The Wolf Border(37)

You’re nice and calm, the sonographer says.

Am I?

Not a fretter.

No.

Rachel watches the woman while she works. Her face is calm. Day in, day out, these expositions. She jiggles the transducer, to get the baby to move position, a practical action, like shaking out laundry before hanging it. Her manner is of one so used to reading signals that she might be on a ship’s bridge or analysing meteorological data. Has the mystery of human reproduction become mundane, Rachel wonders, or is it that technology moves past all miracles eventually? In Alexander’s veterinary clinic too there is a small handheld ultrasound device that he uses for diagnosis and guided surgery. Rachel thinks of her own mother, who, in the seventies, proudly did not avail herself of any such information and took her chances, like millions of other women before her. Her bladder protests as the device moves lower, presses down harder.

Everything is good. Normal range. Baby is waving at us.

The sonographer changes angles subtly again, and takes measurements: crown of the head to the end of the spine. Limbs. Organs. The date of conception. She narrates the anatomical view – upper and lower jaw, hands, feet. Rachel is still not looking.

Do you want to see? the woman asks, reaching over and moving the screen slightly.

Rachel takes a deep breath, turns her head. At first it is like looking into deep space, or a snowstorm. There are indistinct contours, static cavities of darkness and light. The sonographer points everything out. Head, chest. Bones. The heart, flashing rapidly. And a face. A face.

She finds herself looking away again, feeling oddly shy, and amazed that she, at this moment, is creating something recognisably human. What would Binny say? She cannot imagine her mother here, now, though she remembers the vast expanse of stomach under her mother’s coat before Lawrence was born and the long screaming ambulance ride. She can hear Binny’s voice, haughty, patronising. I knew what you both were; I didn’t need to be told. The sonographer lifts the device off Rachel’s belly.

OK. I’m happy with that. I’ll print pictures and leave them at reception. You can get tokens from the machine.

She rehouses the transducer and hands a wad of paper towels over. Rachel sits up, wipes the gel from her belly, and buttons her jeans.

Are you going for bloods?

Yes.

Down the hall, left and left again. Follow signs for Phlebotomy. The toilet is right outside.

She thanks the woman and goes into the bathroom next door. Then she navigates the hospital corridors to the blood station, takes a numbered ticket from a dispenser, and sits in another waiting area. Beside her are men and women of all ages, being tested, she assumes, for everything. Cancer. Anaemia. Diabetes. She looks down at the vein on the inside of her right arm, which is bluish-green and rises easily. She puts a hand on her stomach. A baby. With bones. And a face. The sonographer made it move, almost dance. She is called through, sits in a plump chair, and the vial is taken.

You look happy, the phlebotomist says.

Do I?

Yeah. Nice to have a smiler.

She makes her way back to the antenatal clinic with a pad of cotton wool taped in the crook of her elbow and collects her maternity notes.

There’s minor confusion on the way out of the department. The receptionist comes towards her holding a small envelope containing a printed copy of the scan.

Miss Caine? You forgot this. There’s a cash machine one level down if you don’t have pound coins for the tokens. We can’t take actual money.

I don’t need a copy, Rachel says. Thanks anyway.

The woman scowls.

Are you sure? There’s a cash machine downstairs.

Her tone borders on suspicious, as if Rachel is simply trying to get out of paying, or is somehow not understanding the system. Perhaps there is even some dereliction of motherhood going on. Not everything meaningful happens on camera, Rachel wants to say. Very little does.

That’s OK. Really. I don’t need a picture.

You’ll want one, the receptionist tells her.

No, thanks.

In the end, irritated and sure that it is simply a ploy, the woman capitulates, thrusting the envelope into Rachel’s hand, turning and stalking back towards her desk. Rachel looks at the picture, framed in a white paper mount. The skull is lit like a strange moon, eye sockets, nose, a chubby chest. She puts the picture in her bag.

Outside the hospital, the city of Lancaster glints in the rainy light. Slate roofs and windows refract, like a hundred lenses. There are dense, anvil-shaped clouds banking to the north. Another batch of rain is coming. She gets in the car, puts her bag on the passenger seat, and starts the engine, but she leaves it idling in neutral for a moment. She takes the envelope out of her bag and looks at the picture again – at the little being, mindless, its cells forming rapidly – which in some places would be used as evidence. She still does not know what she thinks about it all, though she feels herself smiling again.

*

By the end of the month they are fit to travel and everything is ready for their arrival. Rachel drives to the airport to meet the cargo flight. She breaks the journey overnight, stays in an industrial Travelodge. She cannot sleep. She checks the weather app on her phone. Sunny. 15 degrees. She is restless, not tired. A mania has arrived, a combined excitement. In her belly, when she lies flat, there is faint movement, or the boding of movement. Flutters. At 4 a.m. she turns the light on and tries to read but can’t concentrate on her book. She looks at the list of contacts in her phone, thinks about calling Kyle; he will still be up. Should she now tell him? Shouldn’t he know? For courtesy’s sake, if nothing else? She switches the phone off and turns out the light.