Chapter 67

Though my shirt had only been pulled up to reveal my rounded belly, I felt almost naked with Mr. Czarn—Reuben—watching from a chair beside me. Then there was the weird jelly they squirted all over my stomach that I’d never get used to.

The lady manning the ultrasound wasn’t the same happy young granny, but a younger woman with dangling silver earrings and brown hair piled high to the sky. I didn’t miss that she gave Mr. Czarn more than one too-long glance.

Then the lights turned off, and I found my embarrassment giving way to my crappy 5 hours of sleep the night before. And the jelly had been warmed ahead of time. And the chair was soft.

“Yep. That there is definitely a boy,” I heard her say with a chuckle. “He is not ashamed to flaunt it.”

I heard clicks as she took measurements, then the tap of keys as she labeled.

The entire time Mr. Cz—Reuben—didn’t speak. He had his legs crossed and his hands folded on his knees, eyes glued to the projection on the wall. I stopped looking at his reactions when I let my heavy eyes close. I could see pictures of everything later. I wasn’t sleeping, just resting my eyes. And she was kind enough to explain what she was finding as she went, clicking and tapping along the way.

“His femur is a bit longer than normal. Going to be a tall boy….Oh, look at that perfect spine and ribs….now for his heart…you see those different colors? That’s marking the flow of oxygenated and non-oxygenated blood. It’s flowing just as it should. No murmurs, no holes, and there are his kidneys…a healthy boy so far. Oh! There’s a kick! Must not like being peeked on.”

I’d felt the kick. It had been small, feeling more like a tiny muscle jerk.

The ultrasound machine worked almost silently. The only noise was the cooling fans in the computer, and they provided the perfect white noise.

I could feel myself slipping into sleep, but I didn’t care. Sleep sounded too good right now, especially after a stressful day of work. Maria had cornered me when she’d spotted me running those supplies down to engineering, and she had done it with a slam of her hand on the wall, blocking my way.

“Don’t you think you have something to tell me?”

Her jungle queen visage became most vivid when she was angry and using her exceptional height to look down at me, widening her eyes so the white popped against her dark pupils and skin.

I felt like a particularly fat and annoying mere cat beneath that gaze.

“I, uh…did you get the souvenirs I sent you?”

“Yes, German chocolate is ten grades above American; besides that…” she leaned down, or more like loomed above her, and flashed her white teeth. “What’s this I hear of Mr. Czarn tripping over himself to take care of you?”

I bit my lip and looked about me just in time to see several heads in their cubicles turn away.

“Um, this really isn’t the place—”

“Damn right, it isn’t, but do I get a text? Or a call? Oh, I do when you get pregnant and poisoned, done in less than ten words and a damn smiley face.” She slapped the wall by her head again, making her jump. “Are we friends or not?”

“Yes?”

“Do I include you in my love life?”

“What little that is…”

“You have no right to sarcasm right now.”

“I didn’t mean it that way!” She looked around at the engineers she could just tell had their ears perked. “I’m not even sure—I meant to explain it to you guys, I really did, I just got caught up in Joshua camping outside my house and—”

“Joshua what?”

Now the engineers weren’t even bothering to hide. Nearly half the office had their eyes peeking over their cubicle walls.

I reflexively slapped my hand over Maria’s mouth.

“I’ll text it all to you during my break.”

“You damn better.”

“I promise.”

I waited for her to clear out of my way to the elevator, but she stood there for a moment longer, scanning me head to toe, her fierce leopard expression softening.

“I…I’m just worried about you. You know that, right? And ever since you found out…you know…I feel like you’ve been closing us out. We rarely hear from you anymore.”

I felt the guilt and couldn’t deny that I had been distancing myself. I couldn’t entirely explain why, but a part of it was fear of Maria and Tammy pressuring me to do something with the baby that I didn’t want to, or even thinking less of me because I had gotten myself pregnant. They, after all, went drinking all the time and had never made such a huge mistake. They’d never moved in with a guy and gotten cheated on either. It was hard to ignore the fear of being judged by people who knew me so well and them being right. I already thought horribly of myself as it was.

Maria, perhaps sensing this, finally let her menacing posture drop and put a hand on my head to pat it exactly three times, like a dog.

I scowled at her, to which she smiled.

“We’d never think less of you, honey. Shit happens. You know that. If anything, we should be to blame for not watching over you. We brought you to that club in the first place and got you drunk, didn’t we?”

“…Thank you.”

“But text me promptly. That butt wipe ginger shouldn’t even know where you live, so that’s scary as shit.”

“Yeah.” I hugged an arm to my side. “It was a little scary, but mostly annoying.”

She gave me another pat before shooing me along on my very important tasks.