24. Zelda
ZELDA
Because of the bleed at Christmas, the hospital wants another look at twenty-six weeks.
I tell Jeremiah on the Thursday call. The line goes quiet.
“You can come,” I say. “It’s at ten past nine on the nineteenth.”
“Zelda—”
“Let me answer the questions. And don’t come straight over and put your hands on me.”
The words sound harsher than I intended. I wait for him to hear only that part.
“I’ll be there.”
He is there before I am. Hedy drops me at the entrance at ten to nine, and he is already on the bench outside the scan department in his work coat, with two paper cups from the hot chocolate place on the corner beside him.
He stands up when he sees me. He looks at my stomach first. When he gets to my face, his ears go red.
“You’ve...” He stops. “He’s grown.”
“That’s the idea.”
He holds out one of the cups. “It’ll be cold. I got here early.”
“How early?”
“Early.”
I take it. It is cold. I drink some anyway, because he remembered which place.
“Didn’t you have work?” I ask.
“My manager is taking the morning meeting.”
His phone stays in his pocket while we wait. I turn the cup between my hands and try not to count the people called in before me.
The room is dim. The sonographer tucks paper towel into the top of my leggings and asks Jeremiah to take the chair by the wall. Jeremiah does as he’s told. He sits with his coat still on and his elbows on his knees.
The gel is warm this time. The screen is turned toward me.
Otto comes up on it in gray and white. His backbone is a string of beads. He has his knees pulled up. While we watch, he puts a fist against his own face and leaves it there.
“Heartbeat’s one forty-four,” the sonographer says. “Placenta’s high, well clear. I can’t see any sign of what bled. He’s measuring a few days ahead.”
“A few days ahead.” My voice wobbles. “He’s fine?”
“He’s what I’d want to see.”
I breathe out and it turns into a laugh. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from shaking the picture.
There he is. Knees and fingers and the stubborn little fist. I have spent weeks feeling him move and still, walking in here, I was afraid of a room going quiet.
“Hello,” I whisper.
He moves his foot. I watch for him to do it again.
A sound comes from the chair by the wall.
Jeremiah has bent forward with his fists against his eyes. His back is heaving. He is trying to do it without noise and he can’t. It comes out of him in rough, dragged breaths, and every one of them has his voice in it.
The sonographer looks at me and then at his keyboard.
Two months ago I would have been off this bed. I would have had Jeremiah’s head against my chest and my fingers in his hair, and I would have told him it was all right.
My arm has already lifted off the paper sheet. I look at it. I put it back down.
“Jeremiah,” I say.
He drags his sleeve across his face and looks up.
“Come and see him.” I point beside the bed. “Here.”
He comes to my shoulder and looks at the screen. His hand rests on the bed rail. It stays there.
“That’s his hand,” I tell him. “He keeps putting it on his face.”
“You do that.” His voice is wrecked. “When you read. You put your fist against your cheek.”
I didn’t know he noticed that.
I put my own hand against my cheek. He sees me do it and smiles through the mess of his face. For a second I can imagine sitting beside him with this child between us, watching for pieces of each other.
“He’ll leave a mark,” I say. “I always do.”
“Across the page too. You fall asleep on it.”
“Only the dull ones.”
He laughs once, unsteadily.
Otto uncurls his fist. We both lean nearer.
“I’m sorry, little boy,” Jeremiah whispers. “You don’t know. I’m going to make it better before you have to.”
I keep looking at the fingers opening on the screen. I want him to manage it. I am so tired of being afraid to want that.
The sonographer prints three pictures. He hands two to me and, after a look at my face, the third to Jeremiah.
Jeremiah slides it into his shirt pocket. When he takes his hand out, something comes with it and rings on the floor. He goes down on one knee after it so fast that he bangs his shoulder on the bed frame.
It is my wedding ring.
He closes his fist over it and gets up, face red to the collar.
“I carry it,” he says. “Since Christmas Eve. I wasn’t going to bring it out.”
“I know.”
“Do you want it back? To keep.”
I look at his fist. My finger still has a pale groove in it that hasn’t filled in.
“Not today,” I say. “Keep carrying it.”
In the corridor he asks whether I need a ride. Hedy has texted that she’s outside. I tell him, and he nods.
He still has the picture in his hand. There is a wet mark on one corner where he caught it with his thumb. I want to tell him not to ruin it, and then I want to ask whether he can see the hand as clearly in the print.
I take out mine. We compare them beneath the corridor light.
“There is one thing,” I say when I have put the pictures safely away. “The laundromat across from me. I can get the basket down the stairs, but hauling the sheets back up is becoming ridiculous.”
“I can do them.”
“Tuesday evenings. Six, if that works. You collect at the door and text when they’re dry. I’ll tell you where to leave them.”
“Six works.” He looks down at the picture still in his hand, then back at me. “Thank you for today.”
I get as far as the doors before I look back. He is standing under the scan department sign with the picture held by its edges.