3. Waiting for Tomorrow
Waiting for Tomorrow
Piper
The paper crinkled beneath me when I shifted on the examination table.
The technician rolled her stool closer and tugged the hem of my shirt high enough to expose my stomach, then squeezed gel from a plastic bottle onto my skin.
The first touch made me flinch. Eight weeks pregnant, and somehow this was the first moment the words had begun to mean anything beyond two lines on a test.
“Scoot down toward me a little,” she said. “That’s it.”
“Like this?”
“Exactly. Try to relax for me.”
Easy for her to say. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands, shifting them first beside my hips, then over the crumpled paper, then back into my lap.
The wand glided through the gel while gray shapes drifted across the monitor beside us.
None of them looked remotely like a baby.
They looked like shadows and clouds and meaningless smudges that required a medical degree to decipher.
The technician leaned toward the screen and made a small adjustment on the machine. A cursor appeared over one blurry section, disappeared, then returned somewhere else. Her concentration made me stop fidgeting with the edge of the paper.
“Is everything okay?”
She glanced at me. “Everything is looking good. Give me another moment to get the view I want.”
That should have settled me. Instead, my attention stayed fixed on the monitor while she moved the wand again.
Nolan would laugh when I told him how badly I had wanted the little gray shape to introduce itself.
He would probably stare at the picture for ten minutes, insisting he could already tell whose nose the baby had when there was barely anything recognizable on the screen.
“I’m going to tilt this toward you,” the technician said.
“Please. I want to see.”
She turned the monitor several inches, then pointed near the center of the image.
A tiny flicker pulsed there.
“There it is, Mrs. Callahan. A strong, healthy heartbeat.”
I covered my mouth before I realized what I was doing.
Then she pressed a button on the machine, and the room filled with a fast, steady thumping that seemed far too big for something so small.
I stared at that little flicker while the sound echoed through the speaker.
The monitor still showed little more than a gray blur, but now there was no mistaking what I was looking at.
Our baby.
“Oh my God.”
The technician smiled. “That’s your baby.”
“It’s so fast.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. I lowered my hand but kept staring at the screen. “It doesn’t even look real yet, but I can hear it.”
“It’s very real, I promise you.”
A laugh escaped me, followed by tears I had no intention of holding back. The technician reached for a tissue box on the counter and held it toward me. I took one and dabbed beneath my eyes without looking away from the monitor.
Three years earlier, Nolan’s whole face had changed when that phone call came through on the college field. One second he was pacing and pretending he wasn’t terrified; the next, he looked like somebody had handed him every future he ever wanted.
This would be better.
The idea made me smile. I could already picture him staring down at one of these photographs, probably asking the same useless questions I had asked. I wanted to watch the moment he understood that this was ours. Not Reid’s. Not the team’s. Not something for a campaign meeting or a sponsor dinner.
Ours.
The technician finished taking measurements and wiped most of the gel away before rolling back toward the machine. “I’m going to print these for you. Take your time getting dressed afterward, and I’ll meet you at the front desk.”
A small printer beside the monitor stirred to life. The strip spooled from it, each image bordered in white. When the technician tore it free and held it out, I sat up and took it with both hands.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Congratulations.”
The photographs weighed almost nothing. Still, I handled them as though one careless bend could damage something that mattered. I studied the first image once more, tracing the white border with my thumb without touching the glossy center.
My purse rested on the chair beside the table. I opened it, took out the protective envelope I had brought just in case, and eased the photos inside until they lay flat.
I tucked the envelope safely between my wallet and a packet of tissues.
Even after I stepped out of the examination room, I kept checking that it was still there, pressing my fingers against the side of the bag as I walked toward reception.
The photographs were safe. Our baby was safe.
For the first time since I had taken the pregnancy test, there was proof I could put into Nolan’s hands.
The receptionist looked up when I approached the desk, then turned her attention back to her monitor. “You’re all set. I have your next appointment in the system.”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
She glanced over the screen once more. “Have a wonderful afternoon, Mrs. Callahan. We will see you back here next month for your follow-up.”
“Thank you so much. I’ll call if I have any questions before then.”
The clinic doors opened, and October heat rolled over me the moment I stepped outside. Sunlight bounced off rows of windshields and turned the asphalt into a sheet of glare. After the dim examination room, I had to shield my eyes until they adjusted.
My car sat several spaces away. I walked toward it with the purse tucked against my side, already planning what I would say when Nolan answered.
Come home.
That was all I needed. No elaborate announcement. No gift box, no staged surprise, no camera waiting to record his reaction. I wanted him across from me in our kitchen, where I could slide the sonogram toward him and watch his face change when he understood what he was looking at.
The memory of the heartbeat followed me across the parking lot. That fast little sound had made everything real in a way the pregnancy test never could. Nolan needed to hear about it from me before Reid found another reason to keep him at the facility until midnight.
I stopped beside the rear bumper and opened my purse. The envelope stayed where I had placed it. My phone was underneath my wallet, and I slid it out without disturbing the photos.
“Come on, Nolan,” I murmured as the screen brightened.
His contact never opened.
The social media app I had left running refreshed before I could tap the phone icon. A new post jumped to the top of the feed, filling the screen with Sloane Prescott’s face.
For a moment, I only stared at her.
Then the rest of the photograph came into focus.
Nolan sat on one of the treatment tables in the team’s rehab room.
I recognized the blue padding, the equipment cabinets behind him, even the stack of folded towels along the wall.
I had been inside that room once during the off-season, before Reid decided wives had no business anywhere near the football operation.
Sloane stood between Nolan’s knees.
No. She wasn’t standing.
Her hip rested across his thigh, her body angled over his lap so their faces fit in the shot.
One arm stretched upward with the phone.
The other disappeared behind his shoulder.
Their cheeks were close enough that anyone scrolling past would understand exactly what the picture was supposed to suggest.
Sunlight washed out the screen. I shifted beside the car and turned the phone until the image cleared again.
There had to be something I was missing.
I zoomed in and looked at Nolan first.
Maybe Sloane had dropped into his space before he could move. Maybe Reid had shoved another camera in his face before he could object. Maybe Nolan had been irritated and the angle had hidden it.
I searched his expression for any trace of that.
He wore the same smile I had watched him give reporters hundreds of times. Easy. Attractive. Cooperative.
He wasn’t leaning away.
I stood frozen with the phone in my hand while cars moved through the lot behind me.
A cart rattled somewhere near the building entrance.
The ordinary noise made the image on my screen seem even stranger, as if I had stumbled across a photograph of somebody else’s husband and only happened to recognize the face.
That morning, I had been lying on an examination table listening to our child’s heartbeat.
After the game, my husband had been smiling while another woman draped herself across his lap.
I lowered the enlarged image and finally noticed the caption below it.
Sloane had tagged Nolan’s account. Thousands of likes were already stacked under the post, with more appearing every time the numbers refreshed. I didn’t open the comments. I couldn’t get past the words she had chosen to put directly beneath my husband’s face.
My thumb hovered over the screen as I read the caption under my breath.
“Postgame strategy sessions with my gorgeous brand partner. QB1 is an absolute dream to work with.”
Likes climbed by the hundreds while I stood beside the car. Comments flooded beneath the photograph faster than I could follow them, strangers celebrating the chemistry between my husband and another woman as if they had been invited into something intimate instead of sold a campaign.
I scrolled once before I could stop myself.
The reactions were variations of the same idea.
They looked good together. They should date.
The campaign had found its perfect couple.
People who knew nothing about Nolan beyond highlight reels and advertisements were building a romance around a photograph taken inside a room where I should have been able to trust him.
My thumb stopped moving.
The sonogram sat inside my purse against my hip.
Ten minutes earlier, I had been planning how to tell Nolan that our baby had a healthy heartbeat. I had pictured his face when I handed him the photographs. Now I was standing under the afternoon sun watching strangers congratulate him for looking good with Sloane Prescott.