Chapter Forty-Four
Two Years Later
Crew
The waiting room at Dallas Maternal & Fetal Medicine has exactly twelve chairs, two outdated magazines about breastfeeding, and a watercolor painting of a stork that looks mildly threatening.
I know this because I’ve counted everything twice.
Emmie’s hand is in mine. She’s twenty weeks today. Halfway. The bump is real now—not the “is she pregnant or did she eat a big lunch” stage. Actual, undeniable, she-grew-a-human bump that she cradles with one hand when she’s not thinking about it.
She’s doing it right now. Left hand on her belly, right hand in mine, her thumb tracing circles on my knuckle.
“You’re doing the thing,” she says without looking up from her phone.
“What thing?”
“The scanning-the-room thing. Like someone’s going to breach the lobby of an OB-GYN office.”
“I’m not scanning. I’m observing.”
“You counted the chairs.”
“Twelve.”
“And the exits?”
“Two. Plus a window in the bathroom that could work in an emergency, but it’s a tight fit.”
She looks up at me. Those hazel eyes, warm and amused and so full of something that still makes my chest ache even after two years of marriage.
“We’re at the baby doctor, Crew. Not a black ops site.”
“Preparedness is a lifestyle, not an event.”
She snorts and goes back to her phone. She’s scrolling through a list of names she’s been building for weeks—a shared Google doc that currently has sixty-three entries, color-coded by her (obviously) and annotated by me (pros, cons, historical significance, and a threat-assessment column that she says is “unhinged” but hasn’t asked me to remove).
We don’t know the sex yet. Today we find out. Or we don’t—Emmie keeps going back and forth.
“I want to know,” she said this morning, standing in front of the mirror in one of my t-shirts, hand on her bump.
“Okay.”
“Actually, I don’t. I want it to be a surprise.”
“Okay.”
“No, I want to know. Definitely. How else will I plan the nursery?”
“Your mother already planned the nursery. She sent blueprints.”
“Those were suggestions, not blueprints.”
“There were measurements, Emmie. And a materials list. That’s a blueprint.”
She kissed me and said, “We’ll decide when we get there.”
So here we are. And I don’t care either way—boy, girl, surprise, no surprise. I just care that Emmie’s blood pressure has been slightly elevated the last two visits, and that Dr. Kohli said it was “nothing to worry about yet,” and I fixated on the word yet for three days.
I’ve read four books on pregnancy. Emmie thinks I’ve read two. The other two are hidden in my nightstand because one is called The Expectant Father’s Survival Guide and the other is What to Expect When She’s Expecting and You’re Quietly Losing Your Mind, and I have a reputation to maintain.
“Jensen?” A nurse appears in the doorway with a clipboard.
I’m on my feet before Emmie can move. I help her up—hand on her lower back, steady pressure, the way the book said—and she rolls her eyes but leans into it.
“I’m pregnant, not injured,” she murmurs.
“You’re carrying my child. I’m going to be annoying about it.”
“At least you’re self-aware.” She smiles, patting my chest.
The exam room is cold. I notice immediately. Too cold. Emmie’s in a thin gown, and she gets cold easily—has since the second trimester started.
“Excuse me,” I say to the nurse. “Is there a way to adjust the thermostat? Or a blanket?”
The nurse blinks. “Uh. Sure. Let me grab one.”
Emmie shoots me a look.
“What? You’re cold.”
“I didn’t say I was cold.”
“You have goosebumps on your arms, and you’ve been rubbing your hands together since we sat down.”
She stares at me for a second. Then her expression softens—goes liquid around the edges—and she reaches out and squeezes my hand.
“You notice everything,” she says quietly.
“Always have. You know that.”
The nurse returns with a blanket. I drape it over Emmie’s legs and sit in the chair beside the exam table.
Dr. Kohli comes in a few minutes later—mid-fifties, calm energy. “How are we feeling today?” she asks, scanning the chart.
“Good,” Emmie says. “Tired. Hungry constantly. The heartburn is pretty brutal.”
“She’s been up three times a night,” I add. “Twice to use the bathroom, once because of leg cramps. The cramps have been more frequent this week—is that normal at twenty weeks? I read it can be a magnesium deficiency.”
Dr. Kohli smiles. “It can be. We’ll check her levels. Anything else?”
“Her blood pressure was 128 over 82 at the last visit. That’s borderline stage one hypertension. You said it wasn’t concerning yet, but I’d like to understand what threshold we’re watching for and what the protocol would be if it trends higher.”
Emmie puts her hand on my knee. “Crew.”
“Also, she’s been having headaches. Not every day, but three times this week. Frontal. She says they’re tension headaches, but I want to rule out anything related to the blood pressure.”
“Crew.”
“And the prenatal vitamins—she switched brands last month because the first ones were making her nauseous. The new ones have less iron. Should we be supplementing separately?”
Dr. Kohli is looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Somewhere between amused and impressed. “Mr. Jensen, I have to say—you’re one of the most thorough partners I’ve had in this office.”
“He has a spreadsheet,” Emmie says.
Dr. Kohli laughs. “Let’s take a look at your baby, shall we?”
She squeezes the gel onto Emmie’s belly, and Emmie winces—it’s always cold, she hates it—and I reach for her hand. She takes it without looking, like it’s automatic. Our fingers lace together.
The wand presses down, and the screen fills with static, and then—
There.
A shape. A flicker. The unmistakable curve of a head, the tiny line of a spine, the rapid pulse of a heartbeat echoing through the room.
“There’s your baby,” Dr. Kohli says. “Measuring right on track. Good heartbeat—152. Strong.”
Emmie’s grip tightens on my hand.
I stare at the screen. I’ve seen this image before, at the twelve-week appointment, but it was abstract then. A smudge. A concept. I can see the profile—the nose, the forehead, what might be a hand tucked near the chin. Now it’s a baby.
My baby.
Something is happening in my chest that I don’t have a tactical framework for. It’s not anxiety, although it’s close. It’s not fear, although that’s in there too. It’s something bigger than both, something that fills up all the space between my ribs and presses outward.
“Do we want to know the sex?” Dr. Kohli asks.
Emmie looks at me.
I look at her.
“Yes,” we say at the same time.
Dr. Kohli moves the wand, adjusts the angle. The image shifts.
“You’re having a girl.”
A girl.
Emmie makes a sound—a soft, shattered, beautiful sound—and presses her free hand to her mouth. Tears are already spilling down her cheeks.
I don’t cry. I don’t. I’m a federal agent. I’ve been trained to maintain composure under extreme duress.
My vision blurs.
Okay, maybe I cry a little.
“A girl,” Emmie whispers, squeezing my hand so hard my knuckles crack. “Crew. A girl.”
I bring her hand to my mouth and press my lips to her knuckles. The ring—her engagement ring, next to the wedding band now—catches the light from the screen.
“A girl,” I say. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It sounds like it belongs to someone who never expected to be here, in this room, looking at an ultrasound of his daughter while the woman he loves cries happy tears beside him.
It sounds like it belongs to someone who got everything he didn’t know he was allowed to want.
Dr. Kohli prints the image for us and leaves the room to give us a minute. Emmie sits up, gel still on her belly, tears still running, and cups my face with both hands.
“Hey,” she says. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I cover her hands with mine. “We’re having a daughter.”
“We are.” She’s smiling so wide it takes up her entire face. “She’s going to have you wrapped around her finger.”
“Probably.”
“Definitely.”
I huff a laugh. It comes out wet. I don’t care.
“My mom is going to lose it,” she whispers.
“Your mom has had a nursery Pinterest board for two years. She’s been ready.”
“Woodland themed.”
“Very tasteful.”
She laughs, and I lean forward and kiss her—soft, slow, my hand resting on her belly where our daughter is growing. The heartbeat is still echoing through my brain, steady and strong.
I pull back just enough to look at Emmie. Really look at her. There’s gel on her stomach and mascara on her cheeks.
She’s everything.
“I love you,” I say. Not because the moment calls for it. Just because it’s true, and I spent too many years not saying things that were true, and I’m not doing that anymore.
She presses her forehead to mine. “I love you too, Agent Jensen.”
Outside this room, her mother is already redesigning the nursery in her head. Foster is going to be insufferable about this. Murphy is going to be furious about losing his spot on the bed.
I can’t wait for any of it.