As Sarah lay on the hospital bed waiting for the medical professional who was on their way to her, she tried unsuccessfully to relax. Her heart was racing and her nerves were tingling. The wait was making her crazy.
Chuck wasn't doing any better. He couldn't stay still. He anxiously paced back and forth across the room continuously, all the while, constantly changing the way he held his arms. First he held them across his chest, then down at side, then he held them behind his back, and down at side side again. He never held one position for more than a few seconds.
Chuck's pacing only served to make Sarah even more agitated than she already was. She felt as though she would lose it at any moment. Sarah believed that she would become so consumed by her nerves that she would soon scramble out of the hospital bed and out of the room, in order to hunt down someone to come see her. She would also use force to bring them back to the room with her if necessary. She just knew that she couldn't wait much longer.
Finally, after a wait that seemed to drag on for years, someone had come into the room. But that did little to calm either Sarah or Chuck. Though Chuck was at last able to stop pacing, but he still didn't know what to do with his hands. Chuck and Sarah still had to wait for all the tests and evaluations to be performed before their nerves would feel any real sense of calm.
Chuck and Sarah watched with a heightened sense of unrest as the woman who entered the room got all the machinery and equipment ready. It didn't take long to get everything set up and ready to go, but for Chuck and Sarah, it might as well have been a week.
"Now, before I begin," the woman asked. "I want to know if this is what you really want? Are you sure you want to know?"
Chuck took Sarah's hand and as they looked into each other's eyes, they silently communicated a message to one another, one to which they already knew the answer. "Yes," Sarah answered for them both. This was something they had to know. The not knowing had just been making them crazy.
The cold sensation tickled Sarah's tummy as the the gel was squeezed onto her skin. But the cold feeling didn't last long. It soon became warm as the tansducer began to glide across her stomach.
No one was paying attention to the activity occurring on Sarah's belly however. Not Sarah, not Chuck, not even the woman preforming the action. Instead, they were all looking off to the left at a little screen.
As Sarah waited for the woman to make her analysis, for the first time she learned the true meaning of torture. All the situations she had gotten into during her career with the CIA in which torture became a factor, were nothing compared to the torture she was feeling right now.
The woman was having difficulties in making her analysis due to a lack of cooperation. Not on Sarah's part, nor on Chuck's. It was another party which was being uncooperative. As such, the waiting and the torture Sarah felt continued to drag out a wait that already seemed never-ending.
After nearly fifteen minutes, which felt much longer to either Chuck or Sarah, the uncooperative party decided to cooperate, seemingly after Sarah let out a desperate plea. Because it was only seconds after Sarah's words filled the room, that the resistant party began to work with the woman, so that she could finally give Sarah and Chuck the answer that they had been waiting so long for.
When her analysis was complete and she was assured of the result, she announced, "It's a girl."
A/N: This story was written in celebration of the news that the baby a friend of mine, who is a sister to me, is carrying is going to be a little girl. Congratulations. I can't wait until she gets here. I know she'll be beautiful. Just like her mother.