And I have to be ready for that. I have to be strong. I have to be able to handle all of this myself.
Then there’s the other piece of this puzzle. The Josh piece. The one I still have yet to figure out.
After killing time in the coffee shop in the hospital lobby, I make my way over to maternal-fetal medicine. The waiting room is filled with pregnant women and their significant others, but I read on my e-reader and ignore the annoying sinking in my gut that only gets deeper as the minutes tick.
“Skylar Davenport?” the tech calls out, and I stand, my nerves all over the place, mixing with a bubbling excitement that makes my stomach roll. “I’m going to give you a gown. Please remove everything from the waist down. I’ll be back in a few minutes to begin. Are we waiting for anyone else to arrive?”
“No. It’s just me.”
She nods and leads me to a dimly lit room with a gurney and a large ultrasound machine. I get changed and onto the bed, draping the sheet over my legs. The door opens a few minutes later, and the tech enters, walking me through the procedure for the transvaginal ultrasound. It’s all very technical, and the nurse in me loves that.
“Do you want to know the baby’s gender?” she asks. “Wecan’t always tell, and it’s not a hundred percent accurate, but I’m pretty good at reading it.”
I swallow, my chest fluttering and my fingers tingling. “Yes. I want to know.”
“Great.” She gives me a reassuring smile. “Let’s get started.”
I lie back and blow out a breath just as the door bursts open. My head whips over, and I squint against the harsh hallway light that filters in. Aston is in scrubs with a harried expression on his face. He spots me on the bed before he looks at the monitor and sighs in relief.
“What are you doing here?”
He comes straight over to me and takes the chair at the head of the bed, his hand on my face as he kisses my forehead and then my lips. “I ran over from the hospital. It’s your first ultrasound. I wanted to be here with you. I wanted to see it. If I get a page, I’ll run back over. It’s just around the corner.”
And that’s it. That’s all it freaking takes for me to fall in love with Aston Hughes.
“Are you ready for me to begin?” the tech asks, and all I can do is nod because if I speak, I’ll sob or squeak or I don’t even know. Dammit. I’ve never been so happy to have someone and so afraid to lose them at the same time.
She puts warm gel on the probe and gently inserts it inside me. It’s not the most pleasant thing I’ve had up my vagina, but the moment the screen flickers and my blob of a uterus shows up, I no longer care about the discomfort. Measurements are taken and she clicks on a million things, but all I’m focused on is the small moving creature in the center. The one with the heartbeat pulsing like a hummingbird’s wings.
Aston sucks in a deep breath and wraps his arms around me. We’re both silent, mesmerized by what we’re seeing. Then she narrows in on it, and we get to see arms and legs and a belly and a head. Tears pour down my face, and with every sniffle I make, Aston kisses my cheek and rubs his nose against me.
“That’s my baby,” I murmur.
“It is,” he replies softly. “She’s beautiful.”
“What?” I face him, blinking a million times a minute. “She?”
He pulls back, a stricken look on his face. “Um. Well. Shit, were you not going to find out?”
I smack his shoulder. “I was, but you can’t just tell me like that.”
He laughs lightly. “I didn’t mean to. It just came out. I saw her, you know, anatomy, and that was kind of it.”
I make a displeased noise. “You can say vagina. You are a doctor.”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Fine. I saw her vagina.” Then he smiles the sweetest smile ever. “You’re having a little girl.”
I turn back to the screen as the tech measures the baby’s nuchal translucency and checks out her heart, all the while pretending to ignore us. It all looks good, as best I can tell.
“I’m having a little girl.”
“Don’t ever run out on me again,” he whispers in my ear. “You’re young and you’re just coming out of a bad relationship. I understand that. But I didn’t like waking up to find you already gone. If you need space, you tell me. If you’re spooked or scared or nervous or freaking out, you tell me. I get it. I’m having a lot of those moments, too. But I’m in this, Skylar. I’m not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. All this means is I’ll have another girl in my life to… to care for,” he says, stuttering over that as if he were going to say something else. “I’m okay with that. More than okay with it. Let me be in this with you.”
I nod and wrap my arms around his head and hold him. “I’m in this with you too.”
I’m at a weird angle, and there is literally a woman with a probe inside of me, but in this moment, I don’t care. In this moment, I feel like maybe, just maybe, it’s all going to be okay. Even if the rest of me knows, this is the calm before the storm.
33
