Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children #2)(2)

“Yes, how long?” asked Serena. The women she worked with always shrieked and fawned when someone arrived with a new sonogram to pass around the group. How nice it would be, to finally be the center of attention!

The doctor, who had dealt with his share of eager parents, smiled. “You’re about five weeks along,” he said. “I don’t recommend an ultrasound before twelve weeks, under normal circumstances. Now, this is your first pregnancy. You may want to wait before telling anyone that you’re pregnant. Everything seems normal now, but it’s early days yet, and it will be easier if you don’t have to take back an announcement.”

Serena looked bemused. Chester fumed. To even suggest that his wife might be so bad at being pregnant—something so simple that any fool off the street could do it—was offensive in ways he didn’t even have words for. But Dr. Tozer had been recommended by one of the partners at his firm, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and Chester simply couldn’t see a way to change doctors without offending someone too important to offend.

“Twelve weeks, then,” said Chester. “What do we do until then?”

Dr. Tozer told them. Vitamins and nutrition and reading, so much reading. It was like the man expected their baby to be the most difficult in the history of the world, with all the reading that he assigned. But they did it, dutifully, like they were following the steps of a magical spell that would summon the perfect child straight into their arms. They never discussed whether they were hoping for a boy or a girl; both of them knew, so completely, what they were going to have that it seemed unnecessary. So Chester went to bed each night dreaming of his son, while Serena dreamt of her daughter, and for a time, they both believed that parenthood was perfect.

They didn’t listen to Dr. Tozer’s advice about keeping the pregnancy a secret, of course. When something was this good, it needed to be shared. Their friends, who had never seen them as the parenting type, were confused but supportive. Their colleagues, who didn’t know them well enough to understand what a bad idea this was, were enthusiastic. Chester and Serena shook their heads and made lofty comments about learning who their “real” friends were.

Serena went to her board meetings and smiled contently as the other women told her that she was beautiful, that she was glowing, that motherhood “suited her.”

Chester went to his office and found that several of the partners were dropping by “just to chat” about his impending fatherhood, offering advice, offering camaraderie.

Everything was perfect.

They went to their first ultrasound appointment together, and Serena held Chester’s hand as the technician rubbed blueish slime over her belly and rolled the wand across it. The picture began developing. For the first time, Serena felt a pang of concern. What if there was something wrong with the baby? What if Dr. Tozer had been right, and the pregnancy should have remained a secret, at least for a little while?

“Well?” asked Chester.

“You wanted to know the baby’s gender, yes?” asked the technician.

He nodded.

“You have a perfect baby girl,” said the technician.

Serena laughed in vindicated delight, the sound dying when she saw the scowl on Chester’s face. Suddenly, the things they hadn’t discussed seemed large enough to fill the room.

The technician gasped. “I have a second heartbeat,” she said.

They both turned to look at her.

“Twins,” she said.

“Is the second baby a boy or a girl?” asked Chester.

The technician hesitated. “The first baby is blocking our view,” she hedged. “It’s difficult to say for sure—”

“Guess,” said Chester.

“I’m afraid it would not be ethical for me to guess at this stage,” said the technician. “I’ll make you another appointment, for two weeks from now. Babies move around in the womb. We should be able to get a better view then.”

They did not get a better view. The first infant remained stubbornly in front, and the second infant remained stubbornly in back, and the Wolcotts made it all the way to the delivery room—for a scheduled induction, of course, the date chosen by mutual agreement and circled in their day planners—hoping quietly that they were about to become the proud parents of both son and daughter, completing their nuclear family on the first try. Both of them were slightly smug about the idea. It smacked of efficiency, of tailoring the perfect solution right out the gate.

(The thought that babies would become children, and children would become people, never occurred to them. The concept that perhaps biology was not destiny, and that not all little girls would be pretty princesses, and not all little boys would be brave soldiers, also never occurred to them. Things might have been easier if those ideas had ever slithered into their heads, unwanted but undeniably important. Alas, their minds were made up, and left no room for such revolutionary opinions.)

The labor took longer than planned. Serena did not want a C-section if she could help it, did not want the scarring and the mess, and so she pushed when she was told to push, and rested when she was told to rest, and gave birth to her first child at five minutes to midnight on September fifteenth. The doctor passed the baby to a waiting nurse, announced, “It’s a girl,” and bent back over his patient.

Chester, who had been holding out hope that the reticent boy-child would push his way forward and claim the vaunted position of firstborn, said nothing as he held his wife’s hand and listened to her straining to expel their second child. Her face was red, and the sounds she was making were nothing short of animal. It was horrifying. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance under which he would touch her ever again. No; it was good that they were having both their children at once. This way, it would be over and done with.