Bang(91)

“But I haven’t even had a period.”

“Well, the first ovulation you must have had probably ended up being the time you got pregnant, resulting in the missed period and the absence of one since,” she explains, and then the realization that I’ve been having sex with three different men sends me into a complete panic as I go completely numb and freeze up inside.

Holy f*ck! What have I gotten myself into?

“I want to be upfront with you though,” she says, her voice remaining calm and soothing, a perfect contradiction of the chaos running through my entire being right now. “Because of the lesions on your uterus, the likelihood of you carrying this baby to term might be lower. This will be a high-risk pregnancy because of that.”

Another wave of confusion hits me when her words spark a swell of sadness in me.

What the hell is wrong with me? This should make me happy, right? I can’t have a baby, so if my body naturally expels it, then problem solved. So why does the thought of that happening make me sad?

When I don’t respond, she asks, “Do you need a moment?”

“A moment?”

She gives me a nod, saying, “Yes. I’d like to go ahead and run an ultrasound to see how far along you are and get a few measurements of the baby.”

“Baby,” I whisper, repeating her foreign word.

“But if you need a moment—”

“No. I’m fine,” I say, interrupting her.

“Okay then. I’ll have my nurse call one of the ultrasound techs. She has a mobile station, so you won’t have to switch rooms.”

Dr. Leemont adjusts the table, allowing me to lie down while we wait. My heart pounds hard against my chest and the sound is all I can hear as I try to sort this all out in my head. I can’t grasp on to a single coherent thought as they all tumble into each other in a maniacal collision, aside from the one piece that remains untouched and clear as day: I’m pregnant.

The door opens and a young tech wheels in the large machine. She introduces herself, but I remain quiet as I watch her set everything up while she and Dr. Leemont go over my labs.

Once she’s set up and I lie down, she opens the front of my gown and squirts a warm blob of gel on my stomach. Pressing the wand down, she tells me, “Since we don’t know how far along you are, I’d like to see if we can get a good view of the baby externally. Normally we do an internal exam, but I’d like to try this out first.”

“Okay,” I breathe as I keep my eyes glued to the monitor screen.

She begins clicking away on her keyboard while she presses the wand firmly onto my lower abdomen, almost painfully, but then she says, “There we go,” and my heart stops. “See that?” she asks as she points to the white peanut on the screen, and as soon as she makes the slightest adjustment to the wand, she freezes the screen.

“Oh my God.”

“Let me get a couple measurements to see how far along you are,” she says, but holy shit, I can clearly see a head and a belly. Not a tiny blip you often hear about that doesn’t look like anything. I clearly see a baby: head, belly, and four tiny nubs for its arms and legs. She doesn’t even need to dissect the image for me because it’s unmistakable. Never has reality hit me so hard with a truth that’s undeniable.

“Nine weeks, five days,” she says, and then looks at me with a smile before she turns to look at her conception calendar on the monitor. “New Year’s baby, it looks like.”

I can’t speak. All I can think right now is Bennett, Declan, and Pike. I haven’t had sex with Pike in over a month, but nine weeks ago, I was having sex with all three of them. God, I’m a sick human being, carrying a baby that could belong to any one of them.

“I’m showing October tenth for a due date,” she tells me, and then she presses a button and a loud woosh woosh woosh woosh comes through the speakers at a rapid rate.

“What’s that?”

“Your baby’s heartbeat.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper again. A heartbeat? It’s so real. So alive. Hearing that fast heartbeat inside of me is almost too much as I lie here, trying not to completely lose it.

“Good and strong,” she says before turning the sound off and when it disappears, I close my eyes and replay the soothing sound in my head. How is this happening?

When she’s done, I sit up and cover myself back up with the gown while she prints me off a few photos and hands them to me, saying a happy, “Congratulations.”

But knowing my situation, and knowing what Dr. Leemont said about me being high-risk, there’s nothing to be congratulating me about. She hands me the pictures, and both she and the doctor step out of the room so that I can get dressed, but I don’t. I just sit here and look down at one of the pictures, a picture that shows a top view: head, belly, and four nubs. A weird laugh slips out through my tears when I compare the baby to a marshmallow.

My hand goes to my belly. I wouldn’t even believe it if I didn’t just see it with my own two eyes.

A baby. My baby.

I never thought I wanted one. Never thought it was even a possibility. But now that I have one, I don’t know how I feel because I’m feeling so much. I’m scared and ashamed, but under that, I feel an overwhelming sense of protectiveness for it. Never have I had anything that was solely mine, and knowing what a f*cked up world this is, I’m comforted by the fact that this baby is safe inside of me.