“Do you know the sex of the baby?” Ben asked as he squirted a stream of warm goo onto my stomach.
“No,” Jesse and I said in unison.
“Do you want to?”
“No,” we said again, though Jesse’s voice was more adamant than mine.
Ben nodded, giving us both looks that hinted that he thought we might have been the oddest couple he’d come across. “Okay, then let’s see how this little guy or girl is growing.”
When he dropped the wand onto my stomach, I heard Jesse suck in a breath and hold it. He wouldn’t stop holding it until he saw that fluttering little heart and heard it echoing through the room. My heart was the troublesome one, but for all Jesse was concerned, both the baby’s and my hearts were like a miracle every day they kept beating. His hand in mine moved past clammy to sweaty, and just as he was leaning forward in his chair, looking close to falling out of it, we heard it—the baby’s heart.
The breath he’d been holding came out as a relieved sigh, while my own relief I kept internalized. I worried about the baby too. Probably as much as he did, but only I knew how much.
His fingers stopped twisting mine, and his sweaty palm went back to clammy. While the heartbeat filled the room, so fast it reminded me of a hummingbird’s wings, Ben moved the paddle around until we had a good view of the baby on the screen.
I wasn’t the sentimental one, or the overly emotional one, but each and every time I’d seen our baby on that screen—even the first time, when it had looked more like a peanut than a baby—my eyes went all blurry and I felt a little hiccup catch in my chest. It was kind of like magic, though with this kind, there was no sleight of hand or science to explain the spectacle before our eyes. This was the truest form of magic.
Jesse stood and moved toward the screen. Every crease and wrinkle on his face was gone. Even in the dark, I could see how light his eyes were when he glanced back at me. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
A tear drained down my temple. I swiped it away before Jesse could notice, but another one leaked out of my other eye. I scrubbed that one away too. I’d cried enough sad tears in my life to know what they felt like. These were the happy kind, the good kind of tears.
I couldn’t help it, not even when Ben plucked a tissue out of the box resting on the top of the machine and handed it to me. Seeing the man I loved standing in front of me, utterly in awe of the image of the child we’d made together against every odd known to man, while that little heart thudded with such strength and veracity it didn’t seem possible it could ever stop, I became an emotional, overwhelmed mess.
When Jesse turned around and noticed though, I’d blame it all on the hormones.
He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, lifted it in front of the screen, adjusted the focus, and snapped a picture.
“I can print you guys off some pictures,” Ben said, giving Jesse an odd look as he snapped another. “That’s no problem at all.”
Jesse nodded. “Sure. Great. Thanks.” He took a few more pictures, all from the same angle and focus, before lowering his phone. “I just want to capture this moment, right now, and remember it.” After tucking the phone back into his pocket, he backed up until he was standing beside me again.
When I could finally tear my gaze from the screen, I looked at him. He was staring at me, his eyes warm and his expression so close to euphoric, I wanted to take my own picture to capture this moment.
“It’s such a miracle, isn’t it?” He lowered his hand to my forehead and brushed my hair back.
If he kept looking at me like that and saying those kinds of things, I would go through the rest of that box of tissues before we got out of there. A change of mood was needed before I melted into a puddle. Glancing at the screen, I smiled at the picture. “I don’t know, it kind of looks like an alien to me.” I felt Jesse’s stare, that’s how potent it was. Lifting my eyes, I grinned at him. “It must take after you.”
Even teasing him about our child looking like an alien couldn’t dampen his mood. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” His fingers tangled through my hair as his eyes shifted from me to the screen. “That baby is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” When he looked at me, he was smiling. “It must take after you.”
I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, touching each other and shifting glances between one another and our baby, but when the wand moved away from my stomach and the screen went blank, the spell was broken.
Broken but not destroyed.
When the lights flipped on, Ben made a quick escape after uttering a brief formality.
Jesse gave me a look. “See what that bra does to a man?”
I laughed so hard my stomach started shaking, and I felt it vibrating in my toes. Going from the nerves of the waiting room to the awe of the ultrasound to him making jokes about my bra’s prowess had taken me for a roller coaster ride I wasn’t ready to climb off of anytime soon.
“Well I know what it does to you, and you’re the only man I’m concerned with anyway.” When I started to sit up, he grabbed my hands and helped pull me up. “Although with the way my girls are growing, they’ll be spilling out of this bra, as well as all of my other ones, in a non-sexy way very soon.”
Jesse’s forehead lined, clearly not picking up on my attempts at subtlety.
“So if you want to take this one for one last spin before it gets stuffed into a plastic storage bin labeled ‘Before,’ you better not wait too long.” When I untied the top part of the exam gown, it was no coincidence.