By Monday morning, though, I was back to being a nervous wreck. Chase returned from his visit home Sunday evening, and stopped by my room to let me know he’d be ready to take me to the clinic in the morning.
“Okay, but this time I’m driving,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “I refuse to be seen riding around in that piece of tin you call a car again.”
Chase merely smiled and shook his head at me. “Sure, have it your way, princess.”
“I usually do,” I’d countered before closing the door and retreating to my bed in an attempt at getting a good night’s sleep. These days, it seemed I could never get enough sleep. No matter how many hours I managed to get, I always woke up tired and nauseous. Not that I held anything against the baby, but I was already so over this pregnancy thing.
The drive to the clinic was quiet and strained, the only break in the silence Chase’s fingers drumming the armrest. As quickly as the weekend had gone by, Monday morning seemed to creep past second by slow second. The fun of the weekend was forgotten, and the heavy task at hand was all that mattered now.
After a twenty minute wait, we were ushered into an exam room, larger than the last one we’d been in. This one had a big table with shining stirrups sticking up out of it, and a rolling piece of machinery pushed up to its side. The plump, smiling nurse was back, and—thank God—she was wearing baby blue scrubs today. It was a big improvement over that hideous salmon pink.
“You can step behind that curtain there and get undressed,” she said, the smile never leaving her face. What the hell was wrong with this chick? Did performing abortions give her the warm fuzzies? Because I can tell you, the prospect of having to get one certainly didn’t give me a case of the smile and giggles. “Take off everything from the waist down and put on the gown.”
“Whoa there,” I said, catching her arm before she could leave the room. “The waist down? Is there some reason I have to take my pants off for an ultrasound?”
The nurse gave me a patronizing look that clearly said, ‘oh, you poor, stupid girl’. “Honey, when you’re so early on in your pregnancy, we have to do a transvaginal ultrasound to get a clear picture.”
My mouth dropped as I snuck a timid glance back at the hulking ultrasound machine hanging out near the exam table. Hanging on the side of the machine, on a plastic hook, was the world’s scariest looking dildo with what I assumed was a camera on the tip.
“Transvaginal?” I repeated, turning back to the nurse. “As in … that thing is going up in my love pocket?”
The nurse gave me another smile, this one sympathetic. “Don’t worry, most women say it doesn’t feel any different going in than a penis.”
“Yeah, those girls must be screwing the Terminator,” Chase muttered from his corner of the room. When the nurse turned her wide, shocked eyes on him, he flushed, embarrassed. “Sorry, but that thing is scary-looking.”
The fake smile finally melting from her face, the nurse sighed. “She’ll survive. Please, Ms. Sanders, change so the doctor can perform the exam.”
Accepting the pink—why am I not surprised?—gown, I stepped behind the curtain and started unbuckling my belt. “No peeking,” I warned Chase.
“Yeah, because this situation has got me all hot and bothered. Hey, why don’t you stick a leg out from behind there like a burlesque show? Jesus, Chloe!”
“It was a joke,” I grumbled as I wiggled out of my jeans and panties. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Sorry,” he grumbled, and I pictured him running his hands through his luscious curls. “Just a little tense out here. Not that I have as much reason to be as you.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I told him, emerging from behind the curtain in the gown. “I’ll be fine. Tie this in the back for me?” I asked, turning around. I’d managed to tie the bottom part covering my ass, but couldn’t reach the one at my neck and my back was exposed to the cold air of the room. I pulled my hair over my shoulder and Chase stood, coming up behind me to tie the strings. His fingers lingered on my neck, massaging gently.
“How do you do that?” he asked, his voice a low whisper.
“What, pretend that things don’t get to me?” I shrugged and turned to face him. “It takes practice, but you get the hang of it after a while. Eventually, it gets easy to pretend nothing fazes you.”
His hand came up to my face, his thumb stroking my jaw. I fought the urge to lean in to that touch, to sink into him and cry my eyes out. “People who appear that way on the outside are usually the ones hurting the most.”
“Yeah,” I scoffed, “you would know.”
Chase nodded slowly, his hand falling away from my face. “Yeah, I do. That’s how I know when you’re doing it.”
Until he’d reappeared in my life, I’d had no idea just how much Chase understood that. I’d known all about the girl who’d stomped on his besotted little heart, but I never knew about the death of his father, or the struggles his mother endured trying to provide while caring for a special needs child. It made my little problems seem so trivial. Poor little rich girl’s parents don’t pay attention to her, and her rich, stuck-up boyfriend used to slap her around. Big freakin’ whoop.
Only, now, with this decision the field might just be even. This was proving to be one of the most difficult of my life, and I knew the repercussions of it had only just begun.
“You can stop pretending,” he added solemnly. “I can tell you’re not having an easy time with this. There’s no one here but us, you can stop with the act.”
Nodding silently, I lowered my eyes. His hand on my face was reassuring and tender, and his lips on my forehead chaste but firm. I swayed into him a bit, drawn to the comfort he offered.
A knock on the door interrupted the moment, and Chase turned to answer it as I climbed onto the table. The nurse entered, followed by the doctor, who began working to prepare the machine while the nurse helped me into the stirrups, draping me with a blanket made out of what had to be the thinnest paper on the planet.
I laid back on the table and turned to Chase. “Just because you’ve seen my girly bits doesn’t mean I want you witnessing this. Stay behind my knees, mister.”
Chase took his place at my shoulder, his eyes fixed on the ugly pink wall. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, a tiny smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.
Doctor Simmons sat on a little rolling stool and situated himself right between my parted, elevated legs. Thank God I showered this morning or this could have been really embarrassing.
“Okay, Miss Sanders,” he said in that calm and soothing tone I suspected he used on all patients. I have to lubricate the transducer in order to make this easier on you. Sorry, but it’s a bit cold.”
My eyes widened as he rolled what looked like a gel-filled condom over the thing he’d called a transducer—but I was now dubbing ‘alien penis’—before lubing it up with a clear gel. I gasped as the doctor inserted it, mostly from the cold, but that sensation faded quickly. The doctor focused his attention on the monitor, while I fixated on the wall, trying not to think about the thing pressing against my bladder with infuriating accuracy that made me want to clench my knees to keep from peeing myself.
“Now, Ms. Sanders,” he said. “As I informed you last week, you are not obligated to view the ultrasound images, though the vaginal transducer will pick up the baby’s heartbeat and make it audible. I am also obligated by law to describe the condition of the fetus to you.”
I nodded, keeping my eyes on the wall. “Okay, I’m ready,” I said, two seconds away from screaming at the guy to get it over with already.
A bit more probing, and the doctor stopped moving the intrusive thing around, which helped ease the tension in my bladder a bit. I bit back an annoyed rant and continued staring at the ugly walls.
“Sir, would you like to see?” the doctor asked.
To my dismay, Chase actually agreed. “Sure,” he said.
“Very well, just give me a moment to take some measurements.�
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After about ten minutes of poking around the doctor finally spoke again. “Looks like we were spot on with the gestational age. You’re about ten and a half weeks along. Sir, if you look there, you can see the fetus.”
Silence filled the room as Chase leaned against the side of the table, staring at the monitor. My eyes flitted up to him, finding his face tight and pinched.
“What is it?” I asked, panic striking. “What’s wrong?”
Chase shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Suddenly, a weird sound filled the room, taking me by surprise. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, like a cross between a chugging and a whooshing. “What is that?” I asked, fighting against the urge to look at the monitor. Seeing would only make it harder. “What’s that noise?”
“That would be the heartbeat,” Chase said, his voice a near whisper. His eyes were wide, his voice filled with the same wonder I was feeling as I caught hold of the sound and clung to it.
“It’s so fast,” I murmured. Chase glanced down at me, and I could see it in his eyes … the same thing that was happening to me in that moment. He cared about this baby.
“That’s normal,” he said, his hand taking one of mine. “Fetuses have rapid heartbeats.”
“One hundred sixty beats per minute,” Doctor Simmons confirmed. “Well within the normal range.”
I swallowed past the rapidly growing lump in my throat and tears sprang to my eyes. Chase had been right. This ultrasound had only made me feel more awful about the decision I had made. I didn’t think I was going to be able to hold it together much longer.
“How does it look?” I asked, my voice raspy as I fought to hold back the tears.
“Everything looks normal here,” the doctor replied. “Length of about eight and a half millimeters, normal for the gestational age.”
“I want to see.”
The words were out before I could think. Earlier, I’d been determined not to look, to refuse to let some government law written to pressure women out of their decisions change my mind. Yet that whooshing sound couldn’t be ignored, and the little picture on that monitor was real.
Chase frowned, staring down at me. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You don’t have to.”
I nodded, a lone tear finally escaping and rolling down my cheek. “I know,” I told him, “but I want to.”
One of his hands came to rest on top of my head, his fingers stroking my hair. “Well, all you have to do is turn your head.”
I knew that, but I still needed that prodding from him to do it. I turned my head and looked, prepared to be confronted with a tiny being with ten fingers and ten toes that would cause me to fall into a fit of tears over the tiny life we were throwing away.
I found myself surprisingly underwhelmed.
The monitor was in black and white, and all I could make out was a gaping black blob in a sea of gray, with a smaller gray blob at the center.
“Um, okay, can someone tell me what I’m looking at here?”
Chase and the doctor exchanged nervous laughter and the nurse tittered. So I’ve never had an ultrasound … never been knocked up before.
The doctor jiggled the little mouse beside his monitor, pointing with the arrow to the different areas. “Well, this is your uterus,” he said, tracing the outline of my baby oven, “and this is the sac the fetus is growing in. And this is the fetus.”
I frowned, inclining my head a bit. “That? That’s not a baby, that’s a blob!”
Chase let out a laugh and I speared him with a glare. He choked on it and straightened his face. “Sorry,” he said. “Okay, let me explain it to you. You see the top of the blob there, the round part?”
I squinted and tilted my head. “Yeah, I see that.”
“Okay, that’s the head.”
I frowned. “Kid’s got a lumpy head already. Must get it from your side of the family.”
He snorted sarcastically. “It’s only ten weeks old. I have a spectacular head. Anyway, you see those little projections coming off the blob? There are four of them.”
I gasped, finally making it all out. “Those are arms and legs!” I exclaimed, now mesmerized by the little blip on the screen. “I think I see fingers and toes, too!”
“Fingers and toes don’t fully develop quite this early, but there are the beginnings of them there,” the doctor chimed in, seemingly nervous about the turn this exam had taken.
Ignoring him, Chase pointed at the screen. “I know you see that, the little pulsating circle there.”
I nodded. “That was the first thing I noticed.” It was pulsing in tandem with the sound filling the room. “That’s the heart, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “That’s the heart.”
I nodded my head and leaned back against the table, closing my eyes. “I want a picture.” I could practically hear the doctor frowning. “I do,” I insisted, opening one eye to peek at him. “Then I want you to cancel the aspiration.”
“Chloe!” Chase sounded shocked, but I couldn’t look at him. Not yet. Not until I reconciled myself to what I was about to do.
“Just do it!” I snapped, covering my spread legs with the thin paper blanket. “And for God’s sake someone give me my panties!”
Doctor Simmons cleared his throat and stood. “Let’s give them some privacy,” he said to the nurse, who quickly and silently followed him from the room.
I came to a sitting position on the table, unable to meet Chase’s gaze. I could feel him watching me, his stare burning the side of my face.
“Chloe, what are you doing?”
I stared down at my hands and cringed as one of the tears I’d been holding back splattered onto my palm. “Changing my mind,” I said, my voice wavering on a sob. “Chase, it has a heartbeat. I didn’t … I don’t know anything about babies. I didn’t know it would have such a strong heartbeat. Something with a heartbeat that strong … I don’t know, I feel like it deserves a chance at life.”
Chase came close, pausing when his thighs were touching my knees. He braced his hands on either side of the table and sighed. “What about you, Chloe? What about your chances? What about your life and your dreams? You chose abortion for a reason.”
“I don’t know!” I sobbed, swiping at my watery eyes. “I don’t know anything right now, so please just … give me time to think. I just know I can’t do this, Chase. I’m all about a woman’s right to choose, but this is harder than I thought.”
Chase nodded, his eyes filled with a combination of shock and relief. “Okay,” he said gently. His arms came around me and he crushed me against his chest. I rested there willingly, glad for his strength at that moment. I needed it more than I’d thought I would. “Okay,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry about this,” I said, my words muffled against his chest. “I thought I knew that I wanted this. I thought I was sure.”
“I knew you weren’t,” he admitted, “but I wanted to give you the space to figure that out for yourself. I didn’t want to be one of those assholes who tries to pressure a girl one way or the other.”
“Thank you,” I said with a sniffle. “Now, seriously, hand me my panties. I need to get out of here. Another minute surrounded by these hideous pink walls and I’m going to hurl.”
I was glad that Kinsley was gone to class when we returned from the appointment. All I wanted was to be alone with my thoughts. As an added bonus, Chase had to work a half day before going to his own class. He came knocking at my door before it was time to leave, wearing one those sexy ties of his over a white shirt and holding his satchel.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” he asked, looking at me as if he were afraid I was going to break into tiny little pieces.
I shrugged. “I’m pregnant, not terminally ill. I think I can manage while you go to work.”
Chase scowled at me. “Smartass. That was huge, the decision you just made. I want to know that you’re going to be okay. That ultrasound did just what the lawmakers
who passed it wanted it to do—guilt trip vulnerable women into changing their minds about a choice they have the legal right to make. While I’m glad you’re having the baby, I can’t say I’m happy about the way you changed your mind.”
“Look, Chase,” I said with a heavy sigh, running my fingers through my hair, “I wasn’t sure about it anyway. The decision never felt right to me, I was just trying to convince myself it was the right thing to do. But maybe it won’t be so bad this way.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, reaching out to stroke a lock of my hair. “Maybe not.” He left me with a kiss on the cheek. “We’ll talk more when I get back. Try to eat something if you can. Baby needs the calories.”
“Blob,” I said to his back, causing him to pause at the top of the stairs.
He turned back to me with a confused frown. “What?”
“The baby,” I said, gesturing toward my still flat stomach. “Until we know the sex, its name is Blob.”
Chase chuckled. “Blob it is.”
I watched him go—until the top of his head disappeared down the stairs—before going back to my room. I had a class in an hour, but I knew I’d never be able to concentrate so I decided to skip it. This early in the semester, it really wouldn’t hurt me to miss one class. Once alone in my room, the first thing I did was reach for my phone.
My mom has never had a job, going from her father’s house to her husband’s house, and in both places she was catered to in the lap of luxury. As I selected her from my list of contacts, I knew she had nothing better to do this time of day. If she wasn’t at a hair, nail, or random spa appointment, she was having lunch with friends or shopping.
She answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, trying to inject cheer into my voice. It was hard when I hated calling my parents for any reason other than to ask for money. I made the obligatory calls around holidays and a few times in between so they’d know I was still alive, but that was about it.
“Hi baby!” she said in a high-pitched, nasally voice entwined with a heavy Texas twang. “How’s your first week of school going?”
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