Chapter 157 The Horizon Ahead

Chapter 157 The Reassurance

The appointment on Friday nearly destroyed him and he had not even gone inside yet.

He sat in the car outside Hartwell Teaching Hospital for four minutes before Lily noticed he had not moved.

"Ethan," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"You have to actually get out of the car," she said.

"I know," he said.

He did not move.

She turned in her seat to look at him properly.

His hands were on the steering wheel even though the engine was off. He was staring at the entrance of the hospital the way someone stared at a thing they were trying to make themselves ready for.

"Tell me what is happening in your head right now," she said.

"Nothing," he said.

"That is not true," she said.

He breathed out slowly.

"Once we go in there," he said. "It becomes completely real."

"It is already completely real," she said.

"I know," he said. "But right now I can still pretend it is something that is happening in the future. Once we walk through that door it is happening now. Today. And I do not know what today is going to show us."

She looked at him.

"You are scared something will be wrong," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"That is a reasonable thing to be scared of," she said.

"Is it?" he said.

"Yes," she said. "It means you already care what happens. That is not a bad place to start."

He looked at her.

She held his gaze without flinching.

"Come on," she said. "I need you in there with me."

He got out of the car.

\---

The sonographer was a woman in her forties named Clare who had the calm, unhurried manner of someone who had done this thousands of times and had learned that the people on the other side of the screen needed steadiness more than they needed conversation.

Lily lay on the table.

Ethan stood beside her.

He had not sat down since they entered the room.

Clare applied the gel and moved the probe and looked at the screen with the focused attention of someone reading something important.

Ethan watched the screen.

He had no idea what he was looking at.

It looked like static. Like a bad signal on an old television. And then Clare angled the probe slightly and something shifted and there it was, a small shape, not much, barely anything, but unmistakably present.

He stopped breathing for a second.

"There we go," Clare said. "Six weeks and three days. Good size for dates."

Lily was looking at the screen.

Ethan was looking at the screen.

"Is everything okay?" Lily said.

"Everything looks exactly as it should," Clare said.

Lily breathed.

Ethan still had not breathed properly.

"Do you want to hear the heartbeat?" Clare said.

Lily looked at Ethan.

He looked at her.

"Yes," he said. His voice came out different from usual. Quieter. Like something in him had shifted position.

Clare pressed a button.

The sound filled the small room.

Fast. Rhythmic. Completely certain of itself.

Ethan put his hand on the edge of the table.

Not on Lily's hand. Just on the table. Like he needed something to hold onto.

Lily looked at his face.

She had seen many versions of his face across four years. The cold one from the hallways of Northwood High. The unguarded one from the piano room. The one from the hotel room that she never wanted to see again. The one at the wedding two weeks ago that she did not have a name for yet.

This one was new.

This was the one that came when something arrived that was too large for any existing expression to contain.

"That is fast," he said.

"That is normal for this stage," she said.

"It sounds very sure of itself," he said.

"Yes," she said. "It does."

Clare printed two images and handed them over.

Ethan held one.

He looked at it for a long time.

\---

They sat in the car afterward without starting the engine.

He was still holding the image.

She waited.

"I want to call Jake," he said.

"Okay," she said.

"Is that strange?" he said. "To want to call Jake first?"

"No," she said. "Jake has been there for everything. He should hear it first."

He looked at the image again.

"I thought I would feel more frightened in there," he said. "When the heartbeat started I thought I would feel the fear getting bigger."

"And?" she said.

"It went the other direction," he said.

She looked at him.

"It got smaller?" she said.

"Not the fear exactly," he said. "More like. The fear stayed the same size but everything around it got bigger. So the fear took up less of the space."

She was quiet for a moment.

"That is a very precise description," she said.

"I have been thinking about it for the last ten minutes," he said.

"What filled the space?" she said.

He looked at the image.

"I do not have a word for it yet," he said.

"You will find one," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Eventually."

He put the image carefully in the inside pocket of his jacket.

She noticed where he put it.

Inside pocket.

Where he had kept the ring for a week before he proposed.

Where you kept things you were not ready to put down yet.

She did not say anything about it.

Some things did not need to be said.

He called Jake.

Jake answered on the second ring.

"We had the appointment," Ethan said.

A pause.

"And?" Jake said.

"Six weeks and three days," Ethan said. "Heartbeat confirmed. Everything is fine."

Another pause.

Longer this time.

"Okay," Jake said.

"Okay?" Ethan said.

"I mean congratulations," Jake said. "I just needed a second."

"You needed a second," Ethan said.

"It is a significant piece of information," Jake said. "Give me a second."

Lily could hear Jake's voice through the phone and she put her hand over her mouth to stop herself from smiling.

"Jake," Ethan said.

"I am here," Jake said. "I am very happy. I am also thinking about the fact that you are going to be someone's father and I am processing that."

"Is that bad?" Ethan said.

"No," Jake said. "It is just large."

"Yes," Ethan said. "It is large."

"Are you scared?" Jake said.

"Yes," Ethan said.

"Good," Jake said.

"That is what Lily said," Ethan said.

"Lily is right," Jake said. "She usually is."

Ethan looked at Lily.

She raised her eyebrows.

"He says you are usually right," Ethan told her.

"Tell him I know," she said.

"She says she knows," Ethan said into the phone.

"Of course she does," Jake said. "Tell her congratulations. Tell her I will call her later."

"I will tell her," Ethan said.

"Ethan," Jake said.

"Yes?" Ethan said.

Jake was quiet for a moment.

"You are going to be good at this," Jake said. "I have known you since we were twelve. I know which version of you exists when nobody is watching. That is the version that child is going to get."

Ethan said nothing for a moment.

"How do you know?" he said.

"Because the version of you that nobody sees is the one that shows up," Jake said. "It has always been that version. The one that drove four hours in the middle of the night. The one that went into a burning building. The one that sat on the sofa with a fifteen year old at three in the morning and gave him a real answer." He paused. "That version does not disappear when things get difficult. It gets more present. Your child is going to get the most present version of you."

Ethan was very still.

Lily could not hear the words Jake was saying anymore.

She could only see Ethan's face.

And whatever Jake was saying was doing something to it.

The new expression, the one from the scan room, was back.

But quieter now.

More settled.

"Thank you," Ethan said.

"Do not thank me," Jake said. "Just do not name the baby Jake."

Ethan made a sound that was the closest thing to a laugh she had heard from him in the last forty-eight hours.

"Why not?" he said.

"Because then every conversation will be confusing," Jake said. "Two Jakes. It is inefficient."

"Noted," Ethan said.

"Good," Jake said. "Go home. Feed your wife. Call me this weekend."

He ended the call.

Ethan put the phone down.

He sat for a moment.

"What did he say?" Lily asked. "At the end."

"The version of me nobody watches," Ethan said. "He said that is the version the child will get."

She looked at him.

"He is right," she said.

"I know people keep saying that," he said.

"Because it is true," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I know it is true. It is just strange to hear it said by people who have been watching."

"Get used to it," she said.

He looked at her.

"Are you going to say that to me often?" he said. "People who have been watching?"

"Whenever you need it," she said.

He started the engine.

"Daniel," he said.

"What about him?" she said.

"He does not know yet," Ethan said.

"No," she said.

"He is going to have opinions," Ethan said.

"He has opinions about everything," she said.

"He is going to want to name it," Ethan said.

She looked at him.

"Absolutely not," she said.

"I agree," Ethan said. "But he is going to try."

"Let him try," she said. "I have vetoed things Daniel suggested before."

"The bread," Ethan said.

"Among other things," she said.

He drove.

The city moved past the windows.

She looked at the hospital getting smaller in the side mirror and she thought about six weeks and three days and a heartbeat that sounded completely certain of itself.

She thought about all the things she had been certain of across four years that had turned out to be right.

She thought about this being one more.

She looked at his profile.

He was driving with both hands on the wheel and the image was in his inside pocket and the expression on his face had settled into something she recognised now.

It was the same expression he had worn the morning after the wedding.

The one that said: I know where I am.

The one that said: I have arrived somewhere and I recognise it.

She turned back to the window.

Outside the city was doing its ordinary Friday morning thing.

Inside the car two people were driving home carrying something that had changed the weight of everything and looked, from the outside, exactly like anyone else.

That was the thing about the most significant moments.

They never announced themselves.

They just arrived.

And then they were simply part of what was true.