Heart & Soul

by Nicole Williams

  “Ben will make sure you get to a patient room when your ultrasound’s complete.” The nurse hustled through the door, closing it, and went on to spread her merriment through the rest of the office.

  “Hey, Ben,” I said, already peeling my oversized band shirt over my head. I’d been through the ultrasound-slash-examine routine enough to have it memorized. “How’s it going?”

  When the room stayed quiet, after tossing my shirt onto the empty chair in the corner, I glanced around. First at Jesse. Then at Ben. Both had varying shades of discomfort coloring their faces.

  “Oh, right. Sorry.” I snagged the thin cotton dress from the exam table and unfolded it. “Exhibitionism is a tough habit to break.”

  Ben was a special shade of pink as he hopped off his stool and powered toward the door, his eyes cast down. “I’ll give you a few minutes to change and then I’ll be back.”

  When the door closed, I finished peeling off what was left, ignoring Jesse waiting for me to look at him. The last time Dr. Stuart had been out sick and a different doctor, a male one, had to do my exam, I thought I would have to duct tape Jesse into the corner when the doctor did the internal pelvic exam. Jesse had never been a jealous man who was threatened by other guys in my life, but I supposed that ended when someone started touching me down there. Even if that someone was an M.D. and touched so many “down theres” on a daily basis he was totally desensitized about the whole thing.

  “Stop looking at me like I just committed murder.” When I slid out of my panties, I sling-shotted them in his direction. They hit his stomach. Bull’s-eye.

  Jesse caught my underwear before they fell to the floor, and he watched me as I tied the gown. “Maybe next time you could refrain from stripping until the just-earned-the-right-to-order-a-beer-in-a-bar male is out of the room?” He folded the rest of my clothes and placed them on the counter.

  “Oh, please. He works in an OB-GYN office. He’s seen more naked ladies and had his magic wand up more women’s hoo-haws than the lead singer of the boy band I refuse to name out loud.”

  Jesse slid the chair across the room, shaking his head. “You’re probably right, but he hasn’t seen my wife’s naked body or . . .” Jesse’s gaze shifted to the ultrasound machine, where the torture-looking device also known as an intra-uterine ultrasound device was hanging. The first couple of ultrasounds had been way less pleasant. “That other part, so sorry if I’m a little uncomfortable with you exposing yourself in front of some other guy.”

  “Exposing myself? I think we’ve got a rather large difference in the definition of that term.”

  After sliding the chair up beside the exam table, he headed to the sink. “You took off your shirt.”

  I could tell from his tone and expression that he wasn’t really upset. When Jesse was really upset, I could see the ridge running down his jaw pop to the surface of his skin. “I was wearing a bra, in case you didn’t notice.”

  He filled one of those tiny paper cups with water and emptied it before looking back. Half of his mouth was turned up. “Yeah, but it’s my favorite bra. I don’t want to share it with some other guy.”

  If I’d had another pair of panties in my hand, I would have flung them at him too. But the bull’s-eye would have been his face. “Are you done acting like a crazy person for the day?”

  That was when the tech knocked on the door before opening it a hair. “All set in here?”

  Jesse’s face went two shades paler.

  “Okay, so not quite done acting like a crazy person,” I muttered before throwing the door open and waving the tech inside. “Ready, and sorry for the earlier strip tease. Everyone tells me I don’t have much of a filter, and I guess that also applies to changing into an exam dress.”

  The tech still looked a shade red, but he went another one at the term “strip tease.” After muttering a quick, “No problem,” he hustled around the table toward the machine. He couldn’t make eye contact with me.

  I moved onto the exam table and got into position, not waiting for an invitation. The sooner we got it started, the sooner we could have it finished. I didn’t have to press my fingers to Jesse’s pulse to know his heart was close to exploding out of his chest. As he moved up beside me and settled into the chair, I almost reminded him to take a breath when it looked like he was turning blue. But when I grabbed his hand, he sucked in a heavy breath of air.

  “Would you grab the lights for me please?” Ben asked Jesse, who didn’t let go of my hand as he stretched toward the wall behind us and flicked them off.

  Ben pointed a remote at the big television screen hanging across from us, then he gingerly scooted the folds of my dress aside to expose my stomach. He was careful to make sure his skin didn’t touch mine, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Jesse watching him as if he was ready to throw down if Ben got a little fresh with me. Men.

  Jesse’s hand in mine was twisting and squeezing as if my fingers and palm were his personal stress ball. It wasn’t quite painful, but close. However, I didn’t say anything because I knew, based on the anxiety ripping through him right now, this little bit of hand-wringing was nothing. At every ultrasound we’d had, Jesse had acted as if he was sitting in the stands while my verdict of guilty or innocent was read in court. He had everything and was terrified he could lose it all with one appointment.

  “Do you know the sex of the baby?” Ben asked as he squirted a stream of warm goo onto my stomach.

  “No,” Jesse and I said in unison.

  “Do you want to?”

  “No,” we said again, though Jesse’s voice was more adamant than mine.

  Ben nodded, giving us both looks that hinted that he thought we might have been the oddest couple he’d come across. “Okay, then let’s see how this little guy or girl is growing.”

  When he dropped the wand onto my stomach, I heard Jesse suck in a breath and hold it. He wouldn’t stop holding it until he saw that fluttering little heart and heard it echoing through the room. My heart was the troublesome one, but for all Jesse was concerned, both the baby’s and my hearts were like a miracle every day they kept beating. His hand in mine moved past clammy to sweaty, and just as he was leaning forward in his chair, looking close to falling out of it, we heard it—the baby’s heart.

  The breath he’d been holding came out as a relieved sigh, while my own relief I kept internalized. I worried about the baby too. Probably as much as he did, but only I knew how much.

  His fingers stopped twisting mine, and his sweaty palm went back to clammy. While the heartbeat filled the room, so fast it reminded me of a hummingbird’s wings, Ben moved the paddle around until we had a good view of the baby on the screen.

  I wasn’t the sentimental one, or the overly emotional one, but each and every time I’d seen our baby on that screen—even the first time, when it had looked more like a peanut than a baby—my eyes went all blurry and I felt a little hiccup catch in my chest. It was kind of like magic, though with this kind, there was no sleight of hand or science to explain the spectacle before our eyes. This was the truest form of magic.

  Jesse stood and moved toward the screen. Every crease and wrinkle on his face was gone. Even in the dark, I could see how light his eyes were when he glanced back at me. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  A tear drained down my temple. I swiped it away before Jesse could notice, but another one leaked out of my other eye. I scrubbed that one away too. I’d cried enough sad tears in my life to know what they felt like. These were the happy kind, the good kind of tears.

  I couldn’t help it, not even when Ben plucked a tissue out of the box resting on the top of the machine and handed it to me. Seeing the man I loved standing in front of me, utterly in awe of the image of the child we’d made together against every odd known to man, while that little heart thudded with such strength and veracity it didn’t seem possible it could ever stop, I became an emotional, overwhelmed mess.

  When Jesse turned around and noticed thoug
h, I’d blame it all on the hormones.

  He pulled his phone out of his back pocket, lifted it in front of the screen, adjusted the focus, and snapped a picture.

  “I can print you guys off some pictures,” Ben said, giving Jesse an odd look as he snapped another. “That’s no problem at all.”

  Jesse nodded. “Sure. Great. Thanks.” He took a few more pictures, all from the same angle and focus, before lowering his phone. “I just want to capture this moment, right now, and remember it.” After tucking the phone back into his pocket, he backed up until he was standing beside me again.

  When I could finally tear my gaze from the screen, I looked at him. He was staring at me, his eyes warm and his expression so close to euphoric, I wanted to take my own picture to capture this moment.

  “It’s such a miracle, isn’t it?” He lowered his hand to my forehead and brushed my hair back.

  If he kept looking at me like that and saying those kinds of things, I would go through the rest of that box of tissues before we got out of there. A change of mood was needed before I melted into a puddle. Glancing at the screen, I smiled at the picture. “I don’t know, it kind of looks like an alien to me.” I felt Jesse’s stare, that’s how potent it was. Lifting my eyes, I grinned at him. “It must take after you.”

  Even teasing him about our child looking like an alien couldn’t dampen his mood. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?” His fingers tangled through my hair as his eyes shifted from me to the screen. “That baby is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” When he looked at me, he was smiling. “It must take after you.”

  I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, touching each other and shifting glances between one another and our baby, but when the wand moved away from my stomach and the screen went blank, the spell was broken.

  Broken but not destroyed.

  When the lights flipped on, Ben made a quick escape after uttering a brief formality.

  Jesse gave me a look. “See what that bra does to a man?”

  I laughed so hard my stomach started shaking, and I felt it vibrating in my toes. Going from the nerves of the waiting room to the awe of the ultrasound to him making jokes about my bra’s prowess had taken me for a roller coaster ride I wasn’t ready to climb off of anytime soon.

  “Well I know what it does to you, and you’re the only man I’m concerned with anyway.” When I started to sit up, he grabbed my hands and helped pull me up. “Although with the way my girls are growing, they’ll be spilling out of this bra, as well as all of my other ones, in a non-sexy way very soon.”

  Jesse’s forehead lined, clearly not picking up on my attempts at subtlety.

  “So if you want to take this one for one last spin before it gets stuffed into a plastic storage bin labeled ‘Before,’ you better not wait too long.” When I untied the top part of the exam gown, it was no coincidence.

  When his gaze dipped to where my fingers were untying the next section, I saw him swallow. When I skimmed my finger down the center of my chest that was, no joke, twice the size I had before getting knocked up, he stepped toward me.

  Another thing that had seemed to double in size since getting preggo—my-eggo? My sexual appetite. Which was really unfortunate timing considering Jesse had pretty much declared a freeze in that department because he was freaked out that the combination of being pregnant and orgasming would send my heart into catastrophic overdrive.

  Seeing that look in his eyes though . . . matched with the way I felt . . . I found myself checking the door to see if there was a lock. Damn.

  Not that I would let that stop me.

  When he took another step closer, I lowered my feet to the cool floor and stood. A moment later, I was sitting again, though I didn’t make a conscious decision to do so.

  “Rowen?” Jesse rushed toward me, but not in the same way I’d hoped he would. Instead of hunger pulling at his expression, it was worry.

  And denied . . .

  “I’m fine,” I almost snapped, more because I was frustrated with myself and my overactive hormones and his don’t-break-the-ticker-with-sex policy. “I just got up too fast.” I wanted to reach for my head when another wave of dizziness hit me, but I knew better. If I grabbed my head and closed my eyes after collapsing back down on the exam table, Jesse would stick his head out that door and holler for a doctor to come STAT.

  “Lie back down. I’ll get someone.” His hands dropped to my shoulders and he started to guide me back down, but I resisted.

  “I’m. Fine.” I focused on his boots, waiting for them to stop going in and out of focus.

  I knew what the feeling was. I’d experienced it before. It was a side effect of having a heart that couldn’t deal with too much too fast. The further along I got in the pregnancy, the more frequent the dizzy spells became. Jesse had only been present for a couple of others, but I’d experienced dozens more when he wasn’t around. Jesse had brought it up at our last heart doctor appointment, and he’d recommended I take it easy and try to limit sudden moves to a minimum, which I had, but it was getting worse. How could I limit getting up and down to a minimum?

  I felt worry flex its bony fingers around my gut and squeeze, but I didn’t let it show on my face. Jesse’s worry monster was showing enough for the both of us.

  “I really think you should lie down,” he said, his hands moving all around me as if he couldn’t figure out what to do but knew he had to do something.

  “And I really think you should calm down before you have the heart attack you’re so worried I’ll have.” I took a slow breath then another. Eventually the dizzy haze burned off and I could make out the stitching on Jesse’s boots. “Just give me a hand up, will you?” His hand found mine before I finished my sentence. “Having a stomach the size of Tibet has a way of tipping a person off balance.”

  When my eyes met his, I knew he saw through me, and he knew I knew. He knew I was trying to protect him as much as he was trying to protect me. The tricky part for me was that I had to keep my emotions veiled in order to protect him. He had the luxury of letting them go full tilt, which he took advantage of. Frequently.

  Hiding my emotions might have been a skill of mine that a ninja would have admired a few years earlier, but I’d lost my edge since meeting Jesse. It was kind of like prying open a clam. Once they’d been broken open, you could try to close the pieces back together, but it was just an appearance. To look inside, all you had to do was lift the top. I thought Jesse knew that, and I loved him all the more for not taking the easy way and just sticking his head inside my closed curtains and looking to see what I was really feeling.

  When I was standing beside him, he wrapped his other arm around my waist to steady me should I need it. His eyes were thick with worry, so I concentrated on draining mine of all traces of concern before I let him meet my gaze.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again, his eyes running down the length of me before returning to mine.

  I felt it again—a brief wave of dizziness right before my vision blurred. It passed almost as quickly as it came on though. I nodded and put on a convincing smile. “I’m okay.” My voice sounded strong, just as I’d intended. “Are you okay?”

  Jesse swallowed, his throat bobbing as he studied me with heavy eyes. “I’m okay,” he said in the same tone. It was strong, but the kind of strong that was only conjured up to hide what we were really feeling. Scared. Helpless. Weak.

  Neither of us would be “okay” until we made it through the next three months. Until we all made it through the next three months.

  TRAVELING THREE HUNDRED fifty miles in one day as a pregnant woman was not what I’d consider an ideal situation. Traveling those hundreds of miles while six month pregnant in Old Bessie . . . fell even a few rungs lower on the ideal ladder. The suspension wasn’t bad, but the seats . . . they didn’t recline or decline or any’cline at all. I’d learned to get really creative with a pillow, but each trip got worse. I’d breathe a few sighs of relie
f once we’d made our temporary move out here in the next couple of weeks and the next time I traveled an endless stretch of I-90 would be sans baby in my stomach.

  My doctor appointment had run extra late, so by the time we made it into Missoula, Garth and Josie’s engagement party had already started. After a quick stopover at Willow Springs to unload the luggage and change into clothes less wrinkled from travel and stained with drive-thru Mexican food, we were back in Old Bessie and cruising toward Garth and Josie’s farmhouse, where the festivities were already well under way.

  The drive to their place was only about twenty minutes, but I’d reached my upper limits of travel via ancient truck one hundred miles ago. I couldn’t stop shifting and wiggling, trying to get comfortable. It was about as futile an endeavor as my efforts to disguise the small planet projecting from my stomach.

  “Black, you were a loyal friend in the truest of ways.” I ran my hands down the dark shift dress I’d slipped into. Instead of making my tummy look less out-there, it succeeded at the opposite. “You betray me in my darkest hour. I thought we were more than that.”

  Jesse chuckled and turned down the volume on Cash crooning through the cab. “What are you talking about? You look amazing.”

  Keeping one eye on the road, he managed to inspect me with the other in a way that made my throat run dry. I wasn’t sure if that urge swelling inside me was more due to my hormones, that glimmer in his eye, or how he looked. It was probably some deadly combination of all three that was making my fists ball at my sides when they wanted to be ravaging my insanely hot husband. Teenage boys had nothing on pregnant women when it came to thinking about sex every two seconds. Nothing on us.

  “What? I mean it,” Jesse continued when he guessed I wasn’t buying his “you look amazing” compliment. “How could you come out looking like that after ten minutes when I can barely manage to get my other boot on in the same amount of time?”