Something Blue

I stood to follow him and then hesitated. I knew nothing had changed overnight, but there was something about seeing Ethan with a girl that made sleeping in bed with him feel strange, somehow wrong. I reassured myself that despite an occasional, fleeting attraction on my part, we were strictly friends. And friends could share beds. I used to have sleepovers with Rachel all the time.

Still, just to be sure, I waited for Ethan to turn around and say, 'Are you coming?' before bounding (as much as a pregnant girl can bound) down the hall after him.

I didn't know how much longer I had before Sondrine would make her presence known in the flat, but I was going to savor every minute of it.

twenty-three

The next morning I called Mr. Moore, the doctor Meg and Charlotte had recommended. As it turned out, he had a cancellation in his morning schedule, so I took the Circle Line to Great Portland Street and followed my A to Zed to his office on Harley Street, a block of beautiful, old town houses, most of which appeared to have been converted to medical offices.

I opened the heavy red door to Mr. Moore's practice and walked into a marble foyer, where a receptionist handed me a form to fill out and pointed to a waiting room with a fireplace. Moments later, a plump, grandmotherly woman who introduced herself as Beatrix, Mr. Moore's midwife, collected me in the waiting room and led me up a winding, grand staircase to another room that looked as if it should have been roped off in a museum.

Beatrix introduced me to my doctor as he rose behind his mahogany desk, stepped around it, and gracefully extended his hand. I shook it and studied his face. With high cheekbones, wide-set blue eyes, and an interesting Roman nose, he was quite handsome. And he was elegantly dressed in a sharp navy suit and a green tie. He nodded toward a wing chair in front of his desk, inviting me to have a seat.

We both sat down, and for some reason I blurted out, 'I expected a white coat.'

He gave me a hint of a smile and said, 'White is not my color.' His refined accent seemed to transform the friendly quip into a line right out of a Shakespeare play.

Beatrix murmured that she'd be back shortly, and Mr. Moore asked me polite, getting-to-know-you questions: stuff about where I was from, when I had arrived in England, and when I was due. I answered his questions, telling him matter-of-factly that I had become pregnant unexpectedly, broken up with my boyfriend, and moved to London to start over. I also told him that I was due on May second, and that I had not been to the doctor in several weeks.

'Have you had an ultrasound?' he asked.

I was embarrassed to report no, remembering that I had blown off my ten-week ultrasound appointment in New York.

'Well, we'll do an ultrasound today and check on everything,' Mr. Moore said, making a note on my chart.

'Will you be able to tell the gender?'

'I will… assuming your baby is cooperative.'

'Really? Today?'

'Hmmm,' he said, nodding.

My heart pounded with excitement and a dash of fear. I was about to see my daughter for the first time. I suddenly wished that Ethan were with me.

'Let's get started then,' Mr. Moore said. 'Shall we?'

I nodded.

'Just go right behind that screen, get undressed from the waist down, and pop onto the table. I'll return with Beatrix in a moment.'

I nodded again and went to undress. As I slid off my skirt, I regretted not getting a bikini wax before my appointment. I was going to make a poor first impression on the impeccably groomed Mr. Moore. But as I got up on the table and tucked the paper cover neatly around me, I reassured myself that surely he had seen much worse. Minutes later, Mr. Moore returned with Beatrix, knocking on the partition that separated the examination room from his parlor.

'All set?' he asked.

'All set,' I said.

Mr. Moore smiled as he perched on a small stool beside me while Beatrix hovered primly in the background.

'All right then, Darcy,' Mr. Moore said. 'Please slide down for me and place your feet in the stirrups. I am going to have a peek at your cervix. You'll feel a little pressure.'

He put on latex gloves and checked my cervix with two fingers. I winced as he murmured, 'Your cervix is closed and long. Wonderful.' Then he removed his gloves, deposited them into a small waste can, slid my paper covering down, and squeezed a blob of gel onto my stomach. 'I apologize if this feels a bit cold.'

'No problem,' I said, grateful for his sensitivity.

He slid the ultrasound probe over my stomach as a murky black-and-white image appeared on the screen. At first it looked like nothing but an ink blot, the kind that a psychiatrist uses, but then I made out a head and a hand.

'Omigod!' I shouted. 'She's sucking her little thumb, isn't she?'

'Hmmm,' Mr. Moore said, as Beatrix smiled.

I got all choked up as I told them that I had never seen anything so miraculous. 'She's perfect,' I said. 'Isn't she absolutely perfect?'

Mr. Moore agreed. 'Beautiful. Beautiful,' he murmured. He then squinted at the screen and carefully inched the probe along my stomach. The image disappeared for a second, then reappeared.

'What?' I asked. 'What do you see? She is a girl, right?'

'Just give me a moment… I need to have a closer look. Then I'll take some measurements.'

'What do you need to measure?' I asked.

'The head, abdomen, and femur. Then we'll look at the various structures. The brain, chambers of the heart, and so forth.'

It suddenly occurred to me that something could be wrong with my daughter. Why had I not considered this before? I regretted all of the wine I had sipped, the coffees that I wasn't able to resist in the morning. What if I had done something to harm her? I anxiously watched the screen and Mr. Moore's face for clues. He calmly examined different parts of my baby, reading out numbers as Beatrix took notes on my chart. 'Is that normal?' I asked at every turn.

'Yes. Yes. It's all terribly, beautifully normal.'

At that moment, normal was the most wonderful word in the English language. My daughter didn't have to be a beauty like me. She didn't have to be extraordinary in any way. I just wanted her to be healthy.

'So. Are you ready to hear the big news?' Mr. Moore asked me.

'Oh, I know it's a girl,' I said. 'I've never had a moment's doubt, but I'm dying for confirmation so I can start buying pink things.'

Mr. Moore made a clucking sound, and said, 'Ahhh. Well, now. I should warn you that pink might not be the best choice.'

'What?' I asked, straining to make out the image on the screen. 'It's not a. girl?'

'No. You are not having a girl,' he said, turning to me with the proud smile of a man who assumes that a boy is always the preferred gender.

'It's a boyi Are you sure?'

'Yes. I'm sure. You're having a boy…' he said, pointing to the screen with his right index finger, the other hand still holding the probe against my stomach. 'And another boy.'

He turned away from the screen and beamed down at me, waiting for a reaction.