Chapter 32 Eliana
ELIANA
sterile field /?ster?l fēld/: noun
Leave it to the lone man at the women’s clinic to make himself the center of attention.
The guy, whoever he is, is being really obnoxious. In a room full of women gestating with the miracle of life, he’s badgering the receptionist with incessant questions about parking validation like it’s the most important thing in the world.
Is it three hours or four? Should I have brought quarters? Are you sure I won’t get towed?
And yet instead of telling him to cool it, his wife comes up to him and says, “It’s gonna be alright, honey.
Come sit with me.” She laughs fondly, indulgently, the laugh of a woman who knows beyond all reasonable doubts that she’s loved.
I hear the man laugh self-consciously, apologize to the receptionist if he was being difficult, and join his wife in a seat.
I hate them both so much. More like my jealousy is manifesting as hate. Whatever.
“First baby?”
The voice comes from my left. I turn toward it, pasting on what I hope is a pleasant expression. “Oh. Uh, yes. First one.”
“How exciting! You must be thrilled.” The woman claps in delight for me. “Is your partner parking the car?”
“No, I—” I swallow. “He, uh… he couldn’t make it today.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. Work?”
“Something like that.”
My hand drifts toward my phone. I could call Bastian, if I wanted to. He’d be here in twenty minutes. Maybe less, if he drove like the maniac I know he is.
I stop myself.
This is what I chose. Backing out now would be a compromise of my own values. I picked this hill—time to die on it.
“My husband was the same way with our first,” the woman continues, oblivious to my internal crisis.
“Couldn’t get time off work, felt terrible about it.
But you know what I told him? I told him, ‘Honey, this baby is coming whether you’re in the room or not.
It doesn’t make too much of a difference, really.
’ Men just don’t understand how it works, do they? ”
I make a noncommittal sound that she must take as encouragement, because she keeps prattling on.
“He cried like a baby himself when our daughter was born, though. Big, tough guy, works construction, and there he was, blubbering into his hard hat.” She laughs at the memory. “They always come around eventually. The good ones, anyway.”
“Mm.”
“Is this your first ultrasound? Oh, wait, no—you look further along than that. Maybe sixteen weeks? Eighteen?”
“Almost twelve,” I correct.
“Oh, you’re carrying big! That’s a good sign. Healthy baby in there.” She giggles to herself. “Let me guess: You’re craving salt? I craved Cape Cod potato chips something fierce with my first. Couldn’t get enough of them. My husband used to joke that I was going to turn into a potato chip myself.”
“No chips for me.” I manage a weak smile. “Mostly just ginger ale.”
“Ginger ale! That’s a classic. My mother swore by it, too.
She said it was the only thing that got her through all four of us.
” The woman sighs contentedly. “You know, I always say that pregnancy is like a marathon. You just have to take it one mile at a time. It’s the hardest race on planet Earth, but mamas run it every single day, all around the planet. You’re gonna be just fine.”
I nod, hoping she’ll run out of steam soon. Not because she isn’t kind—I’m pretty sure she is the nicest woman who has ever been born—but because her kindness is just compounding my guilt for icing Bastian out of this experience. My fingers drum against my thigh.
Thankfully, I’m saved by the bell.
“Elly Hawker?”
I nearly leap out of my seat at the sound of the fake name I chose for today out of an abundance of caution. “That’s me!”
“Right this way,” says a nurse.
I grab Excalibur and stand, offering the chatty woman a quick wave that I hope conveys both nice to meet you and please never speak to me again.
“How are we feeling today?” the nurse asks as we walk.
“Fine,” I say. “Tired, mostly.”
“That’s normal. Your body’s working overtime.” She leads me into an exam room. “Dr. Meredith will be with you shortly. Go ahead and change into the gown on the table, if you don’t mind.”
I change, sit, and wait. I’ve been dreading this for a while now.
I couldn’t go to my old clinic, both because it was far south and also for fear that Aleksei might have found out about it and been watching for my return.
Problem is, now, I’m going to have to go through the getting-to-know-you inquisition all over again with a new doctor.
At least Meredith is a nice-sounding name, right? Very Grey’s Anatomy coded. She can’t possibly be anything less than a sweetie pie.
That turns out to be wrong.
For starters, “she” is not “she”; “she” is “he.” And “he” has the bedside manner of a tax auditor with a wicked hangover.
Dr. David Meredith rips through my medical history like he’s checking boxes on a form—which, to be fair, is exactly what he’s doing—but every question feels like it’s hiding a second, nastier question underneath.
“… And the father,” he says, pen poised. “Is he involved?”
I hesitate a beat too long. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“He wants to be involved,” I say lamely. “I’m just not sure it’s a good idea.”
Dr. Meredith doesn’t respond, just scribbles a note. The scrape of his pen against the clipboard sounds like scathing judgment rendered in chicken scratch.
“We’re not together,” I add, as if that clarifies anything. “But he’s… around. Sometimes. When I let him be.”
Yuck. I despise myself more and more with every passing second.
“How is your support system otherwise?” he drones. “Family? Friends?”
“I have a best friend. She’s been staying with me.”
Another scribbled note. Another loaded silence. “Have you been experiencing any unusual stress lately?”
I almost laugh right in his face. Where would I even begin? Say, Doctor, have you ever heard of the Bratva…?
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I say instead.
If he guesses that I’m not being entirely forthcoming, he shows no sign of it. Instead, Dr. Meredith makes a disgruntled noise and stands. “Let’s take a look at the fetus, then, shall we?”
The ultrasound gel is predictably freezing, but it’s better than the elephant-penis-sized transvaginal probe that accompanied my first appointment.
Still, I flinch when it hits my skin, and Dr. Meredith doesn’t apologize or warn me or do any of the small, human things that would make this feel less awful.
He’s not especially gentle with the wand, either.
Nor does he bother explaining what any of his hmms and huhhs mean as he steers it around the globe of my belly.
Is the baby in breech? Am I birthing a two-headed alien? Nobody knows.
“There’s the heartbeat,” he announces dryly.
The familiar whooshing fills the room. It’s every bit as strong as last time. That’s good, at least.
“Growth is on track. No obvious concerns.”
He rattles off more numbers that mean very little to me. Crown-to-rump length, nuchal translucency, other phrases of medical gibberish. Should I be taking notes? Am I already failing at motherhood?
“Would you like a printout?”
“Yes,” I mumble. “Please.”
“Here are the ultrasound photos. I’ll return momentarily with your paperwork.
” The door clicks shut behind Dr. Meredith, leaving me alone with the ultrasound photos and the hum of the merciless air conditioning unit.
I sit on the examination table in my paper gown like a kid in detention, the material crinkling every time I move. Goosebumps prickle up my bare legs.
Beyond the door, the clinic carries on without me. Phones ring. Distant conversations blur into white noise. Nurses’ shoes squeak against linoleum like mice scurrying through walls.
As I listen, something rises in my chest that I can’t quite name. Not regret, exactly, but definitely something adjacent to it. Something that lives in the same neighborhood and borrows sugar from regret on weekends.
Maybe it’s the ache of experiencing this moment alone when it should have been shared.
I think about the too-nice woman in the waiting room, the one whose husband cried into his hard hat. I wonder whether Bastian would cry if I let him close enough to see our baby enter this world. And then I wonder what it would do to me to see him go through that.
I squint against the tears and turn my face away, because they hurt, they hurt so fucking badly.
I chose this. I pushed him away. I got exactly what I asked for.
So why does it feel like losing?
The door opens again. I assume it’s Dr. Meredith returning with the printout, probably to deliver it with all the cheery warmth of a meter maid dishing out parking tickets.
But the footsteps sound wrong. They thunk in a way I don’t like. There’s a weight to them that doesn’t belong in a place full of expectant mothers and cheerful nurses.
My head snaps up. My body turns to stone on the exam table.
Something is off. Something is very, very off.
“Hello?” I call out.
The footsteps stop.
Then I hear the quiet click of the lock engaging.
My pulse spikes so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my temples, in the tips of my fingers wrapped around my cane. Adrenaline floods my system.
I open my mouth to ask who’s there, but my throat has gone dry. The words catch somewhere between my chest and my tongue, useless and stuck.
The smell hits me then. Marlboro Reds and sweat and cheap cologne, something synthetic and gross, a gas station throwaway with, like, a bellowing gorilla on the bottle. It’s not Dr. Meredith’s dry, medicinal antiseptic, and it’s definitely not Bastian’s wintergreen and musk.
I clear my throat and try again. “Who is it?”
There’s a dry cough that I realize belatedly is a nasty chuckle. Then a man’s voice, cold and unfamiliar.
“I’ll only tell you if you promise not to scream.”