Chapter 176: The first picture

Chapter 177: The first picture
The lights in the exam room had been turned down to a silence, as quiet as the silence of the theater before the curtain rose. I lay on the bed, the light paper crinkling under me, my fingers already entwined around Caspian's. He leaned over me, spring-silent, his thumb tracing gentle patterns on the back of my hand.

I didn't know if I was more afraid or more excited. My heart pounding, breath stuck somewhere in my chest. I couldn't look away from the screen, black and empty for now, waiting for something—anything—to be there, to be real, to be proof that this was happening. That I hadn't imagined it all. The disease, the fatigue, the hunger, the visions. The constant pain that would never subside.

"Under gel, slow, cold gel," the technician warned softly, and I nodded. 

It scared me anyway--cold against my skin--but Caspian encircled his hand over mine, keeping me in place. 

"Okay?" he whispered.

I nodded again, even though my voice was harder than I intended. "Yeah."

And then the probe touched against my flesh. The screen spun, black and static, like the beginning of a quiet whisper in code. I latched my eyes on the screen and didn't even know what I was looking for—what did it look like? A dot? A shape? Would I see it?

Then it arrived.

A small, thudding smear. Flying like the smallest light. Like a heart beating constructed of stars.

"Here it is," the technician panted. "Your baby."

I stuttered. My own heart had frozen. 

I wheeled around to Caspian, my throat constricted and full but unable to produce words. He wasn't even looking at me—he was fixed on the screen like it held the key to everything he'd ever dreamed of. His mouth hanging slightly open, his brows just so I'd ever only once seen before—when I said I loved him.

His eyes were watery.

"Oh," I whispered.

His hand released mine to smooth through my hair, then my face. He leaned his forehead against mine, and I felt him breathe slowly, with awe.

"That's our baby," he whispered, as though saying it out loud would make him believe it. "That's really our baby."

I nodded, sobbing, my throat too tight to talk.

The technician called out items—the rhythm of the heart, the angle of a still-emerging head, the shadow of arm and spine. I listened but could take in no more than the hum of that tiny beat echoing through the room, more than sense, more than terror.

I didn't know it was possible to be like this—this way of loving again, but improved. Gentler. Eternal.

"She's reading right on the mark," replied the technician. "Looks good."

Caspian tightened up his grip on my hand once more. "She?" he teased.

The tech grinned. "Just a habit—I don't know what yet."

But something became solid for me when she said it, as if the idea had always existed, just in need of someone to identify it.

When she had finished, she printed out the picture and handed it to me. I barely looked at it before handing it over to Caspian. His hands were shaking as he took it from me. And for a long, long time, we did not talk.

We walked out of the clinic in silence, into the gentle light of an evening. The world had changed—such that the air was heavy, the clouds were meaningful, the wind was whispering to us alone.

In the car, Caspian had still not taken his eyes from the photograph.

"She's already setting into your obstinacy," he said at last, with a voice full of wonder and something close to laughter.

I turned to him. "Oh?"

He held the picture in sunlight, as if memorizing every soft feature. "She swept over you like fire. You were sick, exhausted, could not even walk straight without falling—yet still you tried to assure me you were fine."

I smiled, startled by the flush moving up my chest. "Now it's her doing, then?"

He looked up to mine. His still-glinting, still-glassy eyes locked with mine.

No, he replied. No one is to blame. It just. something I never imagined I'd be so lucky to witness.

He leaned, stroked his palm against my cheek, then bent and kissed me. Not hard, not fast—just slow and solid. As though he was searing the moment onto us.

"I didn't know," he breathed on my lips, "that I could be so happy."

I placed my hand over his heart. "Neither did I."

He edged the ultrasound photo nearer to me and smiled, slow and wide. "She's already changing everything."

I gazed once more at the smudgy photograph. The black-and-white blur meant nothing, to everyone else. But to us, it was the world. It showed that the pain, the fear, the quiet—it had counted.

"Her eyes are going to be your eyes," I breathed.

"And your fight."

"And your kindness."

"And your fire."

I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from screaming and buried my face in his shoulder as he put the car into motion.

The way home was longer, as though the world itself was taking a break so we could recover and catch up with what we had learned. I watched people walk by—the mother with the stroller, the father with the toddler thrown over his shoulder flying into the air, the teenager giggling at a cell phone call—and for the first time, I did not stand at a distance and view it.

I was among them now.

I was to be a mother to someone.

That fact hit me in the chest with a heart of its own.

Caspian turned to me when the red light came on and we stopped. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking about how I used to question whether I'd ever be safe enough to let life bring something into the world," I said, staring ahead.

"And now?"

I gazed at him. "Now I don't feel safe—I feel brave."

His eyes went gentle. "You are brave."

We said nothing to each other for some time afterwards. The city swept by, dense and noisy, but there was a hush between us that was sacred. As though we were wrapped in something nobody else could touch.

When we pulled into the driveway, Caspian killed the engine but didn't open his door. He gazed at the photo once more.

"Frame it," he said. "Place it where we'll see it every day."

"Such as in the bedroom?"

"No," he said with a lopsided grin. "The kitchen. Right next to the coffee pot."

I blinked, and then I laughed outright. "Romantic."

"It's convenient," he smiled. "I go in there in the morning. I want her to be the first thing I see."

I leaned in and wrapped my hand around his jaw, pulling him in for another kiss.

"She is," I gasped.

He placed the picture carefully on the nightstand, as if it would shatter if we put too much pressure on it. I slept next to him, balled up, his arm around me, his hand lying heavy and vigilant over my stomach.

I was still afraid. Of what would not succeed. Of how the world would be otherwise. Of all that I could not ready myself for.

But I was not alone.

And in that moment—to be held in his arms, the sound of his breathing a lullaby in my ear—I was not afraid.

I was falling in love. With him. With the future. With the fire of life in me with a heartbeat of its own.

We took our first picture.

And a story hardly started.