The A/C vent above her blasted cold on her bare skin, and she shivered in her paper-thin hospital gown.

"Have you been getting enough folic acid?" The obstetrician switched on the sonogram machine and dropped a dollop of cold gel on Jordan's belly. Jordan stared up and counted dots on the ceiling tile.

"Probably not." She looked down as the doctor arched her eyebrow. "I know, I know, but I really wasn't planning on getting pregnant."

"All women of childbearing years should be taking a multi-vitamin with folic acid for that very reason," the doctor chided. "It's drastically reduced the number of spina bifida cases we see each year."

She sighed and made a mental note of yet another of the many wrong things she'd already done in this pregnancy, getting pregnant, being the first.

She had taken the Pill to keep her cycles regular as much as anything else, but in the wake of her breakup with Pollack and then Woody's departure, she had gotten careless. She had left her pillcase on the bathroom sink when she flew to Germany and had missed two days. She'd blithely thought that two days would never make a difference. As a doctor, she should have known better.

Woody had called her the day after she found out.

"I've got something I need to tell you..." He had barely gotten "hello" out before she blurted it in a rush.

"Okay..." he said warily.

"I'm pregnant."

There was a pause where all she could hear was his breathing. "I thought you were on the pill." His voice was flat. This wasn't the reaction she had expected, but she wasn't really sure what she wanted him to say or how she wanted him to feel.

"I...missed a couple of days when we were in Germany."

"Wow. This is..." She heard him exhale heavily. "This is...kind of a shock, Jordan." She bit her lip and said nothing. "Do you have a due date yet?"

"February 3rd."

He paused, and she knew he was doing mental calculations. "This is good. This is good. I'll be home by then."

"Good?"

"Yeah, this is great!" He laughed nervously. "Wow. We're having a baby. We're having a baby."

"You're not mad?"

"How could I be mad? We're having a baby!"

He laughed and whooped and she blinked back relieved tears.

"I'll be home in time, Jordan. I promise," he said before hanging up. "Promise."

Woody's elation had done nothing to shake her own misgivings. Her mother's mental illness had left her ambivalent about having children. Even without those fears weighing on her, this pregnancy could not have come at a worse time. The father would spend the long months until the birth in a war zone on the other side of the globe.

She loved Woody, she was sure of it, but there were times when he still felt like a stranger. When they were in Germany, getting married had seemed like the right and natural thing to do. Here in Boston, doubts gnawed at her. And now they were having a child.

She hadn't told anyone at work yet, but she was fifteen weeks along already, and they were bound to wonder about the soda crackers she nibbled throughout the day and her sudden preference for elastic-waisted jeans. It just didn't seem like the right time. Not yet. Not when she wasn't sure how she felt about it herself.

"Ready for baby's big debut?"

Her heart fluttered, and she propped herself on her elbows as she watched the grainy black and white images on the sonogram screen. And there it was. Unmistakable. A foot, a leg, a tiny beating heart.

Somehow her doubts seemed to evaporate. There it was. Their baby, who had come into being when her heart ached with love for her new husband. It was as if a weight had been taken from her shoulders in that instant.

She smiled and ignored the fat tear that ran down her cheek. She was about to ask the doctor if she could tell the sex of the baby, but the OB's brows were knit as she rolled the wand over Jordan's belly.

"Is there something wrong?"

The OB knew Jordan was a doctor, and there was no point hiding it. She pointed to a small white patch on the screen. "The baby has a small choroid plexus cyst. Right there."

Choroid plexus cyst. Jordan reached into the far corners of her mind back to her days as an intern.

"But, those are harmless, aren't they? It's just a normal variation in brain development." She tried to suppress any growing feelings of panic.

"Yes," the doctor started with caution. "But the condition has been associated with Trisomy 18."

Jordan's heart stopped. Trisomy 18. Severe mental retardation and physical defects. If a baby with Trisomy 18 actually survived the birth, it usually couldn't live more than a few weeks.

The doctor went on in reassuring tones about statistics and odds that the baby was fine, but Jordan only half heard it. She felt as if the floor had opened up beneath her and the walls were closing in.

"I can get you in at Genetic Testing for an amnio today, if you'd like," the OB said in a soothing voice.

Jordan fought against the hard knot in the base of her throat. "Yes..." she croaked.

The doctor squeezed her wrist. "The odds are overwhelming that everything is fine, Jordan."

And so she somehow made it across the hospital to Genetic Testing and waited for her turn to be called. She sat alone trying to distract herself with a magazine while everyone else in the waiting room sat in pairs.

Her name was called, and she was dressed in another flimsy hospital gown while the geneticist swabbed her belly and prepared the needle.

"Would you like me to call your husband in from the waiting room?" he asked.

She frowned. "He's not here. He's...deployed to Iraq." The doctor nodded with sympathy. "How long will I have to wait for results?"

"About three weeks." The doctor smiled weakly. "You know, the odds are overwhelming that everything is just fine."

"So people keep telling me." She felt the sting of the needle. "I don't know. Maybe it's a good thing my husband doesn't know about this."

The doctor sighed. "It's hard to know what to tell them when they're so far away. I'm an Army brat, and my father was always off in some hot spot. When my brother was 10, his appendix burst. My mother went to the squadron commander and asked if she could patch an emergency call through to my dad. The colonel refused and said, 'Don't tell him anything that might be the reason he doesn't come home.'"

XXXXXXX

She tossed her purse and her keys on the floor and curled up in the chair with tears running down her face in sheets. She sat that way in the dark with her knees to her chest and almost ignored the phone when it cut through the silence. Finally, she hastily dried her tears and picked it up.

"Jordan! Can you hear me?" She heard his voice through the static, and she forced a smile.

"Yes! Woody! I can hear you!"

"I know you had an appointment today. How did it go?"

"...Fine."

"What's that? I can barely hear you, Jordan. This connection..."

"I said fine!"

"Ah, that's great news." She could hear the relief in his voice. "I was worried. I've been going crazy all day."

"Everything is fine. Really." She covered her eyes with her free hand and took a deep breath. "Don't worry about us. You just concentrate on coming home safe."

"Look, we're about to take off here. I just wanted to check on you and the baby. I love you, Jordan."

The phone slipped from her hand. She sat for a moment taking steadying breaths and then rose for the bathroom. She took a long shower to wash the layers of ultrasound gel and antiseptic wash from her. Her fingers traced the soft, new curve of her belly.

"You're going to be okay," she whispered.

She closed her eyes and began the long countdown to three weeks.