.” She rolls the wand over my belly again, pressing it firmly to the lower left side of my belly. “Now, for the fun part.”
“The fun part?” I ask, wondering what on earth could be better than hearing my baby’s heartbeat.
“See here.” She nods toward the screen. “That’s your baby’s head, and here are the toes.”
“How big is the baby?” Atlas asks, his voice filled with wonder.
“About the size of a peach.”
“And you can see all of that?” The wonder quickly morphs into disbelief.
But Scarlet just smiles. “The wonders of science.”
I know she’s being sarcastic, but in a way, she’s right. This is wonderful. Amazing, really, that my baby is the size of a piece of fruit but has fingers and toes and a heartbeat.