Aleena
Our breaths came short and hitched. Anticipation sucked the air from the tiny, dimly lit room.
Jared squeezed my hand, shifting in his chair.
“This is going to be cold,” the woman said as she squeezed the gel over my stomach.
I jumped when it hit my skin.
Jared ran his thumb over the back of my hand, trying to calm me and provide me reassurance. But I felt him shake, his own nerves wringing him tight, like we were feeding off each other, the band of tension stretched taut between us a live wire, the connection that made us one.
A soft smile pulled at my mouth when I looked at him.
He raked his free hand down his face and bounced his knee.
The beautiful exterior of the man evidenced all of his anxiety. Jaw clenched tight. Rigid muscles flexing in his arms. It was obvious how difficult it was for him to sit still in the confines of this room with the walls close and the ceiling low.
But everything changed when our eyes met, as if maybe he found peace in what he saw in mine. Wistfulness touched his mouth and he gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Okay, are you two ready to see what we have here?” the ultrasound technician asked, her voice soft with encouragement. She was young, her dark hair tied back in a tight ponytail, her expression easy. She had to be used to couples like us, two people completely on edge as they caught the first glimpse of their future, as they were given a taste of the mysterious, something that seemed such an impossibility.
New life.
The logic of it was incomprehensible.
I could see it as nothing less than a miracle.
“Yes,” I rasped over the rough knot in my throat. Nerves trembled my bones.
God, waiting for this day to come had been nearly unbearable. Sleep had eluded me all of last night. I’d tossed and turned while Jared held me the entire time. He’d run gentle fingers through my hair, chasing away those bits of insecurity that tried to force their way in. The quiet, nagging worries, tangled thoughts that I would be told that this baby was not okay.
I just wanted to see.
Chair legs screeched against the hard linoleum floor as Jared edged up closer. The strength of his chest brushed up against my arm from where he sat staunchly at my side, despite his own insecurities, his own relentless demons that told him he didn’t deserve the beauty of what we’d created together.
I wished he could somehow know what it meant to me that he came back to me, that he stayed. All of my fears of this pregnancy had been wrapped up in having to do it alone, without the one I loved to share something so momentous.
Jared cast me a restless smile, anxiety and hope and undeniable affection swimming in the blue ocean of his eyes.
She set the probe beneath my belly button. Together, we turned back, our attention glued to the screen. Blacks and whites passed in a fuzzy roll, completely unidentifiable.
Until an unmistakable image came to life.
My heart stilled.
Stopped.
Then it took off on a sprint, pounding hard. It surged with warmth, a flood that spilled over to expand my ribs. It spread fast, taking me whole, wedging in my throat and thickening my tongue. It swelled, filling my eyes.
Tears traced down the sides of my face and slipped into my hair.
There was nothing I could do to stop them.
I’d seen pictures of sonograms before, so I knew what to expect. The large, bulbous head, the body half the size, legs and arms tucked in close, the blossoming fetus swathed in the comfort of its mother’s womb.
But this… this was my child.
Our baby.
What Jared and I had created, something so pure and innocent in the midst of all the uncertainty and pain that had surrounded our tumultuous beginning.
The tiny heart fluttered. So fast. So alive.
And a fist. Five fingers extended before flexing to a fist, held out in front of the distinct profile of its face.
I tried to swallow, to breathe through something so overwhelming I didn’t know how to make sense of everything I felt.
I was shattered.
In the most amazing way.
By an overpowering love I didn’t know how to manage, something new that rose up in the greatest wave before it crashed and swept me from my feet.
Yes, I’d already fallen in love with this baby. Anticipation and expectation had filled up the thoughts of my days and nights, ideas of what this child would be, a boy or a girl, the sound of its voice and the lilt of its laugh. What it would feel like in my arms.
But the magnitude of this came without warning.
Jared stood. Fingertips brushed down my face, capturing my tears. I turned to look up at him. He stared down at me, the blue of his eyes alight, on fire, caught up in his own inferno of emotion. Palpably, his pulse throbbed, his heart beating just as fast as mine. He pressed his mouth to my temple, kissing me softly, tenderly. “Look at that,” he said so quietly, totally in awe.
Never had I felt more complete.
The technician continued, tapping her fingers on the keyboard as she took measurements, moving the probe to capture our baby’s image, size and length in centimeters, while Jared and I just stared in awe.
She gave us the due date. That was the reason my doctor had sent me here earlier than what was typical. I didn’t know the exact day of my last period.
“May sixteenth,” she told us.
May sixteenth.
I turned the date over in my head.
I guess I’d always imagined this baby was conceived on that last morning when I’d felt Jared slipping away. Like he’d left a piece of himself with me when he subconsciously knew he was leaving. But no. This was conceived during one of those nights he’d come to me. When he’d cherished me and loved me when he didn’t believe he knew how.
The woman left us with three pictures, a tiny image of our baby on each one.
The door slipped closed behind her.
Jared bent over my middle, his big hands stretched wide as he held our child. He craned his ear, leaning in close, like he could hear what was happening inside. He looked up at me from where he hovered over my belly. Completely wrecked. Undone. Like he would never be the same.
Just like me.
He drove us home. No words were said, like the two of us needed the silence to absorb the day. I settled my hand low on my belly, over the tiny bump that evidenced our child.
For both of us, I think it had finally become real.
Jared parked in front of our little house, and I climbed out onto my shaky feet.
I walked through the front door, and again, I was struck by this man, by what he’d done and wanted for us. Every inch of the house was beautiful. Perfect. Better than anything I ever could have imagined.
I still didn’t think he could ever know what it meant to me, what it felt like every time I stepped through the door.
Like I was home only because Jared had come home to me.
I dropped my purse to the floor just inside the door. Images flooded my eyes and mind, and the innate impulse I’d always had to express my feelings in images hit me harder than they had in a very long time. My fingers twitched with the desire to create. I trailed my fingertips along the hallway, my steps slow as I headed for the place Jared had reserved for me, the place where he’d felt the power of inspiration that he wanted for me.
I nudged open the door.
It too had been completely redone, the walls repaired and the windows replaced. It was painted the softest hue of blue. My sketchbooks lined the walls on the shelves Jared had built next to a desk with drawers filled with supplies, a couch up to the side just like he’d promised when he first brought me to this place.
I loved it here.
I loved him.
And oh my God, I loved this baby.
In the middle of the room, I sank to the plush carpet with a large sketch pad balanced on my knees. I tucked my feet up close to my body, facing the window that looked out on the endless desert sky. The small protrusion in my belly jutted out into the cradle of my lap.
My hand brushed furiously over the blank canvas. Streaks of charcoaled black bled across the page, distinct lines and muted curves that I smudged out with the back side of my pinkie.
Tears streaked down my cheeks. I couldn’t contain it all, this love that had bloomed too full. It had to be released, from my eyes and from my hand.
It came to life, this precious being I somehow already knew, something that forged the strongest bond and the deepest love. It was like I held my child while I drew, my pencil fierce as it sketched and burned and created the image of the face I could never forget.
It was what I saw. Not the two-dimensional image the machine had generated. But real. Full. Vibrant.
I felt the intensity of his presence behind me. It stole what little air was left in the room, like he was wading through the pictures of my imagination, the man a permanent part of it because there was no place he could go that I would not think of him.
He inched forward before he came to settle behind me. A heavy exhale pushed from his lungs as he flanked my legs with his. He pulled me close to him. Over my shoulder, he stared, his breath in my face and in my soul.
His fingers fluttered along the picture of our child, his knuckles stamped with the year of his birth.
Life.
All I’d ever wanted was for him to experience it again.
He swallowed hard, his face buried in the back of my hair, his voice full of the deepest reverence. “Thank you,” he murmured, the words hoarse, speaking of everything I wanted for our lives.