10. Millie
CHAPTER TEN
MILLIE
I've been staring at the ceiling since six in the morning.
The OB appointment is at ten. Four hours away, and my brain has decided that sleep is no longer an option. It's been doing this lately. Waking me up before dawn with a to-do list of anxieties I didn't ask for, then refusing to let me go back to sleep.
I don't know what to think about it. I don't even know what to expect.
I've only ever seen this in movies, and even then I could never see what everyone was pointing at.
My cousin once showed me a sonogram of her kid and all I saw was a black-and-white blob.
I nodded and smiled, but it could have been a weather map for all I knew.
Maybe it'll be different when it's mine. Maybe when it's your own body and your own baby, you just know where to look.
Besides, Joseph will be with me, and that's the only reason I'm not spiraling right now. Knowing he'll be in that chair next to me, that I won't be alone staring at a screen trying to make sense of what I'm seeing, it helps. More than I want to admit.
I get up and find Joseph already in the kitchen. He's dressed, which is unusual for this hour on a day off. Jeans and a button-down that looks like he actually thought about what to wear. Coffee made. Eggs on a plate he's barely touched.
He's standing at the counter reading something on his phone, and when he hears me, he looks up, and his smile is the same as always.
Just a beat too fast. He's nervous and trying not to show it, which is almost sweet because Joseph is the worst liar I've ever met.
His feelings live right on his face, the same way mine live on my hands. Just different volumes.
"Morning. How'd you sleep?"
I hold my hand out flat and tilt it side to side. So-so.
"Yeah. Me too." He pushes the plate of eggs toward me. "You should eat something before we go."
I sit at the counter and eat because he's right.
Tofu appears from wherever she's been hiding and jumps onto the counter between us.
Joseph scratches behind her right ear, and she closes her eyes.
They've gotten closer this past week. I've caught him talking to her when he thinks I'm not around, full conversations, asking her opinion on dinner.
"Tofu, you need to be on your best behavior today. You're in charge of the apartment while we're gone. No parties. No inviting the pigeons inside."
Tofu stares at him.
"I always wanted a pet growing up," he says, more to Tofu than to me.
"But both my parents worked full-time, my sister and I were at school, and nobody was home enough to take care of one.
So I just befriended every animal I saw on the street instead.
I was that kid who crouched down to pet every stray he passed.
My mom would have to drag me away." He looks at Tofu.
"Now I finally have one. Kind of. By association. "
I type: Well, Tofu seems to be fond of you now. She doesn't let anyone just pet her. She usually leaves or bites.
"I feel very flattered, Tofu. The feeling is mutual." He smiles and pats her. Tofu closes her eyes and lets him.
We arrive at Brookfield Medical. It's smaller than St. Aldric's, quieter. The hallways are less chaotic, the lighting warmer. It doesn't feel like a hospital where emergencies happen. It feels like a place where people come for good news.
Joseph walks half a step ahead of me, holding the door, guiding me through with a hand barely touching my back.
He talks to the receptionist, gives both our names, handles the check-in.
He knows where to go without asking, and there's a quiet relief in following him down the hall, in not having to figure out who to talk to or how to explain myself. He carries it. I just walk beside him.
The waiting room is the hard part.
There are other people here. A woman with a large bump rubbing small circles on her belly while her partner fills out forms beside her. A younger couple, barely showing, holding hands with their knees pressed together.
An older woman sitting alone, reading a book, calm as anything.
A man pacing near the water cooler while his wife watches him from her chair with an amused expression.
One couple looks like they've done this before, relaxed, scrolling their phones, unbothered.
Another looks like they're about to pass out.
All of them are different. Different stages, different stories, some planned and some clearly not, some together and some alone.
Joseph fills out the parts of the paperwork he can, medical history on his side, and hands me the clipboard for the rest. I write my answers.
The form asks for an emergency contact. I write Joseph's name without thinking about it.
Then I stare at what I just wrote. The man I've known for twelve weeks is now the first person this hospital would call if something happened to me.
I should probably find that unsettling. I don't.
Our knees are almost touching. I don't move mine. He doesn't move his.
I look around the waiting room. There's a poster on the wall showing the stages of pregnancy, week by week, the baby getting bigger in each frame.
I'm still in the early stages. The size of a fig, apparently.
There's a person inside me the size of a fig, and I'm sitting in a plastic chair pretending I'm not terrified while the father of this fig fills out medical forms beside me.
A nurse calls my name. We look at each other. He searches my face for a second. "Ready?"
I nod. He stands first and waits for me. We follow her in.
The exam room is small and cold. I sit on the exam table and tuck my hands between my knees. Joseph is in the chair beside me, his knee bouncing. He sees me notice and stops it, pressing a hand to his thigh like he's physically restraining his own leg.
"Sorry. I'm a little..."
I type on my phone: I know. Me too.
He reads it and exhales. "Okay, good. I was trying to be the calm one, but clearly I'm failing."
You don't have to be. We can both have a nervous breakdown right here. Together.
He reads it twice and laughs. The room loosens by a fraction.
"Deal," he says. "But if I cry, you have to pretend you didn't see it."
I'll look the other way.
"Thank you. I appreciate the professionalism."
The OB comes in. Dr. Naomi Park. She's warm and efficient without the performance of either.
She explains everything before she does it.
She introduces herself, shakes both our hands, and when I hold up my phone to type my first answer, she reads it off the screen without missing a beat.
No pause. No exaggerated nod. No pity. She just reads it and responds.
I add her to the very short list of medical professionals who haven't made my silence feel like an obstacle.
Dr. Park settles into her chair with a clipboard and starts going through the questions.
"Any nausea or vomiting?"
I shake my head. I type: Not yet. But I've been eating ginger candies just in case.
Joseph shifts in his chair. I can feel him trying not to look smug.
"Smart. That can help when it does start. You're still early, so it may come in the next couple of weeks, or you might be one of the lucky ones who skips it entirely."
I'd like to be one of the lucky ones. I don't type that. I just nod.
"How about fatigue? Are you more tired than usual?"
I nod. A lot. I type: I fall asleep by eight most nights. Sometimes earlier.
"That's completely normal for the first trimester. Your body is doing a lot of work right now, even if you can't see it. Rest as much as you can."
"She's been resting," Joseph says. "She's in recovery from rib fractures, too, so she's been taking it easy."
Dr. Park looks at me. "Rib fractures? When did that happen?"
Joseph explains. The fall, the three fractured ribs, the pneumothorax, the timeline. He does it the way doctors talk to doctors, precise and efficient, filling in the details I'd take ten minutes to type. Dr. Park listens, asks a few follow-up questions about my pain levels and mobility, and nods.
"And how are the ribs feeling now?"
I type: Much better. Still sore if I twist wrong or cough. But I can move around normally.
"Good. We'll keep an eye on that as the pregnancy progresses. As your belly grows it'll put more pressure on that area, so if the pain comes back or changes, let me know."
She checks my blood pressure, weighs me, and goes through the rest of the basics. Everything looks healthy. She tells me she wants to see me again at fourteen weeks for the next scan.
"Any other questions before we do the ultrasound?"
I look at Joseph. He looks at me. We both shake our heads.
"Alright. Let's take a look."
She asks me to lie back on the exam table.
I do, and the paper crinkles under me. She lifts my shirt to just below my ribs and tucks a towel along the waistband of my jeans.
The gel is cold on my stomach, and I flinch.
Joseph leans forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, eyes already on the screen.
The monitor is dark and gray and full of shapes I can't make sense of. Static and shadows.
I hold my breath without meaning to.
The doctor moves the wand. Adjusts. Moves again. She's looking at the screen with focused eyes, reading something in the gray that I can't see. The room is so quiet I can hear the hum of the machine.
And then she points to a small flicker on the screen.
"There," she says. "That's the heartbeat."
The room goes still.
It's tiny. A pulse of light in a sea of gray. Fast and steady, like a bird trapped in a jar. It doesn't look like a baby yet. It's a blur on a screen in a cold room in a hospital across town.
But it's there. And it's beating. And it's real. And it's mine.
I stare at the screen. My vision blurs. I blink and something warm slides down my temple. I don't wipe it away. I just let it fall into the paper beneath my head, and I keep looking at that tiny flutter because I don't want to look away. Not yet. Not ever.
Joseph's hand closes around mine. He reached first. His grip is warm and his fingers are steady, even though when I glance over, his eyes are bright and his jaw is tight the way it gets when he's holding something back.
He's not looking at me. He's looking at the screen.
He's looking at it like he's trying to memorize it before it changes.
The doctor lets us listen. She adjusts something, and then the heartbeat fills the room. Not just a flutter on a screen now. A sound. Fast and light and impossibly real. A rhythm that's been inside my body this whole time without me knowing.
That sound is inside me. That sound is ours.
Dr. Park gives us a moment. She doesn't rush. She lets us sit with it. Then she talks us through the measurements. Everything looks good. The baby is measuring right on schedule for ten weeks.
She answers questions I didn't even know I had, and a few Joseph asks in his doctor voice, clinical terms I barely understand, but that seem to satisfy him.
She prints the image and hands it to me.
A small black-and-white square with a white blur in the center that is somehow already the most important thing I've ever held.
I look at it, at the smudge that will become a person. A person with hands and maybe his eyes and maybe my stubbornness and maybe, if the universe has any sense of humor at all, a voice loud enough for both of us.
We sit in his car in the parking lot for a long time.
The parking lot is nearly empty, the sun coming through the windshield warm and low, and neither of us has said anything since we left the building.
I type on my phone and hold it up: Are you okay?
He reads it and stares ahead for another moment. Then he speaks in a voice I haven't heard from him before, stripped of all the charm and all the volume. Just a man in a car trying to make sense of what he saw.
"Yeah. I'm just in shock, I think. Seeing it. Hearing it. Knowing it's real." He runs a hand over his face and drops it. "There's a lot going on in my head right now." He looks at me. "You?"
I type: I feel the exact same way.
He reads it and nods. Something passes between us that doesn't need words. Not even typed ones.
We sit there a little longer. The engine stays off. The parking lot stays quiet. His hand rests on the center console, close to mine. Our fingers aren't touching. But they're close. And neither of us moves away.
I look down at the photo in my lap. The heartbeat is still in my ears.
I put my hand on my stomach, still flat, no sign of anything from the outside. But inside, someone is there. Someone real. Someone ours.
This is real. I'm going to be a mother.
And I have no idea what to do.