Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(52)
Rake nodded. “A bit cliché and traditional for an ultrasound, but I think you nailed it.”
Their eyes met and neither could control their giggles, breaking up some of the tension in Rake’s chest.
“Okay, let’s go. Our ride is downstairs,” Lizzie said, looking at her phone.
The drive to the doctor’s office was quiet, Lizzie’s jiggling legs making the whole car shake.
Rake was feeling fine.
Totally fine, save for this odd sensation that he was taking off on a flight and leaving his stomach on the ground. He wasn’t sure what that was all about.
At the clinic, Lizzie filled out a few forms, and by the time she was done, they were escorted to an exam room, the nurse handing Lizzie a paper gown and a plastic cup for a urine test, letting them know the doctor would be in shortly.
Lizzie nodded with uncharacteristic quietness then headed into the bathroom.
“Everything all right?” Rake asked after a few minutes. For some reason the shut door and her silence were making him uneasy.
“Yeah,” Lizzie said with a tiny laugh, “I’m having stage fright and can’t get any pee to come out.”
She emerged a few minutes later, her tight red dress replaced with the boxy paper gown. Lizzie hopped up onto the exam table, her knees instantly bouncing again and making the whole thing shake while she bit her nails and looked around the room. Rake wanted to comfort her, gather up all her anxious energy and throw it out the door, but he was too frozen by his own nerves and knotted stomach to do much of anything.
With a knock that made them both jump, the door opened and the obstetrician walked in, giving Lizzie and Rake a warm smile.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Herrara. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said, first shaking Lizzie’s hand then Rake’s. “How are you feeling today?”
“Good,” Lizzie said, blowing out a breath. “Nervous, actually. Is it normal to be nervous? Why do you think I’m so nervous? Is it like an intuition thing and something is about to go really wrong?”
Dr. Herrara sat and rolled her chair closer to the exam table. “Nerves are perfectly normal. It’s a big day, but we’ll check everything out and get a clear picture on how the pregnancy is going. Do you mind if I ask you some questions on your medical history and the pregnancy thus far?”
Lizzie nodded, and Dr. Herrara launched into an endless list of questions.
After what felt like hours, Dr. Herrara finally asked Lizzie to lie back and put her feet in the stirrups. Rake moved toward the head of the exam table, hovering over Lizzie.
“All right, I’ll be inserting the probe now,” Dr. Herrara said gently, positioning herself between Lizzie’s spread legs.
Lizzie sucked in a breath as Dr. Herrara inserted the wand, and Rake looked down to see her eyes squeezed shut and brows pinched together.
“Okay?” he asked, watching as his hand, seemingly detached from his body, reached down and smoothed back Lizzie’s hair. Seeing her discomfort created a weird plucky feeling in his chest.
She squinted one eye open at his touch. “I’m fine, just kind of cold and weird down there,” she said, squirming on the table. “I’m sure you hear that a lot,” she added, shooting him a grin that morphed the uncomfortable feeling in his chest to something softer and sweeter. But equally confusing.
“I’m sorry. Try and relax your pelvic floor, the pressure should ease soon,” Dr. Herrara said from below the tent of Lizzie’s paper gown.
“All right, here we are,” Dr. Herrara said, using one hand to move the mouse on the portable computer next to her, clicking a few buttons on the ultrasound machine. She turned the monitor so Lizzie and Rake had a clearer view. “There’s your baby.”
Rake stared at the screen, seeing a black ellipse in a sea of static gray, a tiny blob floating in the blackness.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He glanced down at Lizzie, wondering if she was similarly awestruck by what they were witnessing. Their bewildered eyes locked, the moment splitting open between them, time spreading out and emotions refracting around them like a kaleidoscope, fear and love and excitement and worry and a sharp sense of joy. They turned back to the screen.
“And here’s the heartbeat,” Dr. Herrara said, clicking another button. A steady, methodic whooshing sound filled the room, a tiny blinking pulse on the screen matching the rhythm and becoming the center of their world.
Lizzie’s hand squeezed around Rake’s in a viper grip that traveled up his arm and fisted around his heart. Everything felt real and magnified and terrifying, like all this time he’d been living in a box, and the sound of the baby’s heartbeat crumbled the walls to dust and left him overwhelmed by sunlight.
Dr. Herrara turned off the machine shortly after, offering a few last-minute notes that neither Lizzie or Rake really heard in their dazed state. Lizzie got changed, and they checked out, receiving a small printout of their beautiful little bean baby.
Outside on the sidewalk, they stared down at the grainy picture, each pinching a corner of it between their forefinger and thumb. Rake’s heart felt like a giant flapping bird that threatened to burst from the cage of his chest and take off in flight. He didn’t know what to do with all these feelings.
At the same moment, Lizzie and Rake tore their eyes away from their perfect blob and met each other’s gaze. Rake watched as Lizzie’s features transformed from blank and slack-jawed to a delicious grin. It was a grin that could rival a star in the way it dazzled—the way it lit up the constellations of her freckles and creased the edges of her eyes where one small tear rolled out of the corner. It was impossible to look at that smile, to look at their blob, and not feel the same enormous grin break across his own face and fissure through his body.