Jake Undone(102)

There may not be a baby anymore.

I suddenly remembered the strange feeling I got in the middle of the night…about an hour after hearing the same song come on the radio. I knew now that I had somehow sensed on a cellular level that my baby was in trouble.

My baby.

Our child.

A part of me and a part of Nina.

I had only known of its existence for a matter of minutes. Suddenly, there was nothing more important. I had given up my dream of ever becoming a father a long time ago, but secretly, I pined for it. I wanted nothing more than to be able to give a child the same kind of love my father gave me in the short time we had together and to be able do the things we never had a chance to.

I was a father.

Even if God forbid, this baby didn’t make it, from this day forward, I will always have been someone’s father…an angel in heaven. No one could ever take that away.

Fear and pain built up inside me as the reality set in. This situation did not look good. I tried not to get my hopes up. How it was possible to be elated and devastated at the same time, was beyond me, but that was the only way to describe this fucked up confusion.

The sound of a passing baby crying in the hallway startled me. Nina and I looked at each other. It was obvious that we were thinking the same thing. I could see in her eyes how much she wanted our baby too. It pained me that she had been going through all of this alone. Not anymore. No matter what happens, I was more certain than ever that this was the path laid out for me: a future with Nina and our child…our future children, hopefully lots of them.

Her eyes were closed, and I leaned in to kiss her face. “We’re gonna get through this. No matter what happens, we are going to get through this together.”

The sound of the door squeaking open caused both of us to sit up suddenly. I grabbed her hand and held onto it like our lives depended on it.

The doctor walked in with a technician who brought in an ultrasound machine. The rolling sound of the wheels seemed unusually loud and alarming, like thunder. I wondered if Nina could tell how scared I was, because I was trying to put on strong face.

“Okay, Nina…we’re just going to open up your gown. You’re going to feel a cool gel on your stomach. This is going to allow us to take a look and see what’s going on.” The tube of whatever crap they were putting on her made a loud squirting sound.

As I moved out of the way, Nina reached for the return of my hand, and I squeezed hers tightly as they were setting up the machine and rubbing that stuff on her belly, which was still almost perfectly flat. It was hard to imagine a human growing inside of there. She became fixated on the dragon tattoo on my left arm, something she always seemed to focus in on when she was really nervous. I was grateful for anything that could be of comfort to her right now, because I was nothing but a useless ball of nerves.

My hand began to shake. Fuck.

She looked at me and said through tears, “It’s okay. It’s okay to be scared.”

She was comforting me now. I wasn’t even going to feign strength anymore because I was scared shitless.

I mouthed silently, “I love you.”

Next, they dimmed the lights, which spooked me. It was like they were about to show a horror movie, except instead of popcorn, the room smelled like antiseptic. The woman turned on a monitor, and they put this nozzle on Nina’s stomach, rubbing it around over the gel. After about a minute, there was a really strange sound.

Swoosh.

Swoosh.

Swoosh.

Swoosh.

It was freaking me out. “What is that sound?”

The doctor looked at me with a slight smile.

He was smiling.

“Jake, that’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

He turned the monitor towards us, and I became completely mesmerized by the sight of the grayish silhouette on the screen that looked like an alien with a gigantic head and a tiny body. The doctor pointed to the heart beating, which looked like a tiny pulsating bean. My eyes couldn’t move from the monitor because I had never seen anything so beautiful as my child’s heart beating, arms and legs moving around in Nina’s belly. I was in awe, overcome with emotion, as I cried for the second time in my adult life. This time, they were tears of joy.

The only time I tore my eyes away from that screen was to look at Nina, whose expression of wonder matched my own.

It was unbelievable how life could change in an instant. Suddenly, all of my other priorities took a backseat. Nothing mattered more than that heart beating inside of Nina.

“Is everything okay?” Nina asked.

“I’m afraid we’ve discovered a possible cause for your complications, although bleeding doesn’t normally occur as early as it has in your case. You have a condition called placenta previa. It’s not typically discovered until the second trimester, when the first ultrasound is normally performed.”