23. AVA
AVA
Man Down
The ultrasound tech stops moving the wand.
Her hand is still on my stomach, still pressed into the cold gel, but the smooth tracking has frozen mid-sweep. She's looking at the screen with an expression I can't read.
Which is worse than one I can.
"Is everything okay?"
"I'm going to get Dr. Fernandez."
She leaves before I can ask another question. The door clicks shut. I stare at the grainy glow of my baby on the screen.
The room is aggressively quiet without the tech in it. Just the hum of the machine and my baby's heartbeat pulsing through speakers that somebody set to a volume designed to be reassuring but is actually terrifying when you're alone.
My fingers curl around the edge of the table. The paper beneath me crinkles.
I've been on my feet since six this morning for the final walkthrough in Brentwood before the painters arrive tomorrow.
Spent hours checking trim colors against natural light while my lower back screamed and my ankles swelled inside the wide-leg pants I've been wearing to hide the fact that my body is slowly, visibly betraying me.
I almost rescheduled this scan for next week.
But the scans are the one thing I don't skip. Not ever.
Dr. Fernandez enters the room. "Ava, let's take a look."
She takes the wand and presses it to my belly. Her eyes sweep the screen, her free hand adjusting something on the machine.
"What's happening?"
"There's a small collection of fluid around the baby's abdomen."
My hand flies to my stomach, fingers spreading wide.
"What does that mean?" My voice comes out too high.
"It's called hydrops. When the antibodies attack the baby's red blood cells and the anemia progresses, fluid can build up in the tissues. The good news is we're catching it early."
The word early sits in the air between us. I don't trust it. I trusted steady titers and look where that got me.
"We need to do intrauterine transfusion today. A needle guided by ultrasound will deliver red blood cells directly to the baby through the umbilical cord."
Cold slides down my spine. "A needle in my belly."
"Through the abdominal wall, yes. You'll be awake. We use local anesthetic. It takes roughly an hour."
My heart starts racing. All I can imagine is a needle inside me pointed at my baby.
"When is the transfusion?"
"Within the hour."
She squeezes my arm and leaves. The tech follows.
My baby's heartbeat pulses through the speakers. Fast, steady, impossibly small.
My phone is in my bag on the chair across the room. I wonder for a brief moment if I should call Kai.
My throat burns. My eyes burn worse.
"Hang on," I whisper to my belly. My palm presses flat against the gel-slicked skin. "I'm going to fix this."
The prep moves fast. A nurse hooks up an IV while another swabs my lower abdomen with antiseptic that makes my eyes water. Dr. Fernandez returns in scrubs with a neonatal specialist beside her.
"Try to stay as still as possible. Movement is our biggest variable."
"I'm good at staying still."
I'm terrible at it. I fidget in theaters, tap my foot in meetings. I once rearranged a client's bookshelf mid-consultation because my hands needed something to do.
Staying still when I'm scared is against every instinct wired into my body.
But I will turn to stone for this baby.
The local anesthetic burns going in, then spreads outward into numbness. The ultrasound wand presses onto my skin and there's my baby on the screen again.
"You're going to feel pressure now," Dr. Fernandez says.
The needle enters.
There’s no pain but the push is there. The needle feels deep and invasive. Every cell in my body screams to flinch, to curl around my baby, to protect the thing I grew from the thing trying to save it.
Instead I grip the table edges until my knuckles ache and force my breathing into measured counts.
Breathe In. Two, three, four. Breathe out. Two, three, four.
"Good. Stay just like that. Your baby's tolerating it well."
The baby's heart rate flickers in green numbers on the monitor. I lock my eyes onto those numbers and let everything else disappear.
I no longer hear the murmur of the team talking over me in calm, clinical voices.
Just focus on my baby.
Minutes pass like cold syrup. The clock on the wall ticks. I try counting ceiling tiles but my eyes keep sliding back to the monitor.
My legs cramp. My lower back locks from the forced position.
I try to be brave but my chin starts trembling after a few minutes. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and slide into my hair.
Kai should be here.
The thought cracks through me with the force of something I've been holding back for months.
Not I wish Kai were here. Not it would be nice.
He should be sitting beside this table with his hand over mine, his calm voice cutting through the beeping and the sterile air. His thumb drawing circles on my wrist. His steady brown eyes telling me he's got this, the way he told me he's got everything since the day I decided to trust him.
He should be here and he's not because I won't let him be.
The baby moves, a flutter against the needle's path that makes Dr. Fernandez pause.
"Hold still, little one," I whisper through wet teeth. "I know you hate this. I hate it too."
When the needle finally comes out, I feel the absence like a fist unclenching inside my torso.
"The transfusion went well. The baby's heart rate is strong."
I nod. My face is soaked and I don't care anymore who sees it.
They keep me for observation in a recovery room with a fetal monitor strapped to my belly and a nurse checking every fifteen minutes.
I lie there with my hand on the small adhesive bandage where the needle went in.
The wanting is back and louder now. Not the polite, managed longing I've been packaging for months. The raw kind that presses against the inside of my chest and makes it hard to breathe.
I want Kai's palm on top of mine, his thumb traces patterns on my skin.
I’ve spent months being strong enough to carry this pregnancy alone. Lying in this recovery room, the fetal monitor strapping my baby's heartbeat to my belly, I don't feel strong. I feel hollow.
The drive home takes forever because I keep the speed ten under the limit and my hand keeps flying to my stomach at every bump.
Biscuit runs to me the moment my neighbor hands him over. His tail keeps wagging, nose jamming into my thigh.
"Hey, girl. Easy."
I trudge to my door, unlock it. I don't remember the steps between the door and the cushion. Just that I’ve somehow arrived at the couch and I’m now lying and staring at the ceiling.
Exhaustion settles deep into my marrow. Every muscle I held rigid for an hour is releasing at once, cramping and twitching in waves that roll through my legs and back.
Biscuit climbs onto my chest. Her warm weight presses into me and a sob breaks loose that I didn't give permission.
Then another. Then another.
I cry with my dog on my chest and my hand on my belly, the ceiling blurring above me. I cry because Kai would have held my hand through every second of it if I'd let him.
And I didn't let him.
I've been so busy proving I can do this alone that I forgot to ask whether I should.
My mother made raising Lucy and I look survivable. She made it look like strength. But I remember her hands shaking over the bills at the kitchen table when she thought we'd gone to bed, hearing the sound of her crying through the wall.
I don’t want to live that kind of life.
I want Kai. I need his voice.
Now.
Not tomorrow, not tonight over takeout, now.
My phone is in my bag by the door. I slide off the couch and half-crawl to it because my legs have stopped cooperating. The screen blurs. My fingers are clumsy, swollen. I tap the screen, press the phone to my ear.
Two rings.
"Ava?"
Wrong voice. Only one person in the world has a voice as sharp as that.
"Lucy?"
"You called me. What's going on?"
"Sorry. Wrong number."
"Are you crying?"
"I'm fine."
"Don't you dare 'I'm fine' me. I can hear your nose running through the phone. Talk."
I should tell her I'm tired and hang up. Deal with this tomorrow when I have the energy to act in a way that won’t scare her.
"I had a blood transfusion for the baby."
There’s a charged silence.
"Tell me Kai was with you."
"He wasn't."
"Where was he?"
"He had stuff going on with the team."
"Stuff," she spits out in disgust. "His pregnant girlfriend is getting a needle through her stomach and he's at a hockey rink. That's what you're telling me."
"It's more complicated than that."
It really is. Even though I told Lucy and my mother that Kai and I are finally in a relationship, they don’t know I didn’t tell him about the baby.
Whimpering, Biscuit sits beside me, his head on my leg.
"What's complicated? You're in a relationship with this man. He knows about the baby. A normal human being clears his schedule and sits in that room."
My chest tightens. The correction sits on my tongue. He doesn't know, Lucy. I never told him.
"Maybe he couldn't get away."
"Couldn't get away?" Her voice rises. "From what? Skating? Hitting a puck? His girlfriend needed a needle put through her belly to keep his baby alive and he couldn't get away from a sport?"
"You don't understand the situation."
"Then help me understand. Because from where I'm standing, this looks like Dennis all over again. A man who shows up when it's easy and disappears when it's hard."
The name hits me like a slap.
"Don't compare Kai to Dad."
"Why not? Dad was charming too. Dad showed up with gifts and grand gestures and made promises that felt like bedrock until the first crack appeared. Then he was gone. How's that any different from a man who buys you a studio but can't be bothered to show up for a medical emergency?"
My hand shakes against the phone. Heat rushes into my face and behind my eyes.
"Because Kai is nothing like Dad, Lucy." My voice sounds broken. "He shows up every single time. He drove across the city at two in the morning to bring me mango because I couldn't sleep."
"Then where is he, Ava? Right now. This second."
I pause, silent.
Where is Kai right now? He’s probably at his apartment thinking about a captaincy some man in a suit is holding hostage, not knowing that the mother of his child is on the floor with a bandage on her belly.
The worst part is I chose this.
"He's doing the best he can," I whisper.
"His best isn't enough.” The anger in Lucy's voice fractures. Beneath it, fear crawls through. “Not for you or for that baby."
"Stop."
"Not until you hear me."
"I hear you." Tears are dripping off my jaw and onto Biscuit's fur. "Believe me, I hear you."
"Ava, are you really okay? Do you need me?"
"The baby is fine. The procedure went well."
"I didn't ask about the baby, Ava."
My back is against the wall by the front door, legs stretched across cold hardwood, the bandage on my belly pulling when I breathe.
"I'm so tired of doing all of this by myself, Lu." The words come out small.
"I'm coming over tomorrow."
"You don't have to."
"I'm coming tomorrow and we’re talking about everything, including why your boyfriend's priorities are so backward that hockey comes before his child."
She hangs up before I can respond.
I force myself to stand and walk back to the couch. Kai's hoodie is draped over the arm. I pull it on and the fabric swallows me, the sleeves falling past my fingers, the hem hitting my thighs. His cedar scent wraps around me.
My phone is still in my hand. I scroll to Kai’s name, double checking it this time before calling him.
"Hey." His voice is low and warm, hitting my bloodstream faster than any IV drip the hospital pumped into me. "I was just thinking about you."
"Hi." My voice sounds like someone scraped it off a sidewalk.
"What's wrong?"
"I had a blood transfusion today."
Silence. The kind where you can hear someone's entire body go still.
"What?"
"A transfusion at the hospital. I'm home now."
"Ava, what do you mean a blood transfusion? Why? What happened?"
A drawer slams on his end, then there’s the sound of keys jiggling. He's already moving.
I want to tell him everything, but my vision is dimming at the edges. The room tilts. My hands have become very heavy.
"Ava, talk to me. I'm coming. Which hospital?"
"I'm home," I mumble. "I'm on the couch."
"I'm on my way. Stay on the phone. Ava? Ava."
His voice gets farther away.
I slide sideways into something dark and warm and quiet. The phone slips from my fingers. Biscuit whines somewhere near my ear.
The last thing I hear is Kai's voice, small and frantic through the speaker on the floor, saying my name over and over like it's the only word he knows.