I’d called ahead. Asked for the scan with urgent demand…insisted Havers didn’t do it…and am now sorely wishing V had come with me…but lately his bonded male instincts had been driving him crazy…sleepless days…and something is seriously wrong, his touch has been lighter, more careful, his distance mental as well as physical…as though his mind is puzzling over some dark conundrum I will never understand.
He’s worried...that much I know, petrified we won’t make it, or he’ll hurt us…and this little hitch…well I don’t want him to freak even more. So I am alone and…shaking…my hands tremble as I clasp the outstretched hand of the nurse seated in the room I am led into. A loud popping snap punctuates the handshake, fissuring the images on the screens, the machines bleeping to a stutter and startling me into a battle stance, alert for any attack…after a short silence filled only with the clack of keys as the nurse tries to rectify the situation, she looks up at me with a frown, as if I’m to blame for the mechanical fuck up…my shoulder lifts in a half shrug as the battle tension eases from my muscles* It happens around my hellren too…*her face evens out to a clinical smile, genetics freeing me from any blame and heaping it on the genes the young inherited from its father…I can’t help but smirk a little. Hopping up onto the bed at her bidding as she runs through the procedure, asking me inane questions I answer around the butterflies roiling in my stomach, my nausea a strong influence twisting my gut into a sea of sickness, when she gets to the ‘so, how many weeks along are you’ question, I answer slowly and watch her eyes narrow, one surprisingly strong hand braced on my sternum, easing me to a lying position and pulling the shirt up to beneath my breasts, tucking it under, her hands gently palpating my abdomen, resisting the urge to growl at her for being so poky around my young.
When her frown deepens, I put her out of her misery* That’s the reason I’m here...I’m well aware this isn’t normal…I want to make sure it’s ok…no growths or multiple heads…can we just…*motioning to the ultrasound* do it already…please? *worry alters the pitch of my voice to a tremulous waver of sound, and she pats my stomach reassuringly and starts. The gel is cold and my protective instincts rise up on a growl, hoping the change in temperature doesn’t affect the young, eyes glaring emerald fire at the rolly thing that descends on my bump, her hand guiding it through the jelly, smearing my skin in gross blue stuff…inhaling deep, my nose buried in the scent of V that lingers on the shirt, trying to calm my nerves and not rip the hand off the nurse. To have anyone but V touch the rounded swell of my stomach brings out…homicidal tendencies in me that I am hard pressed to control. My eyes flick from her offending hand to the screen at the soft sound of my name, her finger outlining the blob hidden in amongst the fuzzy static* <<This thing is seriously not playing nice today…I’m so sorry…but…here…*shaping something to the right of the screen* this is the head…the body is in there somewhere, don’t worry...and if I turn this up…*more fiddling and then…the fast, disjointed beat of a tiny heart, distorted by the hum of static, but oh so real* this… is your young’s heart, beating as normal…*she smiles and all I can do is stare at the blurred smudge of something, the life growing inside me sounding in my ears, a hummingbird drum filling the room as my eyes fill with tears* Your young is rather developed for this stage, almost double what it should be for the number of weeks you stated, but no growths or multiple heads that I can pick up…>>
*I think I nod…but I can’t be too sure of any of my actions as my heart is clenched with an overwhelming sense of joy…and that niggling trepidation that mounts as the weeks go by and my young does a snowball of growing that knocks me sick and makes me want to eat everything in sight…including my hellren, who seems to have become something of a cartoonsteak striding around in front of a very hungry…pregnant…tiger…irresistible…terrified that one day I’ll drain him…or for some reason the young will decide that the Fade is better than this world and leave us…or I eat something bad and hurt it, or the bath water is too hot and I fry it like an internal lobster…irrational fears…silly maybe to anyone else, but to me they are very real, to the point I wake up every sunset and actually wish for morning sickness, just so I know it’s still deciding on joining us at some point. My world has narrowed to one thing and one thing only…the young and its safety.
The gel is wiped off by the nurse’s gentle hand, my shirt rearranged over the large-ish swell of my stomach and her words a low reassurance...nothing is wrong, all seems healthy, good, strong heartbeat. I leave the clinic with a lighter weight on my shoulders, no devastating blow threatening to tear my world asunder just yet. A melody skips through my mind on a memory…my mahmen singing me to sleep, the Old Language lullaby wrapping me in comfort as I wait for the doggen to return…fuck…I haven’t told her…she has no idea I’m pregnant…as the car pulls up, the directions are not to home, but to a female who has earned the right to the knowledge that our line will not die with me, that I can create life, that the Scribe Virgin has not punished the actions of the past with no hope of young in the future…settling back on the leather seat, palms soothing the bump with small circles, the shirt tugged to conceal my bare legs…Probably should have put more clothes on for this appointment, the last thought I have before I call my mahmen to warn her of my visit…withholding the delicate nature of the news*
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