Chapter Four
Carried Away
The first doctor’sappointment a few days later confirmed what the three home tests had told her a week ago.
“I can not tell you how hard it was not to tell you right away,” she said as the three of us sat in the office as the doctor talked to us.
“I loved how you did it. It was amazing,” I told her.
“Yeah, yeah. Kind of stole my thunder from my gift,” Mark teased. I squeezed his hand and stood on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. I fingered my necklace.
“It doesn’t change how pretty it is,” I assured him.
The doctor gave Cleo a once over and declared her examination over. “Go ahead and get dressed. Everything looks good. You’ve been pregnant before, so you know the drill. No alcohol, limit the seafood. I can get you the list if you want. Have you had any nausea?”
Cleo sat up and shrugged.
“Some. I’ve only puked once so far.” The doctor nodded and pulled out her prescription pad.
“I’m going to prescribe some medicine to help in case it gets really bad. Every pregnancy is different and its better to have something to help than nothing at all.” She pulled the paper off the pad and handed it to Mark. She glanced from him to me and then Cleo.
“I’ll see you all in one month. If you have any sharp pain, or bleeding call us immediately. If it Is past office hours go straight to the hospital. Sound good?” We all nodded, and Mark and I left with the doctor so Cleo could get dressed.
Mark hugged me and I saw he was smiling wildly.
“So, its real, really real.” I laughed.
“I guess so, Dad.”
“I don’t know about that. I want to be called something cool. Daddio? Pops? Padre? Or maybe I’ll be more formal. Father,” he tried the words out, trying to find one that worked.
“Well you have a few months to figure it out. You want to get lunch?” I asked right as Cleo came out of the room. He raised the paper in his hand.
“Let’s get this first, then see about food.”
An hour later we sat around Cleo’s kitchen while Derek passed around various containers of Chinese.
“So, are we going to wait until the baby’s born to go on tour then? People are excited about a new album, so this gives us time to work on it. No one is really pushing us right now to perform live,” Derek said. I looked over at my husband, who was exchanging glances with the rest of his band. I understood the hesitation.
Cleo had gone on tour while she was pregnant with Blue. She continued performing right up until her due date. But that was her baby. She was putting her own child at risk. This one wasn’t hers. Her body of course, but if something happened to the baby, we wouldn’t get another chance at this.
“I want to wait. Touring while pregnant is not great. I did it once and that’s enough for me. Plus, didn’t we vote to make a new album instead of a revisit? We don’t have anything solid for it,” Cleo said. Relief flooded me. She looked at me and winked. Mark perked up and put his food down.
“Speaking of music, I have an idea,” he started. Oh, I remembered him telling me about this awhile back. He had been so proud of it when he explained it.
“Okay, so the band is named after a musical. I think we should play that up.” His friends gave him confused looks but urged him to continue.
“Maria Maria was from West Side Story. We used to do musicals when we were kids, why not embrace it? I think we should sample famous songs from musicals, put our own spin on them and create a whole album surrounding it. We could do music videos with like clips of when we were kids mashed together with us now. It would be an homage to the ten years, but still something fresh.” He waved his hands around with enthusiasm over his idea.
Cleo straightened and looked like she was considering it. I glanced at the other two and they were deep in thought as well.
“I like it,” Derek said first.
“It’s genius,” Adrian added.
“What songs do you have in mind?” Cleo chimed in. Mark’s face lit up and he clapped his hands on the countertop. Cleo jumped up and left the room quickly. She returned with a pile of notebooks and pens. She tossed them across the counter to her bandmates and they all opened them and began discussing their future music. I finished my food silently watching them go at it.Their process was kind of fascinating to watch.
“First of all, what songs do you think we should sample? Or what musicals do you like?” Cleo asked again.
