Possibilities - Part SevenA
Here's the next part of this story... again, it's actually just "part A" and "part B" will follow in the next day or so.

I'm very glad that people are still enjoying it!



VII.

Allison does a great job putting forth her happy face during the first two weeks of her pregnancy, but you know that inside she’s a basket-case of worries. She seems to have forgotten that you practically have a doctorate in reading human behavior, and after almost seven years, she is an open book to you when it comes to things like anxiety.

You don’t say anything to her about it until one night when you’re lying in bed watching a movie. The two of you had been engaging in some strictly R-Rated activities and your limp hand is resting on her bare stomach. You feel it rumble beneath your palm, and an instant later you feel her entire body tense up.

“The baby’s fine. You ate too much burrito,” you tell her.

“What makes you think I was worried about the baby?” she asks, acting slightly affronted.

“The full body flinch,” you say, mildly.

She huffs out a breath and crosses her arms over her chest.

“You need to relax.”

“Relax? How am I supposed to do that? Every little twinge has me running to the bathroom to see if I’m bleeding. Every tiny pinch has me thinking that I’m losing this baby just like last time.”

She rolls away from you and you know it’s because she doesn’t want you to see that she’s getting tears in her eyes.

“If you’re going to have a miscarriage then it’s going to happen whether you worry about it or not. Being on edge the whole time isn’t going to prevent it.”

“Thanks for the news flash,” she throws back at you.

With a sigh, you shift closer to her and rest your hand on her shoulder.

“What’s going to make you feel better?”

“I don’t know. I’ll worry less after I have my prenatal blood work done this week.”

“Okay,” you say as you swing your legs over the side of the bed and grab your cane in one hand and your previously discarded t-shirt in the other.

“Where are you going?”

“Get up,” you tell her. “You’re coming too.”

“Coming where?”

“To get your blood work run.”

“Greg, it’s after ten o’clock.”

“What, and your blood goes to bed at nine? I think I can draw blood and run the tests as well as any first year lab tech.”

She’s shaking her head, but there’s the hint of an amused smile at the corner of her mouth and she gets out of bed and starts reaching for her clothes.

The hospital is very quiet, and the lab even more so, but the time you arrive. Allison obediently hops up onto a stool and you set to work with a phlebotomy kit you grabbed from a supply room on the way down. Less than two minutes later, you have three vials of her blood and are pressing a gauze pad against the crook of her arm.

“If you wanted to make yourself useful, you could go make us some coffee,” you say as she scoots down from her perch. “This’ll take a little while.”

“Greg?” she says, touching your arm so that you’ll look into her eyes. “Thank you.”

She kisses you lightly on the cheek then, and you watch her walk out of the lab and down the hall.

It annoys you when you find that you’re actually a little bit nervous as you run the series of tests which will show that Allison is fine and that all of her hormones are at pregnancy-friendly levels. You’re sure that everything will test out normal and yet you can’t quite push out that sliver of fear. The last thing you want is to find a problem and have to be the one to break the news to her.

Thankfully, that isn’t the case, and an hour and a half later you’re sipping a cup of cinnamon hazelnut and reading off a list of normal test results.

“So, are you going to stop worrying now?” you ask as you hand over your findings.

“No,” she replies, “But I’ll worry a little less now.

And that’s how the bargaining begins. She says she’ll worry less when she passes the one month mark, and then she says she’ll worry less when she passes the point where she lost the last baby, and then she says she’ll worry less after the first ultrasound. You know better than to try to convince her that no worrying is necessary because at least she seems more at ease than she started out. Besides, you feel those moments of profound anxiety yourself, and talking yourself out of them is impossible. It takes seeing Allison and knowing that she and the baby are okay to put your mind at ease.

The ultrasound is a strange experience. Allison asks you if you want to go with her, and of course you know she wants you there, and you have to admit that you want to be there, and so you drive across town to her doctor’s office. You still haven’t told anyone that she is pregnant and after last time you’re particularly sure that you don’t want everyone at Princeton Plainsboro to know.

You’ve heard fetal heartbeats before. You’ve seen ultrasound pictures. Hell, you even delivered a couple of babies back in your residency during your ER rotation. Nothing compares with hearing that low, fast, ‘lub-lub-lub-lub-lub-lub-lub’ and knowing that it’s your child’s heartbeat. If it was anyone else’s child in the fuzzy black and white monitor, you wouldn’t have given it a second look, but it’s your child and you can’t tear your eyes away as you make out a cheek and a nose and a tiny fist balled beneath a chin that already looks like Allison’s.

The ultrasound tech - you think her name is Marie but you can’t be sure - asks if the two of you want to know the baby’s sex. It’s something you and Allison haven’t discussed. She shrugs when you look at her, so apparently it’s up to you. You’re not the sentimental type who longs for the ultimate surprise during delivery. You’re the pragmatic type who likes to have all information possible.

It’s a girl.

And at once, the child is more familiar and more foreign at the same time. You won’t know what to do with a girl, a delicate little thing like her mother, but you remember that a girl is what you’d hoped for last time.

“So, I guess ‘Greg Junior’, is out,” you quip.

Allison lets out a bell-like laugh and you continue to look at your daughter moving around on the screen and pretend not to notice when Allison wipes tears away from her eyes.

Over the next two weeks, Allison finally becomes more relaxed. The baby name book reappears on her nightstand, along with “What to Expect When You’re Expecting”. You read the reviews of that book and then throw it in the trash after discovering that apparently it is designed to make expectant mothers afraid during every stage of pregnancy. When Allison asks about it you tell her you spilled beer all over it. Then you give her a copy of “The Unofficial Guide to Having a Baby” instead.

When her little belly begins to grow, you know it’s time to start telling people, but you wish you could just keep the whole pregnancy between the two of you. It seems safer that way.

Like last time, your mother is the first person you tell. She is thrilled for you both and then she tells you to get off the phone and let her talk to Allison. You laugh and hand the phone over. That weekend at the Wilsons’, you make the official announcement. Sarah squeals and Wilson claps you on the back, and then ushers you into the family room to watch the ball game while Sarah drags Allison upstairs to go through her old maternity clothes.

“Happy?” Wilson asks as you settle into the most comfortable chair in the room.

“Not bad, not bad,” you tell him, and let a slow grin spread across your face.


Comments and particularly criticism always welcome.