Page 51 of Hidden By His Side

Chapter 17

Summer didn’t want to be there anymore. The need to get off the table itched under her skin, but that would just mess everything up. The person with the machine had already carefully tucked paper towels into her clothes. Their voice was pleasant but kept fading into static in her head.

Ramiro was next to her. He took up so much of the air in the room. That was for the best. She couldn’t hyperventilate if she couldn’t breathe.

Warm gel was squeezed onto her flat stomach. She’d expected it to be cold. She decided not to stare down at what they were doing, kind of like with needles. If she didn’t see what was about to happen, there was nothing to worry about.

The black and fuzzy screen made it easier for her eyes to lose focus.

Summer pulled in a breath slowly. It felt wrong, those slow breaths, when her heart sped in her chest.

Then the thrumming sound started. It hovered in the air, so fast, too fast. Even faster than her heartbeats.

“Oh, you’re lucky!” the sonographer said. “Do you hear it?”

“What is that?” Ramiro asked.

“The baby’s heartbeat. Don’t worry. It’s supposed to be fast like that. It also means you’re definitely more than a month out. Let me just measure…”

More than a month? Summer had suspected as much, but the idea of it was still hard to wrap her head around.

The thrumming in her ears slowed her own heartbeat, as if her heart knew it couldn’t compete with the speed of the baby’s.

The thing growing inside her had a heartbeat. That meant it was alive.

Her eyes focused on the screen. The image didn’t look like much, but she followed the lines that the sonographer created. That blob was a baby. It was her baby. And it had a heartbeat.

Did it also have thoughts? Was it dreaming inside of her? Dreaming of a life?

Her eyes burned. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

“These lines are to help me measure it,” the sonographer explained, still staring at the screen. “I can give you a printout without them if you’d like.”

Summer couldn’t respond. If she tried to talk, they’d realize she was crying.

Ramiro leaned over the chair, wrapping her hand in his. His touch was as warm as it was before. She felt so cold incomparison.

“It’s okay,” he murmured, squeezing lightly.

The sonographer looked at her, her face softening. “A lot of new mothers cry when they hear the heartbeat.”

She probably thought Summer was overcome with love for her baby. It was the opposite. She resented the thing growing inside of her.

No. It was a person, not a thing. The heartbeat and the shape of it pushed that reality into her mind. The baby could have a life, a life that would almost certainly be more important than her own.

Listening to the heartbeat, she could no longer picture getting rid of it, and that made her angry and terrified and bitter.

She blinked back the tears and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the ticking timeline of what was to come.

Would Ramiro stick with her through the whole pregnancy? She was already an emotional wreck, and she’d seen the way he’d looked at the women with stretched out stomachs. Not in horror, not exactly, but the sight of them had made him nervous.

She listened to the heartbeat, knowing it was marking out the time she had left with Ramiro. She was going to lose him. It was only a matter of time.

The worry wasn’t a new one. She’d always known that her time with him would be limited.

She stared back at the screen. She would be able to blame that little blob instead of herself. In a way, that felt better after all.

Summer was quiet on the ride home, and then throughout the afternoon. Quiet, but not still. The bowl ended up back on the kitchen counter even after she’d picked it up a dozen times. Each of her belongings, the ones that weren’t too heavy, anyway, was lifted and moved more than once. All but the fuzzy blue blanket on the back of the couch.

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