Story: Phoenix
Chapter 8
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Previously: Jed got a glimpse into Sara's family and was surprised by Hashem's struggles; Abbey reminded Lizzie of the rules; Jed tried to calm Abbey's nerves with a bubble bath
Summary: When Abbey reveals something to her doctor, Jed gets angry about feeling left out; an ultrasound reveals the sex of the baby Abbey is carrying
"Put it down." Abbey adjusted the blue and white cloth gown to fall over her knees as she squirmed to get comfortable on the examination table.
"You have eyes in the back of your head?" Jed asked, standing at the end of the table right behind her, fumbling with a skeletal model of a hand.
"Yes. Put it down."
"She's an obstetrician. Why the hell does she have a hand in here?"
"Would you please put it down?" Abbey was the mother to Jed's inner child. Motivated by a curious personality, the sensible, mature adult would sometimes morph into a little boy, eager to experiment and desperate to entertain. Usually, that inner child would only appear when he was playing with Lizzie and Ellie, but from time to time, he would surface at the most inopportune times.
Like now.
Jed acquiesced to his wife's request. He returned the model to its home then scanned the room. But even when his eyes left the desktop hand, they wandered back seconds later. The bony object piqued his insatiable interest and left him no reasonable way to muffle his enthusiasm. He approached it again, lifting it as his lips curved into a mischievous grin.
He twisted the silver-stemmed handle and moved quietly towards his wife. Abbey's head rested unsuspectingly on a white cotton pillow. Just the thought of what he was about to do provoked a smile. He adjusted his body to get the best possible angle, then pushed the base of the hand into her auburn locks, gently vibrating it so that the pointy fingertips scratched her scalp.
Momentarily startled by the feeling, Abbey reached above and smacked his wrist. "What the hell?"
Jed lost the battle with a stubborn laugh that forced its way out of his mouth. The hand fell from his grip as he struggled to compose himself. "Abbey! Look what you did!"
She sat up to watch him scramble in a hunt for the shattered joints. "What the hell is the matter with you? Why can't you just sit still and not touch anything?"
"I was just having fun. I didn't expect you to have a fit." He examined the parts, confused by the three middle fingers. "How do these go in?"
"Don't look at me. You broke it. You fix it." She couldn't deny the minutes of entertainment he'd provide if he were left to figure it out on his own.
Jed was shocked by her refusal to help. Surely she wasn't going to leave him hanging in a cloud of confusion. "Come on. Tell me how to get these fingers back in."
Abbey shook her head. "Uh uh."
"Good morning," Dr. Gibson greeted them as she opened the squeaky door after a quick knock.
Jed held out the skeletal fragments. "My wife broke your hand."
"Jed!" Abbey scolded.
"It's okay," Dr. Gibson intervened as she accepted the fractured hand. "I have a husband too."
Abbey winked at Jed. But it wasn't an innocent, flirtatious token of her love. The flutter of her eyelashes expressed the gloating she was forced to suppress in front of the doctor. "So you understand."
"I do." Dr. Gibson flipped the pages of Abbey's chart without another look at Jed, who managed to fall into an open seclusion in the corner. "So, 25 weeks. How do you feel?"
"Fat." Abbey stared at her bulging belly. "I'm not quite as big as I was with Ellie, so I know it's just going to get worse."
"Your weight is actually less than it should to be."
"What does that mean?" Jed asked.
"It means it wouldn't hurt to fatten her up a bit." Dr. Gibson curved her hand around Abbey's belly and pressed lightly.
"Good luck with that! She already has a complex. No matter how many times I tell her she's breathtakingly beautiful, she doesn't believe me." He was dumbfounded by her own body image, constantly teasing that her perception of herself was so out of the realm of reality that he might just have to remove all the mirrors from the house.
"You'd say that even if I was 500 pounds."
"That's because you would be beautiful, even if you weighed 500 pounds."
With furrowed brows, Abbey looked to the doctor. "It's okay that I'm underweight?"
"You're not that far off. The ultrasound will tell us exactly how big the baby is, but I don't feel anything out of the ordinary." She ran her fingers down Abbey's legs, stopping at her ankles.
"Will we actually see a baby this time?" Jed stood cautiously excited. "Last time, it was a big blob."
"Only to you, Hon." Abbey laughed.
"You'll be able to see a lot more this time. And this time, I'll tell you if it's a boy or a girl - if you want to know."
"We don't," Abbey quickly replied. "I think we're having a boy. He thinks we're having a girl." She smiled warmly in Jed's direction. "We'd rather wait to be surprised."
"She means she'd rather wait to bow to my superior instinct." His arrogance wiped the smile right off her face.
"And your delusional grandeur."
Dr. Gibson remained neutral to the exchange. While treating Abbey for the past several months, she had come to accept their snappy quips as the charming repartee that defined them as a couple about as much as the affectionate glances they'd throw one another during each and every visit. She removed the stethoscope from Abbey's belly and wrapped it around her neck.
Armed with a bottle of the cold, gooey gel, the ultrasonographer introduced herself to Abbey before probing her abdomen. She had been through this before, but nothing could prepare her for the cool sensation at the first touch. She winced, curling her toes and clenching her calves. Jed chuckled from his vantage point, blissfully oblivious to the wicked glare Abbey was shooting from across the room. That is, until she shrieked.
"What's the matter?" Dr. Gibson had just tested the transducer across the slimy surface of her gel-covered tummy.
"Nothing. The feeling just caught me off-guard."
"Is it very tender?" She pressed down on the area with a gloved hand and watched for any change in Abbey's facial expression.
"No. I thought it might be. That's all."
"Why? Have you been having pain there?"
"Not really pain," Abbey began. "Just...a little..."
"Pain," Dr. Gibson finished.
"Just a slight twinge now and then. It passes very quickly."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Jed took a few nervous steps towards his wife. He was surprised, to say the least. Abbey usually kept him abreast of every change in her pregnancy. At least, he thought she did.
"Because it's no big deal," she answered. "Right, Dr. Gibson?"
"Well, we'll check it out. You're not feeling any pain today?"
"No. Not at all." She dropped her arm to the side and laced her fingers around Jed's. His body language was stiff and unresponsive, but she held his hand tighter until his muscles relaxed into her palm.
"You're avoiding stress?"
"I'm trying."
"Trying isn't good enough, Abbey. I told you to avoid all stress."
"Yes, but you don't have a little boy that you have to watch like a hawk."
Dr. Gibson looked at her quizzically. "I thought you had two girls."
"I was talking about my husband," Abbey joked.
Jed wasn't amused. Physically, he was right next to her, but mentally, he was isolated in his own world of bewilderment. From the day he found out she was pregnant, he had battled the terrible thoughts that ran rampant through his mind, finding solace in the fact that he was adequately monitoring Abbey's condition. Her progress had become his top priority.
But the wires got crossed. Somewhere along the way, it had become acceptable for her to leave him out of the fray, to exclude him from the daily challenges of this pregnancy. She had been doing it for weeks. He spoke out a couple of times, but usually, he kept quiet to avoid disrupting the harmony.
But silence wasn't quite so easy this time.
He held his displeasure until they were alone. Finally, he released her hand from his. "Why didn't you tell me you were having pain?"
"It was no big deal." Abbey spoke dismissively.
"It is a big deal," Jed countered. "You should have told me. I don't like being shut out."
"I wasn't shutting you out, but the pain always disappeared so quickly. There would have been nothing you could have done about it."
"You don't know that."
"You're right," she teased in an effort to lighten the mood. "What was I thinking? With your medical training, there's no telling..."
"Damn it, Abbey, I'm not kidding!" If his harsh tone didn't alert her to how serious he was, his reddened face and bulging eyes certainly did.
Abbey paused as she stared at him, neither willing nor anxious to explain. For months, she had been the one with the doubts and his attempts at reassurance were met with skepticism before acceptance. The tables had turned. Now, she was the one feeling safe and secure, convinced that nothing could threaten this baby. And it was Jed - strong, encouraging Jed - who seemed to be showing some fear.
"Okay. I think it's obvious you're not kidding, but do we have to talk about this here?"
"No, of course we don't," he said bitterly. "We'll just talk about it wherever and whenever you want. You're making all the decisions anyway, so you tell me when would be a good time to talk about this. Should I pull out an appointment book and schedule a chat?"
The sarcasm that ordinarily lit her temper, now just filled her with questions. "What is that supposed to mean?" His gaze fell to the floor where he shuffled his feet impatiently. "Jed? I'm asking you. What does that mean?"
"What?"
"You said that I'm making all the decisions and I'm asking what you meant by that. Have I left you out of this?"
Jed nodded emphatically. "Yes. I feel like you have." Abbey waited silently for him to continue. "I've been so worried about you since day one. When we found out you were pregnant, it was because you weren't feeling well."
"That's normal. I wasn't feeling well when I found out I was pregnant with Lizzie."
"Yeah, but this is different." He tried to sound solid and powerful as he accentuated every syllable. But behind the facade, Abbey saw something she hadn't seen in quite a while - her husband's vulnerability.
"Because I haven't included you?" She wasn't proving a point now. She was genuinely shocked by the accusation.
"Not in this. You didn't tell me about this." Jed sat on the edge of her bed, facing the wall in front of him with his back to Abbey.
"I wasn't purposely trying to exclude you." She rubbed his shoulders in a sympathetic gesture of remorse. "Pregnancy causes all kinds of little pains, Jed. Most of them are absolutely nothing to worry about. If I thought there was a serious problem, don't you think I would have told you?"
He tried a nonchalant approach, but his spirited shrug took him nowhere. He had to be honest. "I hope that you would."
"But you have doubts?"
"I don't like feeling out of control, Abbey. I don't like thinking that every decision that's made about this baby is made by you."
"I'm not..."
His posture abruptly changed as he whirled his upper body around to face her, his shoulders no longer droopy, his eyes no longer worn. "Yes, you are. You are. I have no say in anything, not in the way you handle your stress, not in how many hours you're putting in at the women's clinic, not even in the Lamaze classes."
"First of all, the clinic is not negotiable. I'm there 20 hours a week, max. And as for the Lamaze classes, you didn't want to take them?"
"No, I didn't. I liked the birthing classes we took when we had Ellie, the one where they emphasized the husband's role during labor."
"A lot of good that did," Abbey muttered. "You had a concussion when I was in labor with Ellie."
With a bit of regret, Jed relived the memory of nearly missing his younger daughter's birth due to his own clumsiness. "I did."
"Is that what this is about?"
"This is about all the things I told you it was about."
Abbey grabbed his hand again. This time, she tenderly stroked his knuckles. "Jed, the Lamaze method also emphasizes your role. You're my partner. My coach. You'll be with me every step of the way."
"There are a lot of critics of these kinds of classes."
"There are critics of all the methods. You know that." He had to admit he did. "But I'm asking you to just give Lamaze a try. After we go to the first class, if you're still uncomfortable, we'll do the birthing classes again. Okay?"
"Okay."
Abbey felt the tension ease between them as she raised her hand to caress his cheek. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were feeling this way."
Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the return of Dr. Gibson. "Sorry it took so long, but I wanted to make sure we have this." She held up a thick wandlike instrument.
"What is that?"
"It'll give us a better picture of your baby so I can see what's going on."
As the doctor turned the monitor, the ultrasonographer, once again coated Abbey's stomach with the gel. Jed remained beside her as he felt the tiny shiver he was expecting.
"So, Doc," Jed started. "What if one of us wants to know the sex of the baby?" This was the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Abbey's understanding nature.
"Wait!" She pulled on his arm. "I thought we agreed we didn't want to know."
"No, Sweet Knees, YOU said you didn't want to know. And you told me that I didn't want to know either." He triumphantly spun himself towards the monitor. "It turns out, I do."
"Jed..."
"Abbey. I really want to know."
She couldn't very well argue with him after the conversation they just had. "Yeah. Fine. Dr. Gibson, please tell him the sex of our baby."
"I can tell you both," she offered as Abbey shook her head.
"No, thank you. I'd prefer to be surprised."
"Then you'll have to look away when we do the ultrasound."
"Why?"
"You're a doctor, Abbey. You might very well know the sex as soon as you catch a glimpse of the picture."
Jed smirked at her predicament. Caught between watching the images and her desire to be surprised, Abbey directed a snarky tone towards him as she promised to stay true to her earlier intentions. "I trust the doctor to tell me should anything be out of the ordinary. I'm perfectly fine with looking away."
"Yeah, right!" Jed wasn't convinced.
As the transducer poked at her belly, a pulsating sound invaded the quiet room. It was the sound of their baby's heartbeat. Jed's sapphire orbs were glued to the screen as if hypnotized by the scratchy black and white pictures while Abbey fought to keep her attention - and her head - elsewhere.
"I still can't tell if it's a boy or a girl." Jed couldn't tell, but Abbey was sure she would know.
"I'll whisper it to you afterwards," Dr. Gibson told him.
Already consumed by her own curiosity, Abbey now had another problem. Soon, Jed would know something she didn't. And it wasn't just a shallow factoid. This was the sex of their child, a piece of information she had cast aside to make the pregnancy more exciting. But, truthfully, she yearned to know.
She maneuvered the sheet that constricted her movement and lifted her head to steal a glance at the monitor. Quietly. Methodically. Swiftly. In such a way that no one noticed. It was such a quick peek, in fact, that she saw something that wasn't even there, something that caused her to relax against her pillow and spur her vivid imagination into overdrive.
But if she had really devoted any time at all to the monitor, she would have realized that what she saw was a mistake. A simple blip on the screen. She wasn't expecting a son, as she believed. The protruding bulge in her midsection that was growing at a painstakingly slow pace was actually sheltering the development another daughter.
She was carrying a little girl.
TBC