It wasn’t working on me.
Eight weeks pregnant. First ultrasound. First time we’d hear a heartbeat. First time we’d see proof that the life we’d made was real.
Chrissy squeezed my fingers.
“You’re shaking.”
“Am not.”
“You are.”
I brought our joined hands to my mouth and kissed her knuckles, lingering over the wedding band that still felt like a miracle on her finger.
“Just don’t want anything to be wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said softly, the same fierce certainty in her voice that had carried her through every mediation, every hospice bill, every nightmare Vivian threw at us. “I feel good. Tired, queasy, boobs hurt like hell, but good.”
She was glowing, even under the shitty lighting. Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy braid, curls escaping around her face. She wore one of my old hoodies — black, oversized, sleeves pushed up — and leggings that hugged the subtle new curve of her lower belly. She looked like mine. She was mine. And inside her, something of ours was growing.
The nurse called her name, Mrs. Stonewood, and the title still hit me in the sternum every damn time. I stood up so fast I nearly knocked the plastic chair over. Chrissy laughed under her breath and tugged me back down to earth with a gentle pull on my hand.
We followed the nurse down a hallway lined with framed photos of chubby newborns and pastel ultrasound prints. My pulse thudded in my ears louder than my boots on the tile. Chrissy kept stealing glances at me, amused and fond, like she could see every frantic thought racing behind my eyes.
The exam room was dim, curtains drawn, screen glowing soft blue. The tech — a kind-faced woman in her forties with a ponytail and a name tag that read MARIA — smiled at us both.
“First ultrasound?”
“First everything,” Chrissy said, hopping up onto the table with that fearless grace that still undid me.
Maria chuckled.
“Dad, you can sit right there.”
She nodded at the chair pulled close to Chrissy’s head. I sat, but only because collapsing felt like a bad look.
Chrissy lifted her hoodie just enough to expose the gentle swell of her stomach. My mouth went dry. I’d kissed that skin a hundred times in the last few weeks — slow, reverent, possessive — but seeing it here, under clinical light, made it all terrifyingly real.
The gel was cold; Chrissy hissed and laughed at the same time. I gripped her hand harder. Maria pressed the wand gently against her skin, sliding it in small circles. The screen flickered with static, then gray shapes, then?—
There.
A tiny bean-shaped blur. A fluttering speck that seemed no bigger than a lentil.
And then the sound.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
So fast it sounded like hummingbird wings.
Chrissy’s breath hitched. My own caught in my throat and stayed there.
Maria smiled wide.
“Strong heartbeat. Measuring right on track for eight weeks.”
I stared at the screen, unable to blink. That sound — that rapid, defiant little drum — was ours. Half me, half her. Proof that something good could come out of everything broken in my life.
Chrissy turned her head toward me, eyes shining.
