“I lost track of time. I’ll be okay. Seriously, it’s twelve. I’ll survive.”
“Are you nervous?” she asks.
I purse my lips and shake my head. “What’s there to be nervous about?”
Journey snickers. “Okay.”
I focus on the clock ticking above Journey’s head. It’s old-school, like the kind we had in the classrooms in high school. I can hear it from over here—a clear reminder that our appointment was five minutes ago.
“Mr. and Mrs. Pearson,” I hear from behind.
Journey stands up first, holding out her hand for me to grab. “I don’t need help standing up,” I say, cocking my head to the side.
“I know your back has been hurting, and your feet are a little swollen. I was trying to help.”
The woman holding the clipboard, waiting for us, stifles a laugh. “I hear this all the time,” she says.
I give Journey a look, one she’ll understand as: there’s never a bad time for payback. However, I also know she is not afraid of my payback.
I follow the women down the hall into a small room. “I’m Tricia,” she says. “Dr. Lincoln sent you over, correct?”
“Yes,” Journey responds.
“Perfect. You can have a seat on that stool,” Tricia says to me as she takes a seat in front of her computer monitor. Journey is already making herself comfortable on the table as if she’s done this a million times. She hasn’t. She’s had four doctor’s appointments, which have lasted a total of five minutes each. This appointment is different. Journey isn’t nervous, apprehensive, or uncomfortable in any way, and I can’t understand why because I feel like I might be sick.
“Are we hoping to find out the gender today?” the woman asks. I’m not a hundred percent sure if she’s a doctor or if an ultrasound specialist is different from a doctor, but I see the degrees hanging all over her wall so she obviously must know what she’s doing.
Journey glances over at me, waiting for me to answer. “Uh, yeah, we’d like to find out if possible,” I say, clearing my throat before and after my sentence.
“Do you have any suspicions?”
“It’s my first, so I’m not sure, and I’m not a big believer of superstition.,” Journey says.
She thinks we’re having a boy. She’s lying to the technician. She hasn’t been sick or uncomfortable—hasn’t had any cravings or aversions to smells or foods. She’s hardly gained weight, but enough that the doctor isn’t concerned. According to the books, she doesn’t approve of me reading; those are tell-tale signs of having a boy. She doesn’t want to hear it, but I saw her tracing her finger over a blue baseball cap the other day in a store.
All in all, she’s having a smooth time so far, unlike me who is wondering how I’m going to do this all over again. We weren’t planning for a baby. We hadn’t decided yet, but fate decided for us. Plus, it’s not like we didn’t know what could happen without taking precautions. I think we both silently assumed if it happens, it happens, and if not, it’s fine. Then when it happened, I thought Journey was going to have a hard time adjusting to an idea she hadn’t come to terms with first, but she’s been happier than I’ve ever seen her, so I’m happy too. Just nervous, and a little scared.
The ultrasound technician squirts the jelly stuff all over Journey’s little bump, as we call it, and presses the scanning device onto her stomach. Images flicker on the screen across the room and the sound of a heartbeat causes all the hairs on my arms to stand. “A good strong heartbeat,” Tricia says. She clicks her mouse across her screen while still moving the device around Journey’s stomach, leaving little markers on the screen. “Everything looks good so far.” Journey presses herself up to her elbows, likely assuming what comes next during the process. It takes the technician a minute to scan around Journey’s abdomen to find what she’s looking for. “Come on, sweetie, move that little arm of yours.” I see the arm now that Tricia has pointed it out. “Let’s see if we can get the baby to move that arm.” Tricia runs the device in circular motions over the spot producing the image of the arm, and a startling movement makes Journey jump and laugh at the same time.
“The baby did not like that,” Journey says.
“I guess not,” Tricia says, “but I got a clear image for you.” She clicks her mouse a few times, zooming in on the screen. “It appears you have a baby girl on the way. Congratulations!”
Journey is enamored by all the images on the screen; her eyes are wide and her mouth is ajar. The blood is rushing to my head, or out of my head, or—maybe I should have eaten breakfast because this cold sweat filling my body isn’t normal.
A girl. Another girl. Daughters. Two. Journey. All girls.
“He’s clearly not going to make it through the delivery,” I hear Journey saying through a chuckle. A damp rag is on my forehead, and water droplets are streaming down the side of my face.
“Here’s a little juice and some crackers. This will bring your blood pressure back to normal,” Tricia says.
“What? What happened?”
“You passed out, dork,” Journey says, standing in front of me, holding a wad of ultrasound pictures in her hand.
“Believe it or not, it’s common for this to happen here. It’s a lot for the mind to take in, and sometimes our bodies go into fight or flight mode, causing a blood pressure change, and dads just blackout sometimes. Oddly enough, it’s more often when they hear the word ‘girl.’” Trica laughs at her statement.
“I bet those studies show that those dads already have experience with daughters,” I say with a struggling smile.
