3. Az
— ? —
Az
The ultrasound room is freezing, which feels appropriate for a woman whose husband is currently in Phoenix doing whatever the hell is more important than watching our daughter’s heartbeat for the first time.
I’m lying on the exam table in one of those paper gowns that make everyone look like they’re about to be served on a platter, and the gel the technician squirts on my stomach is so cold I actually gasp. “Sorry,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “It warms up.”
It doesn’t warm up fast enough.
I already know it’s a girl. The blood test results came back last week.
I was alone for that too, sitting in my car in the parking lot of the grocery store, reading the email until it sank in.
A daughter. We’re having a daughter. I called Eli immediately and he answered on the fourth ring, distracted, Brynn’s voice in the background asking something about venue capacity.
“That’s amazing, babe,” he said. “I gotta go, sound check in five, but that’s… wow. A girl. Love you.”
He ended the call before I could tell him anything else.
“Your husband couldn’t make it?” the technician asks, like she’s commenting on the weather.
“Work,” I say. I told him the appointment time twice. Put it in the shared calendar. Texted him a reminder this morning with three exclamation points, which I immediately regretted because it made me look desperate.
He texted back: Phoenix radio thing came up cant move it sorry!! Brynn will send video ??
Brynn. Will send video.
I didn’t respond.
“Well, let’s see this baby,” the technician says, pressing the wand against my belly. The screen flickers to life with that gray-and-white static that looks like nothing until suddenly it looks like everything.
And there she is.
My daughter.
She’s bigger than I expected, curled up like a comma, and I can see her spine, this perfect little ladder of bones that I grew inside my body without even trying. Her heart is beating so fast it looks like a strobe light, this relentless flutter that means she’s alive, she’s real, she’s mine.
“Strong heartbeat,” the technician says. “One-sixty. Perfect.”
I can’t speak. My throat has closed completely and my eyes are burning and I’m watching my daughter move, actually move, one tiny hand coming up to her face like she’s already done with all of us.
I need to call him. I need him to see this.
“Can I… sorry, can I have one second?” I’m already reaching for my phone on the little table beside me. “I just want to-”
“Take your time, honey. She’s not going anywhere.”
I dial Eli. It rings once, twice, three times, and then voicemail. His recorded voice says “You know what to do” in that low rumble that used to make my stomach flip and now just makes me want to throw the phone across the room.
I hang up without leaving a message.
Try again. Voicemail.
Again. Voicemail.
My hands are shaking when I pull up Brynn’s contact. I hate that I have her number at all, hate that I know it by heart because she calls so often I’ve accidentally memorized it, hate that my husband is more reachable through his tour manager than through his own wife.
She answers on the first ring, because of course she does. “Az! Hey!”
Her voice is so bright, so cheerful, and I can hear…
I can hear the echo of a hallway. The squeak of shoes on linoleum.
“Where are you?” I ask, even though I already know.
“Oh, I’m just-” A pause. “I’m at the medical building actually? Eli mentioned your appointment and I was in the area so I thought I’d swing by in case you needed anything.”
In the area. In case I needed anything. Like she’s a delivery service, like she’s doing me a favor, like she belongs anywhere near this moment that should have been between me and my husband and no one else.
“He’s doing a radio interview,” Brynn continues. “I can pass along a message though! He really wanted to be there, you know he did, but this thing just came up super last minute and-”
“Can you just tell him to check his phone?” I keep my voice level, which costs me.
“Totally! And hey, listen, since I’m here anyway, do you want me to come in? I could record everything for him so he doesn’t miss-”
“No.” The word comes out flat.
“It’s really no trouble! He specifically asked me to make sure-”
“Brynn. No.”
There’s a beat of silence. Then: “Okay. I totally get it. I’ll have him call you as soon as he’s out.”
I hang up and look back at the screen where my daughter is still moving, still alive, still waiting for someone to pay attention to her.
The technician gives me a sympathetic look. “You ready to continue?”
I nod because words feel out of reach.
She’s measuring things, head circumference, femur length, the fluid at the back of her neck, and I’m watching my daughter’s heart beat and thinking about how I already knew she was a girl but now I can see her and she feels so much more real.
She has my nose, I think. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
Maybe she’ll have Eli’s eyes, that impossible pale blue that makes people stop him on the street.
God, I hope she has his eyes.
The door opens.
I know before I turn my head. I know by the way the air shifts, by the faint smell of that vanilla perfume she wears, by the soft “Hey, sorry, I know you said… but he called me back and he really wants to see, and I figured-”
Brynn is standing in the doorway with her phone already raised, camera pointed directly at the ultrasound screen.
“He asked me to record everything,” she says, like that makes it okay. “I promise I’ll be totally quiet, you won’t even know I’m here.”
The technician looks at me. “Is this…?”
“It’s fine,” I hear myself say, even though it’s not fine, even though every cell in my body is screaming at me to tell her to get out.
But Eli wants to see. Eli asked for this.
And if I make a scene, if I kick her out, I’m the difficult one.
I’m the wife who can’t handle her husband having a female friend.
Brynn slips into the corner, phone steady. She’s wearing white jeans and a silk blouse and her hair is perfect, like she’s on her way to brunch instead of ambushing my prenatal appointment.
“Oh my gosh, look at her,” Brynn breathes, and I want to say don’t look at her, she’s mine, you don’t get to look at her like that.
I don’t say anything.
The technician keeps working, pointing out the chambers of the heart, the kidneys, the tiny feet with their tinier toes. “Everything looks perfect,” she says. “Measuring right on track.”
“That’s amazing,” Brynn says. She’s narrating into her phone now, quiet but audible. “Eli, everything’s perfect, she’s so beautiful, the heartbeat is super strong-”
“Can you ask about movement?” Brynn interrupts. “Eli wanted to know when she’ll start feeling kicks.”
I turn my head slowly. “What?”
“He texted me a list of questions. I figured since you’ve got the doctor right here-”
“I can answer any questions,” the technician says carefully, looking between us.
“When do kicks usually start?” Brynn asks, like this is her appointment, like she has any right to any of this information.
The technician answers, something about sixteen to twenty weeks, something about first-time mothers, something I should be paying attention to but can’t because I’m watching Brynn zoom in on the screen, on my daughter’s face, and then she’s doing something on her phone and I hear the little whoosh of a message sending.
“What was that?”
“Heartbeat recording. He wanted to hear it live but since he couldn’t-”
“Stop.”
Brynn looks up, innocent. “What?”
“Stop recording, stop sending things. Just stop.”
“I’m just trying to help, Az. He’s really upset he couldn’t be here and I thought-”
“I didn’t sit up yet. I didn’t even see the final measurements. You just-” My voice cracks and I hate myself for it. “You just sent him the heartbeat before I could even-”
The technician clears her throat. “I can print some images. Give you a moment.”
She leaves, and Brynn and I are alone with my daughter’s image frozen on the screen.
“I’m sorry,” Brynn says. She lowers her phone but doesn’t put it away. “I really was just trying to help. You know I love you guys.”
I sit up, wiping the gel off my stomach with the paper towel the technician left behind. My hands are trembling so badly I can barely get the gown closed. “You need to go.”
“Az-”
“I mean it.” I finally look at her, and whatever’s on my face must say what I can’t put into words, because she actually takes a step back. “You don’t come to my appointments. You don’t record my daughter. That’s not help. That’s you inserting yourself into moments that don’t belong to you.”
Her expression shifts. The sunny brightness wavers, and underneath it I catch the colder thing she keeps hidden, hard and calculating. “I was just trying-”
“I know what you were trying.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. Then Brynn nods once, tight, and walks out without another word.
I sit in the empty room with my daughter’s image on the screen and my hands pressed flat against my stomach where she’s still alive, still moving, still completely unaware that her father chose a radio interview over her heartbeat and her mother had to share her first real glimpse with a woman who has no business being here at all.
The technician comes back with a strip of printouts. Four images, black and white, my daughter from four different angles. “These are yours,” she says, gentle. “Congratulations. She looks healthy.”
I take them.
I don’t look at them again until I’m in my car.
From the parking lot, I call Eli, engine running, hands unsteady.
He answers on the second ring this time. “Babe! I saw everything, she’s perfect, I can’t believe-”
“You saw everything because Brynn recorded it without asking me.”
Pause. “She said you were okay with it.”
“I wasn’t okay with it. I said fine because I didn’t want to cause a scene, and then she started narrating to you and sending the heartbeat before I even sat up and-”
“She’s like family,” Eli says. “She was being sweet. She knows how much I wanted to be there.”
“She’s your family. She’s not mine. And I just told her to stop, so I need you to back me up.”
Another pause. Longer this time. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t ‘talk to her’ like you’re placating me. Actually tell her-”
“I said I’ll talk to her, Az. Jesus. Can we just be happy for five seconds? We’re having a daughter. A little girl. That’s-” His voice catches, and for a moment I hear the man I married, the one who cried when I told him the test was positive. “That’s everything, babe.”
“It would have been everything if you’d been there.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But I’ll be there for the next one. I promise.”
He always promises. I’ve heard that promise before.
“I have to go,” I say.
“Az-”
“I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I hang up before he can respond.
***
That night, I’m in bed with Whiskers curled against my side, scrolling mindlessly through my phone because I can’t sleep and the nursery isn’t going to plan itself, when I see it.
Eli’s Instagram.
New post. Forty-seven minutes ago.
It’s the sonogram. My daughter’s face, grainy and perfect, unmistakably her. And the caption:
my two girls ??
Already half a million views. Three thousand comments about how lucky he is, how beautiful she looks, how Brynn commented a string of heart emojis with the words “cannot WAIT to meet her” and Eli responded with “best aunt already.”
He posted my daughter’s sonogram.
Without asking me.
And he called us “my two girls”, his wife and his daughter, except he didn’t even text me to say he was doing it. Didn’t send me the image first. Didn’t think for one second that maybe the mother might want to be the one to share, that maybe this was mine to give to the world.
Brynn sent him that photo. She recorded it, she sent it, and now half a million strangers have seen my daughter before my own parents.
I never sent him that photo.