Page 36 of Play the Game
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting his words wrap around me and ease my nerves. “Together.”
“Evan, scoot back and lie down.” Dr. McCallister takes a seat on a rolling stool and motions towards the head of the table, looking at Cooper. “We have to do an internal ultrasound at this stage, so why don’t you go stand up there.”
He takes his position at my head as the doctor pulls the stirrups out and I slide my feet into them, feeling more exposed than I ever have in my life. I wish I was sitting on my couch with my laptop on my lap, telling a story with words and watching my axolotls swim. I wish I was at work, drafting some kind of complex pleading. I wish I was listening to one of AustinMaguire’s misogynistic rants. I wish I was literally anywhere but here.
I wince a little when Dr. McCallister inserts the wand and moves it around, a blurry picture appearing on the screen. “Okay, there’s the baby,” she says, and I squint at the screen where she points as the image slowly get clearer. She pauses the picture, takes some measurements, and then unpauses it and resumes looking for whatever it is she’s looking for.
“Oh, holy fuck,” I mumble as I take in what is so obviously two arms, two legs, and a weirdly large head. A baby. My baby, right there on the screen. Two seconds later, a thumping sound fills the room.
“Heartbeat is perfect,” Dr. McCallister says with a smile, and the noise has my own heart thudding in my chest as dread seeps into me.
I don’t feel a rush of love. I don’t feel awe or wonder or any of the things the million accidental pregnancy romances I’ve read and every pregnancy rom-com I’ve watched tell me I should be feeling. Instead, I feel my breath hitch as panic slices through me. I grit my teeth and try to breathe through it, but the air gets stuck in my lungs. For a second, the room blurs, but then Cooper latches onto my hand, his other hand coming up to the top of my head, stroking my hair.
“Breathe, Rhodes,” he murmurs, his eyes fixed not on the screen, but on me.
I nod, sucking in a breath, my eyes locked on his as I listen with half an ear to the doctor. “So, it looks like you’re about ten weeks along. Judging from your date of conception, that seems about right, which would bring your due date to around the last week of May.”
“May what?” Cooper asks, his eyes never leaving mine.
“It’s not an exact science, but around the twenty-fifth.”
He gives me a small smile. “That’s my birthday.”
I huff out a laugh because this is the twilight zone. “Well happy fucking birthday, Cooper. I got you a baby.”
The second the doctor pulls out the wand, I yank my legs out of the stirrups and sit up so fast I get dizzy, clamping my eyes shut and breathing through my teeth as nausea has my stomach rolling over. “Easy there,” Cooper says, rubbing circles on my back.
When the nausea passes and I open my eyes, Dr. McCallister is still sitting in front of me, her face serious and her eyes filled with understanding. “It’s okay,” she says.
I let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “What’s okay? None of this feels okay.”
She lays a hand on my knee. “It’s okay if you don’t feel any of the things the books and movies tell you you’re supposed to feel right now. You’re smart and accomplished, and I’m confident you’ve thought through all your options, so if you’re here, it means you’ve decided to stay pregnant. Even though you made that choice, it’s okay if you ask yourself a hundred times a day why you’re doing this and question if you should. It’s okay if some days you really, really don’t want to. No matter what you feel, it’s okay, and I promise you a million other women have felt it too. It’s just that no one talks about that part, because we live in a patriarchal society that tells women good moms don’t get to feel any emotion that isn’t happiness, and that’s just bullshit.”
I turn her words over in my head and take a deep breath. “That makes me feel…oddly better actually.”
She smiles and pats my knee, pushing up from the stool. “I thought it might. Feel your feelings, Evan. Whatever they are. Typically, I would see you in about a month, but because you’re already ten weeks, I’ll need to see you in two weeks, so you can make that appointment on your way out. But if there’s anything you need in the meantime, or even if you just need to talk, you call me. Although I suspect you have a really good listening ear already.” She gives Cooper a meaningful look as she waves goodbye and closes the door behind her.
“Well, that was a mindfuck,” I mutter, standing from thetable and letting the paper sheet fall to the floor before I remember I’m not wearing pants. Or underwear.
Cooper gives a low whistle under his breath. “Your ass is even better than I remember, Ev. And I remember quite a lot.”
I don’t know if it’s the way he uses my nickname for the first time or the way he lightens the mood after the heaviness of what we just went through or the absolute and utter ridiculousness of our current situation, but a laugh bubbles up from my throat, and ten seconds later, I’m laughing so hard I collapse back onto the exam table, tears streaming down my cheeks as I try and get myself under control.
When I remember I’m still half naked, it sets me off again, and then Cooper drops his head to my shoulder and starts to laugh too, and we’re just a pair of insane people laughing hysterically in the OBGYN’s office, a frozen picture of our baby on the screen as we wonder what the actual fuck is happening to our lives.
And for the very first time since this whole ordeal started, I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it won’t be so bad after all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
COOPER
Evan
Why did a cherry slushie and a bag of bagels just appear at my front door?
Me
Because your blood pressure cuff was delivered yesterday.
