Chapter 7
“Mercer, Kate. Dr. Mehta is running a few minutes behind, but the sonographer can see you now.”
The receptionist called my name with the exact same inflection she would have used for a dental cleaning. I nodded, mostly because my vocal cords had gone off-duty the second we walked into the First Hill Women’s Clinic.
The waiting room smelled of lavender over clinical antiseptic.
Along the far wall, two goldfish in a tall aquarium circled a plastic castle, entirely oblivious to the fact that someone had decided that constituted a home.
Cole sat to my left, his knees cramped together in the low chair, his navy windbreaker folded across one forearm.
He didn’t talk. He didn’t look at his phone, either.
When the receptionist walked away, he tilted his head toward me.
“Do you want me in there with you?”
The question came with an escape hatch built in. I could say no, and he’d stay by the fish tank, doing exactly what I asked.
I looked at the closed doors down the hallway. One had a poster of a sleeping baby; another showed a mountain range that might have been calming if I hadn’t wanted to tear it off the wall.
“Yes.”
Cole stood up. He didn’t reach for my hand. His fingers brushed mine as he scooped his jacket off the seat, pulling back before the contact needed a definition.
“All right,” he said. “Then I’m coming in with you.”
The nurse who led us down the hall wore a badge reading Marisol. She weighed me, took my blood pressure, and handed me a paper gown folded into an impossibly small square.
“You can undress from the waist down. Restroom is right there. Your support person can stay while you change or wait outside, whatever you prefer.”
The choice was directed at me. Cole looked at an articulated lamp beside the exam table, deliberately staying out of the decision.
“Stay,” I said.
It wasn’t an elegant sentence. I liked that there was no time for it to be.
The paper gown scraped the backs of my thighs when I stepped out of the restroom.
The room was colder than I’d expected. It had a large monitor on an articulated arm, a rolling stool, and a framed print of a birch forest. Cole had taken a chair near my shoulder, leaving enough room so the edge of the table didn’t crowd him.
His presence filled the space anyway: the clean scent of soap, the faint pop of his knee when he shifted his weight, the size of his hands resting over his folded jacket.
I climbed onto the table and rested my heels in the stirrups. The clasp of my watch pinched my wrist. I clicked it open, snapped it shut, and clicked it open again.
“Ms. Mercer, we’ll be doing a transvaginal ultrasound since you’re early in the pregnancy,” Marisol explained. “The probe will have a sheath and warm gel. You can tell me to pause at any point.”
“Understood.”
My boardroom voice worked. It was a minor, embarrassing relief.
Cole looked at my face, not the dark screen.
“Do you want my hand?”
The watch felt heavy in my fingers. I could have said no. I could have kept both hands flat over my stomach, pretending the posture was a clinical choice.
I held out my left hand.
Cole took it without squeezing. The athletic tape around his wrist had a rough edge beneath my thumb. I locked my eyes onto that fraying edge while Marisol adjusted the overhead light and explained each step.
It didn’t hurt. It was uncomfortable and precise—a minor invasion my mind couldn’t find a metaphor for. The ceiling fan turned with an office hum. Out in the hall, a supply cart rattled over a seam in the flooring.
The screen flickered to life in shades of gray.
Marisol stayed quiet for several seconds. She adjusted the probe with careful precision, clicked two keys, and zoomed in. I recognized that silence from executive meetings—the quiet when someone discovers a number is wrong and hasn’t decided if it can be salvaged.
Cole’s hand didn’t move.
“Here’s the gestational sac,” Marisol said finally. “It’s inside the uterus, right where we want it. And here is the yolk sac.”
She pointed to a dark smudge ringed in white. If that was an answer, it was written in a language I didn’t speak.
“Is that good?” I asked.
Marisol angled the monitor slightly toward me. “Yes. That’s exactly what we want to see at this gestational age.”
Cole blew out a quiet breath through his nose. I kept scanning the screen for something recognizable. A faint curve beside a circle. Nothing that looked like the photos in ads or the search results my phone could have provided if I’d let myself look.
Marisol zoomed in once more. Her fingers stopped moving over the keyboard.
“We have early cardiac activity as well.”
The sentence hung suspended between the hum of the fan and the rustle of the paper gown under my back.
“Activity?” I repeated.
“The heart is beating. It’s early, so we measure it on screen. It’s clocking in at one hundred and sixteen beats per minute.”
There was no music. Nobody filled the room with dramatic sound to cue our faces. On the monitor, a tiny flicker appeared—a rhythmic pulse right where Marisol had placed a caliper line.
Cole squeezed my fingers once. He waited for me to return the pressure before squeezing again.
I stared at the flashing point. My stomach dropped—not entirely from fear, but from the terrifying speed with which fear found something tangible to latch onto.
“Is everything all right?” Cole asked.
He didn’t look at me when he asked. He directed the question to Marisol, his voice low and steady.
“Right now, the measurements align with approximately six weeks, and there is cardiac activity. That’s a good sign. We’ll monitor the pregnancy as usual; an ultrasound today can’t guarantee the whole road ahead.”
Thank you, I thought before I could stop myself. Thank you for not turning one morning into a false guarantee.
A soft knock sounded at the door. Dr. Mehta walked in holding a tablet, her hair gathered into a low braid. She greeted me first, then Cole, without making the sequence feel pointed.
“I’ve reviewed the scans. I agree with Marisol: early intrauterine pregnancy, approximately six weeks, with cardiac activity. Your estimated due date is December second, though we’ll confirm that at your next visit.”
December second.
The date landed with absurd gravity. December meant Halcyon’s year-end campaign, locked calendars, and my brother Danny’s birthday, for which my mother always cooked enough food for a battalion. It wasn’t a vague season or an abstract concept. It was a Wednesday that didn’t exist yet.
The doctor went over prenatal vitamins, symptoms that warranted an urgent call, and scheduling a follow-up scan in a few weeks.
I nodded at all the right intervals. Cole asked if there were specific restrictions we should keep in mind, and Dr. Mehta answered without drama: avoid alcohol, take the supplements, call if there was heavy bleeding, severe cramping, or fever, and live normally otherwise.
Normally. Noted.
When Marisol finished, she printed two glossy images and slid them into a white envelope. Cole didn’t reach for it. The doctor handed it directly to me.
“Any questions for now?”
I had so many none of them could clear my throat. What if the next scan doesn’t look like this? How do you budget for a life without building a cage around it? At what exact point do you stop talking about a possibility and start talking about a person?
“No,” I said. “Not for now.”
Dr. Mehta nodded as if that were a complete answer. “Take your time getting dressed. Marisol will have your follow-up instructions at the desk.”
Cole released my hand when I had to sit up from the table. The sudden loss of warmth left a tingling print on my palm. I carried the envelope against my chest into the restroom and slid the latch shut.
In the mirror, my hair was flattened behind my ears and the paper gown was half-untied at the waist. My watch sat open on the porcelain sink. I snapped it shut. The click sounded deafening in the small stall.
I didn’t cry. Crying was an action—almost useful. I just stared at the white envelope until knuckles tapped softly against the wood.
“Kate,” Cole called from the other side. “We don’t have to rush anywhere.”
I got dressed before answering.
“I have an eleven o’clock meeting.”
His pause lasted half a beat longer than usual. “Of course. We can head out whenever you’re ready.”
He didn’t tell me I shouldn’t go. He didn’t tell me Diane would survive without me. I appreciated it, and I resented him just a little for knowing exactly where not to push.
* * *
The corner coffee shop was packed with doctors wearing white coats under their jackets and commuters shouting into video calls.
Cole and I snagged a table by the window, near an espresso machine that hissed every few minutes.
I’d ordered peppermint tea because it was the only item that didn’t demand a decision.
He had a black drip coffee and let it cool without taking a sip.
The white envelope sat between our mugs.
“I didn’t expect the photos to be so... abstract,” I said.
Cole stared at the edge of the envelope, not the photo. “Looks like a poorly printed topo map.”
“An extremely expensive map.”
“Worst navigation system I’ve ever seen.”
A short laugh slipped out before I could choke it back. Three women at a neighboring table glanced over. I looked down at my tea, which smelled like warm toothpaste.
Cole offered a cautious smile, missing the easy confidence he had when discussing rugby.
“Sorry. Mediocre joke.”
“No. It’s an accurate assessment.”
“That worries me more.”
The espresso machine vented another blast of steam. Outside, an ambulance sped down Madison, its siren muffled by the fine drizzle. Cole took the envelope between two fingers and nudged it an inch closer to me without opening the flap.
“Do you want to look at it again?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s okay.”
“I also don’t know what we’re supposed to do now.”