Chapter Twenty-Six
Who would have thought the fun never stops when sitting in a frigid examination room wearing nothing but a paper gown that opens in the front. Those oh-so-wonderful chrome stirrups gleamed at me mockingly from the end of the exam table. Ugh.
It was moments like these, when I was forced to be a patient, that I took the opportunity to mentally record for myself. As a physician, it was so easy to forget that the patient on the exam table was a person with fears, anxieties and general discomfort with all things paper-gown and metal stirrup, for example. These were the moments I needed to force myself to be present, to remember and internalize in order to become a better doctor.
Instead, I was being forced to listen to the nervous chatter of my husband while his leg bobbed up and down at a million miles a minute. If I asked him why he was nervous, he’d staunchly deny any sort of discomfort or anxiety. So instead, I humored him, which definitely wasn’t conducive to living in the moment.
“What do you think of the name Ada?” he asked.
I pulled my gaze from the holes in the off-white ceiling tiles to look at him. “Name for what? A new character in Dragon Epoch?”
His dark brows twitched together. “No. For the baby, if she’s a girl.”
I wrinkled my brow at him. “Where the hell did you get Ada from? Did you just take the M off your name, so she’d be named after you?”
He brightened at the thought. “Actually, I hadn’t considered that angle but that makes it even more of a plus. The idea is actually because of Ada Lovelace. She lived in the nineteenth century and was considered a key figure in modern programming. The government named a programming language and there’s even hardware named after her.”
I raised my brows. “And now...our baby, if you get your way?”
“Ada Drake. It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
I laughed, amazed he couldn’t hear it. “Everyone’s going to think you just wanted the feminine form of your name and named her after you. So what do you want a boy to be, Adam Drake Jr.? If I decide to give the poor kid a middle name, he wouldn’t be a junior, right?”
He shook his head vigorously. “Nope, no junior. I went to school with a kid who was a junior—and people called him junior instead of his actual name. He was a total asshole.”
I sighed, turning my attention to the settings on the ultrasound machine. This early in the game, I’d have to have a transvaginal ultrasound, which included the dreaded wand. I wasn’t the biggest fan of that.
“How does this contraption work, anyway? Sound waves?” he asked.
“Ultrasound waves.” I pointed at the wand. “This is a transducer. It sends out a beam of sound through the body. They are totally harmless, which makes this process much safer than an X-ray. The sound waves bounce off or move through the body, depending on whether it’s going through soft tissue or bone. So the echo—”
“What about Grace?” he cut in.
I heaved a sigh. “Adam, you aren’t listening. You asked me a question and I was trying to explain how this whole process works. It’s really quite fascinating what you can see using this technology.”
But he wasn’t listening. “She’s another programmer. Grace Hopper.”
“Well, I guess Ada and Grace are better than something like Padme or Mon Mothma.”
He quirked a dark brow at me. “Well, I’m going to resort to Star Wars names after I’ve exhausted possible programmers.”
“Resort right on to something else.”
“No Leia?” He looked at me doubtfully. “Okay, what about Galadriel? That’s a lovely, elegant name for a powerful, kickass woman.”
I sighed. “I don’t think her ears will be pointy enough for that name. Besides, Galadriel Drake sounds like, I dunno, a dragon hunter or something.” I stared at the door. “Damn, I have to pee. When is she coming in?”
“I’ll wait here, go use the bathroom. It’s right next—”
I shook my head. “No for the external ultrasound, I need to have a full bladder.”
He gave me a look. “Do I want to know why?”
I laughed. “No, it’s just anatomical stuff. It puts my organs in the right position—”
At that moment, thank goodness, my obstetrician, Dr. Weir, showed up, greeted us with smiles and made a little small talk. Once she had the transponder on my stomach and got measurements, I was finally able to use the bathroom before moving to the next step in the process.
This part, I knew, would be more interesting for Adam. And sure enough, not ten seconds after the transponder was in place, the familiar whoosh whoosh whoosh of a fetal heartbeat resounded on the speakers.
“So Mia, do you want to show Adam?”
My husband blinked, then stared at the screen, obviously completely at a loss for what he was looking at. Which was understandable, because to the non-initiated, ultrasound imaging must resemble the constantly scrolling green code in The Matrix. But in this case, I was Neo. I put my finger just below the slight flutter inside the dark circle. “This is the fetal pole on the embryo and see that little flickering motion right there? That’s the heart. The tissue starts that flickering motion, emulating a heartbeat, at five to six weeks.”
Adam leaned in, squinting. “Yeah, I see it. That’s so cool.”
“The tissue starts pumping like that very early on.”
He blinked, tilted his head and blinked again. Then, without a word, pulled out his phone. “Can I get a video?”
Dr. Weir intervened. “Oh, I can send you a video clip. We don’t normally do that but Mia’s in the business so I can make an exception. I’ll just pull your email address off your chart and send you a snippet.”
I smiled at her. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”
She grinned. “No problem.” Then she turned to Adam. “And I have to tell you that my daughters love your game. In fact, they love it a little too much. The youngest had to have her gaming time restricted because her grades were starting to tank.”
Adam gave her a sheepish look. “Sorry but...not sorry?”
She laughed. “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”
I raised my brows. “But she’s okay now? She managed to pull her grades up?”
Dr. Weir nodded. “Oh yeah, yeah. Everything’s just fine now.”
Adam said, “Well maybe when she’s on a school break, you could bring them down to the campus and we’ll do a tour, if that interests them.”
She laughed again. “Are you kidding? I think they’d flip out.”
“Maybe put it out there as an incentive for her to get her grades up,” I said.
The doctor considered and nodded. “That’s a really good idea. I have a feeling you’re going to be a natural at this mothering thing, Mia. Already thinking like a mom.”
When I looked back at Adam, he seemed distracted, as if he wasn’t paying attention to what we were saying. On closer inspection, he appeared pale. But he seemed to bounce back quickly and by the time we were alone in the car, he was his old self again.
I sent him a stealthy look under my lashes and tried to make the inquiry as casual sounding and off the cuff as I could. “Everything okay? You seemed a little, um, distracted there at the end.”
He pressed the button to start the car. “Hmm? Yeah, just thinking about all the stuff we need to do before the happy event. Making a mental list, you know. The stuff to get, the classes to schedule, writing up the birth plan—”
I put a hand over his. “Adam, don’t put the cart before the horse. We have many months left. We’re good.”
“Yeah, about that. Why does everyone think that a pregnancy is only nine months long when it’s actually forty weeks?”
I laughed. “Well forty weeks if you’re counting those first two weeks where a woman isn’t actually pregnant. I guess we stick with tradition—even if it’s based on bad math. Or maybe women didn’t like the idea of calling 40 weeks 10 months. I’m sure I’ll be wanting it over and done by the end, just like everyone else.”
“Maybe it’s just another one of the great medical lies we’ve been fed all these years,” he teased, as he was so fond of doing, knowing how much that medical conspiracy stuff got my back up.
I arched a brow at him. “Listen—” And when he snickered it only made me more annoyed. “Fine, you join the medical conspiracy camp. I’ll sign up for the flat earth society.”