Chapter 16
CLAIRE
In the dream, Dr. Patel kept moving the wand and the screen stayed gray.
No curve of a back. No lifted arm. The speaker on the machine gave us only the soft scrape of static. I asked Dr. Patel to try again, but she looked at Graham instead of answering me.
He stood on the other side of the room with the first ultrasound in his hand. When I called his name, the picture folded down the middle.
I woke with my palm pressed against my stomach.
The apartment was dark except for the stove clock and the narrow line of streetlight beneath the curtains. For a few seconds, I could still hear the empty machine.
Then the refrigerator started, the pipes clicked behind the bathroom wall, and I was alone on the couch.
I had fallen asleep there after checking the Bellamy timeline one final time. The throw blanket was tangled around my feet. My phone lay facedown beside a glass of water on the floor.
I sat up and waited for my body to tell me something.
There was no pain. When I went to the bathroom, there was no blood.
My stomach looked the same beneath my sleep shirt, a small firmness I could see only when I turned sideways.
The nausea that had ruled my mornings for weeks had been quieter for three days.
Dr. Patel had told me that could happen now. I had been grateful yesterday.
At one in the morning, its absence felt like evidence.
I lay down again and put both hands low on my stomach.
It was too early for Dr. Patel to expect regular movement.
The small turns I thought I had felt twice that week could have been the baby or digestion; she had warned me not to count on them yet.
I stayed still anyway, bargaining with every quiet inch of my body for one unmistakable sign.
The apartment offered only the hum of the cooler through the floor.
I opened the clinic page on my phone and read the after-hours instructions.
Severe pain. Heavy bleeding. Fever. A list of symptoms I did not have.
The nurse line could not reach through the screen and tell me the heartbeat was still there.
Going to an emergency room because of a dream would put me beneath fluorescent lights for hours and turn fear into a medical event.
During treatment, I had learned how quickly fear could consume a night. One bruise became a clotting problem. A headache became the wrong medication at the wrong time. I could research until dawn and still arrive at the clinic carrying the same question in a more exhausted body.
I called Nina.
The call went to voicemail after four rings. Before I could decide whether to try again, a text appeared.
At my sister's with the boys tonight. She got called into work and they just fell asleep. Are you okay?
I pictured Nina whispering from a hallway, one nephew asleep on the couch and the other waiting to hear her footsteps outside the door. She had already spent the week driving me to the clinic and carrying the parts of the Bellamy event I could not.
Bad dream. Nothing medical. Go back to sleep.
Three dots appeared.
I can call.
I typed No, I'm fine, then erased it.
Stay with them. I'll call if anything changes.
The typing indicator came and went twice before she sent a heart and told me to keep my phone on.
I returned to the couch. The new storage cabinet stood against the wall, its bottom drawer even with the others.
Graham had left the instruction booklet on top, weighted beneath the small bag of spare hardware.
He had carried the buckets, followed my labels, eaten noodles at the worktable, and left at eleven thirty.
His number was below Nina's in my recent calls.
I stared at it until the stove clock changed to one sixteen.
Then I pressed his name.
He answered immediately. “Claire?”
For one terrible second, I could not speak. The concern in his voice made the dream come back in pieces—the blank screen, the folded picture, Dr. Patel turning away.
“I don't need a hospital,” I said. “Nothing hurts. There's no bleeding.”
I heard sheets move and a lamp click on. “What happened?”
“I had a dream that the heartbeat was gone.”
He was quiet.
“I know that's not a reason to go in,” I continued. “I read the instructions. I know symptoms can improve. I just—” I pressed my fingers against my eyes. “I don't want to be alone right now.”
“Do you want me to come?”
The direct question left the answer with me.
“Yes. Sit with me until I fall asleep.”
“I'm coming. I'll call from the door.”
He arrived fourteen minutes later. I watched from the upstairs window as his car stopped across the street. He crossed beneath the awning, called me, and stayed on the sidewalk until I went downstairs and unlocked the studio entrance.
Graham wore dark sweatpants under his coat and an old university T-shirt. His hair was still flattened on one side from sleep. He looked at my face, then lowered his attention to the keys in my hand.
“Upstairs?” he asked.
I nodded.
The studio smelled of roses and damp greenery. He followed me through the dark without reaching for a light. At the apartment door, I let him in and went straight to the couch.
Graham took off his coat. “Where do you want me?”
“Here. Just not too close.”
He sat on the floor with his back against the front of the couch, near my feet. His shoulder was a few inches from my knee. The position looked uncomfortable, but he settled there without searching for a better one.
“Do you want water?” he asked.
“I have some.”
He nodded. The room became quiet enough that I could hear his breathing and the faint rattle of a truck on the avenue.
“The nausea stopped,” I said. “Not completely. Almost.”
“Did Dr. Patel say that could happen?”
“Yes.”
“Does hearing that help at all?”
“Not tonight.”
“Okay.” He rested his head against the couch cushion behind him. “Do you want me to call the nurse line for you?”
“No. If I need the nurse, I'll call.”
“Okay.”
“The dream started at the clinic,” I said. “The screen was empty. Dr. Patel wouldn't answer me.”
Graham folded his hands over one raised knee.
“I keep thinking I could lose the baby and not know,” I continued. “That everything could stop inside me while I'm making flower counts or answering emails. I would still be planning where to put the bassinet.”
He looked toward the cabinet against the wall. “I think about it too.”
“You do?”
“Every time my phone rings. Every morning I wake up and there isn't a message from you.” He swallowed. “I tell myself no message is probably good. I don't always believe it.”
“What do you do?”
“Look at the pictures you gave me. Read the dates at the top. Remind myself what Dr. Patel said when I was there.” He rubbed his thumb across one knuckle. “Then I put the phone down for as long as I can.”
I could picture the two prints on his nightstand or desk, aligned with the same care he gave every document that mattered. Once, that would have irritated me. Tonight it made the distance between our two rooms feel measured rather than endless.
Knowing he had been afraid hurt and helped in equal measure. He had not made the fear another thing I had to manage.
“I spent so long trying not to hope,” I said. “Every month, I would tell myself I knew better. Then I would calculate the day anyway. I thought if I expected nothing, nothing could humiliate me.”
Graham stared at his clasped hands.
“Now I know this baby is here,” I said. “I've seen the heartbeat. I've started buying things. I let myself think about a face and a name, and that means there is something to take from me.”
“I'm afraid too,” he said. “I don't know how this ends. I wish I did.”
“I wanted you to tell me it was fine in the dream,” I said.
“I want to tell you that now.”
“But you can't.”
“No.” His voice broke on the word. He looked down before he continued. “I can tell you the last scan was good. I can tell you I'm here tonight. That's all I have.”
The tears came then, hot and immediate. I covered my mouth to keep the sound down, although there was no one below us to wake.
Graham turned slightly. “Can I give you a tissue?”
I laughed once through the tears. “Yes.”
He reached to the box on the kitchen table and handed it up to me. Then he returned his hands to his knee.
I told him the rest of the dream. I told him how the picture folded in his hand and how angry I had been that Dr. Patel looked at him first. I told him I was afraid the years of treatment had taught my body how to fail before I had learned how to carry anything.
His face tightened at that, but he let me finish.
“Your body isn't on trial with me,” he said.
The words stopped the next explanation in my throat.
I lay back against the couch cushion. Graham stayed on the floor. We listened to the pipes knock once and the refrigerator settle into silence again.
After a while, I asked him to talk about something that had nothing to do with the baby.
He told me the garage door had jammed halfway open that afternoon and Rosa had fixed it before he found the manual.
I told him Paolo had used too much blue tape on the first bucket after making fun of mine. Graham said that sounded like justice.
The ordinary words slowed the room down. My fingers loosened around the tissue.
“Will you still be here if I close my eyes?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Leave when I fall asleep. Lock the apartment door behind you.”
“I will.”
I pulled the throw blanket over my legs. The fear had not disappeared, but it no longer filled every part of the room. Graham's shoulder remained below the edge of the couch, solid in the dim light.
The last thing I heard was him asking whether he could turn off the lamp.
When I woke, dawn had thinned the darkness around the curtains.
A second blanket covered my shoulders. The glass of water sat on the kitchen table instead of the floor, and Graham's coat was gone from the chair. I checked the apartment door. The lock was set.
There was no note. My phone held no message asking whether I had slept, no careful reference to what I had told him in the dark.
I made toast and watched the light move across the new cabinet. At seven fifteen, I texted him.
Thank you for coming. I slept.
He answered a few minutes later.
I'm glad. Thank you for calling me.
I read the words while the toast browned too far in the toaster. He had come when I asked. He had listened to the ugliest part of my fear, covered me, locked the door, and gone home.
The next appointment card was clipped to the refrigerator beside the ultrasound. Nina had offered to drive both ways, but the appointment fell on the afternoon before Daniel's memorial date. Graham might already have plans with Theo. I could ask, and he could tell me.
My next appointment is Thursday at four. Nina is taking me. Can you drive me home afterward?
His answer came before I removed the burned toast.
Yes. I'll be outside the clinic at five unless you tell me otherwise.