The room we were ushered into was clearly a makeshift arrangement that had been made semi-permanent after the fact. There were uneven wear stains on the floor, where some equipment had clearly stood in place for many years before being moved when the entire room was repurposed. The nurse closed the privacy curtain behind us, and we were alone. Natalie grunted softly as she sat up on the bed, and then turned slowly to lay on her back. She wiggled for a moment, and then pulled up on her loose-fitting top to expose her swollen belly. I sat down in the chair beside her.
The TV was on. I reached back behind the top of her bed, grabbed the all-in-one controller, and turned the volume up a few notches. It was nice to have the distraction, but Natalie hardly seemed to notice. She was staring at her belly again. She did that a lot.
The curtain being drawn broke the silence in a jarring way.
"Hello hello," the technician said, not looking up from her clipboard. "How are we doing today?"
"Good," Natalie said. Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat and shifted on the bed, and repeated, "Good," more clearly.
"Alright alright. Where are we... twenty weeks! Okay!" She smiled and looked up. "This is a big one." She set the clipboard into a slot and sat down on the other side of Natalie. "This is gonna feel cold at first," she said, as she reached for the bottle of jelly.
The technician didn't say much else as she worked. They never did. That wasn't their job. She drew some lines on the screen, made some measurements, and then noted everything. The whole thing took less than five minutes, and then we were alone again.
I turned the TV back up, and it was just as jarring when the doctor opened the privacy curtain ten minutes later.
"Hello...
Natalie
," the doctor said, her long hair back in a ponytail. "How are you feeling today?"
"Good," she replied woodenly.
"That's wonderful to hear. Wonderful. Looks like we saw you about ten weeks ago. Is that right?"
"I think so."
"Okay..." The doctor said down and smiled. "Have you two decided if you want to know the gender?"
Natalie and I both paused and looked at each other, but probably not for the same reason the doctor thought.
"It's very common to want to wait," she added.
"You can say," Natalie said, carefully. "I don't want that to be a secret, but what I really want to... um... Is everything—"
The doctor smiled, and placed a hand gently on Natalie's forearm. "Your baby is healthy. All the tests I've got here," she said, looking down at a tablet, "are clean. We're negative on all the chromosomal testing. Everything the tech checked is right on target for a little girl at twenty weeks."
"Is that enough testing?" Natalie asked urgently. "I was reading online, and it seemed like there were a lot of things that the blood or amniotic fluid couldn't possibly test for."
The doctor waited patiently, nodding as she talked herself down, and then smiled. "I hear what you're saying," she said, "and I don't want to be dismissive of how you feel. Can you take a deep breath for me?"
Natalie nodded, laid back against the bed, chest rising and falling slowly. Her eyes looked misty.
"You're right. We don't test for everything. We can't. What I can tell you is that we test for all the most likely conditions. We cover as many things as we can, with as few tests as we can, and we try not to put the mother through any more tests than are medically necessary."
Natalie nodded and looked down, clearly still worried.
"I know that pregnancy can feel like a... like a neverending list of things to worry about, but one of the most important things, if not
the
most important thing, is
your
health. Do you know what I mean?"
Natalie nodded half-heartedly.
"There's a line between healthy fear and unhealthy fear." She leaned forward and made direct eye contact while clasping both hands around my sister's. "It's natural to worry. Trust me. I have three. I've been where you are. Every pregnancy is different, but even with my third I was having to stop from diagnosing myself with every little thing. It never gets easier."
She smiled, and Natalie gave a whimpered laugh.
"The parenting does, but the pregnancy is always nerve racking. Fortunately, you have a team of doctors looking out for you, okay?"
Natalie nodded.
"The best advice I can give you is to listen to your body. If something feels wrong don't let anyone tell you it's nothing.
Your body knows.
On the other hand, don't let your head tell your body how you feel."
At that, Natalie laughed and wiped at her eye.
"Be honest with me," she said, moving one stretched-open hand over Natalie's belly. "How have you felt?
"Really good," Natalie said, nodding and wiping at the other eye.
"Okay." Both of them nodded again, and the doctor reached for the bottle of jelly. "Good. Remember to speak up, even if that means asking for things you would normally just do for yourself around the house. I'm sure Dad here is aching to be useful."
Natalie and I looked at each other.
"No, I'm... uh..."
"He's my brother," she said.
Without missing a beat, the doctor smiled broadly. "That's wonderful that you have supportive family, and so rare. Almost every woman that comes in here does it alone, and I know that can be scary.
"Now," she continued, "this is going to feel cold for just a second."
My sister nodded and licked her lips, only wincing slightly. The doctor turned her chair and pulled a monitor out away from the wall. Natalie and I both stared at the shadows and flashes of gray.
"She is about nine point seven inches long," the doctor lilted, "which is perfect. She's tracking right where we'd expect given your height."
"She?" I said.
The doctor smiled and looked back at us. "Her heart rate is about a hundred and fifty five. Girls are almost always higher than boys, and... if she'll sit still for just a second..."
The doctor narrowed her eyes as she slid the wand back and forth. Natalie's eyes grew wide.
"There's her spine," she said, as a wave of ridges splashed across the screen. "And that's her leg... and if we slide around just a little bit..." She turned around to us and smiled. "No penis. It's a girl."
My hand found Natalie's, and she squeezed tightly.
"A girl," she said softly.
The doctor beamed, gave us a moment to breathe, and then showed us more.
***
Mom made a point of looking down at her phone just as we came through the wide, sliding double doors and then pretended to react to seeing us afterwards to let us know we were late. Natalie smiled weakly, and I managed little better.
"Thanks for coming," Natalie said.
"Of course," Mom replied, smiling graciously. "I'm only too happy to help out." She turned, arms folded, and looked deeper into the furniture store. "So what are we looking for specifically?"
Natalie sighed. She'd been sighing a lot recently. "Honestly, I was hoping you could help with that too. I keep thinking of things and forgetting. And then sometimes I'm thinking about something I need and go to write it down because my memory is just shit lately, and by the time I find a pen and paper or my phone I've forgotten what I was doing. I know I need a crib, but... I'm just... I'm so tired."
"Yeah," Mom said, smiling slightly. "I don't miss that."
Natalie made a sound in her throat and rummaged through her purse, producing a small three-by-three card after a moment.
"Is this..." Even after her most recent round of botox, Mom still looked pretty shocked.
"A girl," Natalie said softly. "It's a girl."
Mom stared down at the ultrasound picture, barely more than a shadows in the dark, and smiled. "Thank you for this."
Natalie nodded.
Mom held the card in her hand and, after taking a moment to compose herself, turned sharply. "Alright. Well." She cleared her throat sharply, fooling no one, and started walking. Natalie and I moved to follow her.
"So," she said loudly, so as to be heard without having to turn to face us. "You two look like you're back to hating each other."
"We don't hate each other," my sister groaned.
"Could have fooled me." She took a sharp turn, moving through an office furniture display, and added, "When are you going to kick him out?"
"
Mom
, we don't hate each other. Can we please move on?"
She stopped and turned to face us. The botox softened her smirk, but it was still there. "He's been living under your roof for almost two years. Isn't he ready to get back on his feet yet?"
"I'm standing right here," I say.
