Chapter 101 Sixteen Weeks
The first doctor’s appointment in our new house started with me sitting on the bathroom floor at six in the morning eating crackers over the sink.
Not because I was sick. The morning sickness had mostly faded by now, showing up occasionally like an uninvited guest who had lost the memo that the party was over. I was on the floor because the cool tile felt good against my legs and because the house was quiet and I wasn’t ready to break the quiet yet.
Sixteen weeks. Four months.
I pressed both palms flat against my stomach. It was changing now in ways I could actually see. A small firm curve low beneath my navel that hadn’t been there a month ago. Not obvious under clothes yet, but undeniable under my hands. Real in a way that still caught me off guard sometimes, like turning a corner and finding something beautiful you weren’t expecting.
Lycian found me there ten minutes later. He stood in the bathroom doorway in a grey shirt and bare feet, hair not yet sorted, taking in the scene without alarm. He had stopped alarming easily about three weeks ago. Finding me in unexpected places doing unexpected things had become part of his morning routine.
He sat down on the floor beside me without a word. His back is against the cabinet. His shoulder warms against mine. He stole a cracker from the sleeve in my hand and ate it like this was a perfectly normal place to have breakfast.
I leaned my head on his shoulder.
Outside the window, the January sky was just beginning to go from black to grey. The heating had clicked on an hour ago and the house smelled like warmth and the faint cedar of his soap from the shower he had already taken. A car passed slowly on the street outside. Someone else was awake before the world.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“No,” I said. Then, a few seconds later, “A little.”
He nodded like both answers made equal sense, which they did.
Clara arrived at nine. She had been doing all my appointments here at the house, setting up in the spare room with her equipment and the particular calm efficiency that made me trust her completely even when she was telling me things I didn’t entirely want to hear. She knocked even though she had a key. She always knocked.
The room she used smelled like the lavender hand cream she kept in her bag and the clean sharp edge of medical supplies. I had learned to find that smell reassuring rather than clinical. It meant someone who knew what they were doing was paying attention.
“Sixteen weeks,” she said, setting up the small monitor. “How are we feeling?”
“Good. Mostly good. Tired in the afternoons.”
“That’s normal. Your body is working very hard even when you’re doing nothing.” She glanced at Lycian, who was standing against the wall with his arms crossed in the particular way that meant he was trying to look casual and not succeeding. “You can come closer. You’re allowed to be here.”
He uncrossed his arms and moved to stand beside me without pretending that was what he had wanted all along.
Clara applied the cold gel to my stomach. I pulled in a sharp breath at the temperature and she said sorry the way she always did, two beats after the fact, the reflexive apology of someone who warned you every time and knew the warning never quite helped.
The monitor came to life.
Sound filled the room before the image did. Fast and rhythmic and filling, the particular sound that never got smaller no matter how many times I heard it. Our baby’s heartbeat, going about its work, unbothered and steady and astonishingly real.
Lycian exhaled beside me. A long slow breath leaving his body like something he had been holding since we woke up.
I reached for his hand without looking. Found it already reaching for mine.
“Strong,” Clara said, moving the wand slowly. “Really strong. Measuring right on track.” She angled the screen toward us. “Say hello.”
The image was clearer than the early ones. Less abstract. I could see the curve of a spine. The round dark hollow of an eye socket. A hand, fingers slightly spread, floating in the quiet dark of wherever they lived right now.
A hand.
Five fingers.
I counted them without deciding to. The way you do when something is so important your brain checks twice before it lets you believe it.
“Everything looks perfect,” Clara said. Her voice was warm and professional at once, the particular tone she used when she meant what she was saying and didn’t need to dress it up. “Organs are developing normally. Good movement. Good position.” She paused, tilting the screen slightly. “Do you want to know the gender? I can see it clearly.”
I looked at Lycian.
He looked at me.
We had talked about this. Late at night in the new house, his hand on my stomach, both of us going back and forth. The practical part of me wanted to know, to plan, to prepare the nursery with intention instead of guessing. The other part of me, the part that had spent so long surviving things, wanted to stand in that delivery room and receive a piece of news that was only joy. Nothing complicated. Nothing to brace for. Just joy, complete and total, arriving all at once.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. Your call.
“No,” I said. “We want to be surprised.”
Clara smiled and tilted the screen back. “Then I’ll just tell you what I can see. Which is a healthy, active baby who is currently showing off.”
As if on cue, the image shifted. A kick, visible on screen, the small foot extending and pulling back. I felt it at the same moment, a soft firm pressure from the inside, and I laughed out loud, surprised the way I was surprised every single time, because knowing it was coming never made it ordinary.
Lycian squeezed my hand hard.
I squeezed back.
Clara finished the appointment quietly, talking through the next few weeks, what to expect, what to watch for, and when to call her. I heard most of it. Some of it floated past because I kept looking at the last image on the screen before she switched it off. The hand. Those five fingers. The particular stillness of something alive and growing and entirely unaware of how much it was already loved.
After she left, the house went quiet again.
I stood at the kitchen window with a cup of tea I had forgotten to drink, looking out at the January garden. Dead grass. Bare branches on the small tree near the fence. The flat grey sky sits low over everything.
Lycian came up behind me. His arms came around me from behind, his hands folding over mine on the mug, his chin finding the top of my head.
We stood like that watching the grey garden and the bare tree and the slow winter light moving across the fence.
Four months.
Five fingers.
A heartbeat that sounded like something certain.