Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
WELLS
A month after their first doctor visit, they were back in Dr. Lopez’s office. This was the important visit—hearing the heartbeat, getting the picture.
Allison lay on the exam table as the technician moved the wand underneath Allison’s gown. Wells sat next to her, trying not to nervously jiggle his leg.
He stared at Allison’s hand on the exam table, debating whether it would be weird if he held it.
Wells’s eyes traced the shape of her belly. She wasn’t showing yet, but he wanted to believe that there was a little bump below her belly button.
His bump.
“Alright,” the technician said, looking at the display of black and white wobbly lines.
Wells’s heart was in his throat. He looked at Allison, whose eyes were trained on the sonogram screen. She looked nervous and excited.
Harper, the technician, moved the wand, trying different angles. In a tense moment, he and Allison held their breaths, until a fast whomp, whomp, whomp sounded in the room.
Wells thought he’d never heard a better sound, bursting out with a laugh. His and Allison’s eyes connected.
That was theirs. Their baby.
“Good, strong heartbeat,” Harper said.
Allison’s eyes filled, and he grabbed her hand, linking their fingers together.
“It’s a baby,” he said with a smile.
Allison bit her lip, beaming with joy. “It’s a baby.” She squeezed his hand. Hers was shaking as much as his was.
Somehow, the auditory confirmation felt like a seismic shift underneath his feet. There was a before and an after of this moment.
He could believe the science of the pee stick changing colors, but something about hearing the sound with his own ears, seeing the little blob on the sonogram himself—it made it real.
Ash—Dr. Lopez, Wells corrected himself—opened the door, and her eyes scanned the screen.
Wells had known her since they were in kindergarten together, and it was still weird calling the person you saw beef it on the monkey bars “doctor.”
“Hi there, you two,” she said as she closed the door. “Ooh, baby looks good. How are you feeling?” She put a kind hand on Allison’s arm.
“Good,” Allison said in a bright, tight voice.
Hmm. Wells narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like that voice.
“Okay.” Dr. Lopez took the wand from the technician, looking at the screen. “Baby’s a little big, which is not surprising.” She arched a playful eyebrow at him.
“Guilty as charged.” He saluted her.
“Hey, I am also tall. That baby is fifty percent me,” Allison said with a teasing smile at Wells.
“Baby’s about the size…of a strawberry,” Dr. Lopez said.
Wells was delighted by this idea. He’d heard other people talk about the fruit-based sizing chart of gestational babies, but now he had one of his very own.
He had a strawberry.
“Should call him Shortcake,” he said, winking at Allison, who, to his delight and surprise, burst out laughing.
“Any morning sickness?” Dr. Lopez asked, taking care of the wand and cleaning up.
“No,” Allison said in a tone that he believed. “But I have these strong cravings, and strong smells that have been getting to me. It’s hard being a florist when even the scent of carnations is too much to handle. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night craving some random thing.”
His heart thudded. Why hadn’t she told him? “Like?” Wells asked.
“I don’t know. Two nights ago, kale? I had spinach in the fridge. It did the trick.” Allison shrugged as she sat up. “The day before, it was spicy pickles. I’ve never had a spicy pickle in my life.” She smiled in wonder at Dr. Lopez.
Wells was deeply offended. “I could have gotten you spicy pickles.”
“At two o’clock in the morning?”
“I have a car,” he said with a defensive shrug. Why did this woman think he’d bought the house next to hers?
Expressly for spicy pickle emergencies.
“I have a car too,” she laughed, shaking her head.
Dr. Lopez didn’t ask any questions about the situation between him and Allison, but he could see her trying to piece it together. Thank god for HIPAA.
With printouts in hand, they headed home. Wells had insisted on driving her, saying it was silly to go across town separately when they lived next door.
He parked his car in her driveway and hopped out.
“What are you doing?” she said in confusion.
“Going into your fridge,” he said, charging up her steps.
“Why?” she said, sounding exasperated as she followed him.
“To see what you might need to have on hand for cravings.”
The soundtrack of the heartbeat hadn’t left his ears since they’d left the doctor’s office.
He doubled back to hold her hand as they climbed the three steps to her porch. She rolled her eyes as he steadied her.
“You need a handrail on this,” he said, suddenly realizing the seriousness of the situation. This woman was pregnant.
Pregnant, without a handrail!
He waited for her to open the front door.
“I have plenty of food in my fridge.”
“But what if you have a craving for marinated olives?”
“Since I know they are illegal in Pennsylvania,” Allison said with a deadpan look, “I will have no other option but to fly to Italy and get them. I’ll go to the grocery store, Wells.”
He scanned her living room, but instead of a cozy storybook cottage, all he saw were death traps. The steep, rickety stairs.
Oh god, her tub.
I didn’t even think about her death-trap tub. Slipping while getting out of it when she’s eight months pregnant.
Anxiety spiked in him as he pictured her navigating the steps late at night, in the dark, to go downstairs to get something to eat. Missing one step and—
He couldn’t even finish the thought.
“You need to stay with me,” he blurted out over the sound of his racing heart.
She paused in the act of taking her coat off and looked at him. “I what?”
“You need to stay at my house until the baby comes.” His voice sounded strained and a little nuts.
She threw her head back with laughter. “No,” she said, laughing as she hung up her coat.
“My house is a lot safer than yours. All one floor, no death-trap staircase, no death-trap tub. I have a much bigger fridge, and it’s—” He yanked open her fridge and saw a package of tortillas, shredded cheese, and a half-dead container of lettuce. “It’s a lot better than this.”
“I’m going to the store today.”
“You don’t even have any milk. How are you getting all of your nutrients?”
“They just came out with these amazing things called multivitamins. The baby will be fine.” She sighed, flopping onto her couch and pressing a hand into her back.
The purple shadows under her eyes were even more noticeable in the afternoon light.
He glared at her, putting his hands on his hips. “I’m worried about you. And Shortcake,” he added to cover his tracks.
I miss you.
She stilled as her eyes connected with his. “You’re worried about…me?”
“Yes,” he said, at his wit’s end. “I just realized this is a terrible place for you to live. Your landlord should be ashamed,” he said, trying not to smile.
She emphatically shook her head. “No, I do not need you judging my granny evening activities and bossing me around.”
“You could see Smokey—”
“Harry—”
“Whatever,” Wells sighed. “And I won’t have to worry about you here,” he said finally, letting the last part slip out against his better judgement.
“I will be staying right here,” she said, putting her feet up on the couch.
He was late for his shift at the diner. Tiny had Tai Chi on Wednesdays. “We’ll revisit this later,” he said, stalking to the door.
Allison threw her head back in frustration. “This is what I get for becoming co-parents with a lawyer.”
He was going to bully this woman into letting him take care of her if it was the last thing he did.
ALLISON
April
Week 10: Your baby is the size of two daisies
Two weeks later, Allison had to do the worst thing imaginable: ask for a favor.
Specifically, from Wells.
The smell of the trash in her kitchen was unbearable.
It only had the now fully dead bag of salad and yogurt containers (having been thoroughly chastised by Wells about not getting enough calcium), but every time she took the lid off, a wave of nausea rolled over her.
She hadn’t even been able to get past the kitchen entrance the last time.
No one else knew she was pregnant, and since it would have seemed like a crazy request to ask someone else to empty her trash, she only had one option.
Desperate times and all that.
She’d sent off a text to him and waited in the living room, surrounded by a baffling number of strawberries that all tasted wrong.
How could strawberries taste wrong?
What was this kid doing to her?
A craving for juicy, tart, sweet strawberries had hit her like a Mack truck yesterday afternoon and hadn’t let go.
She’d dreamt about them last night and had woken up in tears at not having any in the house.
Pregnancy was a trip, apparently.
All the ones at the grocery store in Fairwick Falls were half-dead since they were out of season. She’d gotten every variety at the biggest grocery store in Elliotsville.
They all tasted like dirt.
Dirt.
How was that possible? She wanted strawberries and then all the strawberries tasted wrong.
She’d tried strawberry candy, strawberry jam, strawberry ice cream, but she was craving fresh, bright fruit, and not being able to taste the one thing she wanted was driving her, ironically, bananas.
Maybe I should change that phrase to strawberries from now on.
As she waited for Wells, she ripped open another package of strawberry candy, hoping this would do the trick, but no—saccharine sweet, and not what she wanted.
A wave of tears bubbled up that she wasn’t able to suppress like she usually did.
She couldn’t even figure out how to find a strawberry that tasted good. How was she going to take care of a baby? Figure out what it needed and take care of herself… and a cat, once she could change the litter box again?
Harry/Smokey was probably enjoying her high life in her princess cat tower with expensive cat food at Wells’s house.