Page 12 of To Hate You

I smiled, but my hand shook as I tried to tuck a red curl behind my ear.

“I’ll just be way back here, and as soon as we walk out that door, we never speak about this again.”

My smile disappeared as I lay back on the bed. Staring up at the white ceiling, I tried my best to focus on my breathing rather than hyperventilating. The fluorescent light was sharp and bright, making up for the lack of natural sunlight because the damn room had no windows.

The door flung open, and I nervously sucked in a breath as the doctor walked in with the same nurse that was here earlier.

“Miss Whitlock,” he greeted. “I’m Doctor Garcia, and I’ll be examining you today.”

“Hi, Doctor.”

“Your urine test came out clean and showed that you are definitely pregnant.”

I held my breath as the doctor pulled on his gloves and took a seat next to me. Suddenly air no longer reached my lungs, and all I could think about was the panic attack I had at Andrew’s party. It was terrifying. It felt like my heart would stop at any moment, and the thought of experiencing that again had fear clawing at my chest.

“Um…Silas, would you just,” I held out my hand, and without hesitating, he inched closer and took it, wrapping his fingers tightly around mine.

“I’m here.” He shot me a half-smile. But we weren’t in the dark like we were the other night when I told him I was pregnant. The worry in his eyes was evident within the emerald rings of his green eyes. It was hard to ignore.

Doctor Garcia adjusted the paper sheet, and my skin erupted with chills even though the warm air from the air conditioning wafted across the naked skin of my belly.

“Ah.” I breathed out, biting back tears as the nurse squirted the cold gel on my stomach. It felt so fucking unreal, me being seconds away from seeing my baby on a small monitor.

Silas squeezed my hand. “You’re doing great.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t doing great. I was terrified out of my fucking mind.

“Let’s see what we have here.”

My eyes opened as he typed something on the machine and started moving the ultrasound wand around my lower abdomen. I kept on staring at the ceiling while clutching Silas’s hand. At that moment, I had this out-of-body experience, as if I was an innocent bystander watching everything from the other side of the room.

I was twenty years old. A college dropout because I had no intention of going back after I got my heart broken. I was failing more than half of my classes anyway, so what was the use of even trying?

“Okay, so you are almost seven weeks pregnant. Everything looks good. This little shape right here is the baby.” His finger tapped at a black dot that looked nothing like a baby.

“Is that a kidney bean?” Silas leaned closer to the screen. “See, I always knew you’d have real ugly babies one day.”

Through clenching my jaw to keep me from crying, I scoffed and let go of his hand, giving him a hard nudge in his side.

“At seven weeks, there’s not much to see yet,” Doctor Garcia continued. “But this little pulsing line we have here is the heartbeat. Let’s see if we can get some sound.” The doctor turned a dial on the machine, the room filled with a rapid pulse. A heartbeat. The sound of life.

“There it is. I’ve been doing this for over forty years, and I can tell you nothing beats the sound of that tiny little heartbeat. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

My hand reached toward the screen; all my racing thoughts gone. And all I focused on was that little blip on the screen and the sound of a heart beating with life. Something shifted inside me. Everything changed.

“Yes,” I replied softly, my fingers caressing the screen as if I could somehow touch the little black shape. “It’s beautiful.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It seemed unreal, looking at the life currently growing inside me. A life Noah and I had made. This baby was the only thing I had left of him. I was so fucking scared of the daunting reality mere minutes ago, and all it took was one image and the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my entire life for me to realize that I wanted this. I wanted this baby, no matter if Noah didn’t love me enough to stay–I now loved this heartbeat more than I loved anything in the entire world.

“Oh my God.” Silas leaned closer. “That’s a baby.”

“Sure is. And so far, everything looks good. We will need to get a full panel of blood work done.” He removed his gloves and stood while the nurse wiped the excess gel from my stomach. “I’ll give you a script for some prenatal vitamins, and then I’d like to do an ultrasound scan at twelve weeks to get a clearer picture of what’s going on. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Nurse Gillian will help you set up your next appointment.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

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