The gel is cold on my stomach and I wait impatiently as Addison presses the doppler, my heart rate slowing until I hear it.
Every time I'm here, I expect her to say it's gone.
That she was sorry, that there isn't anything she could do.
But then that gentle and irregular swishing makes itself known. Steady and strong, a tiny heart beating deep within me, and I'm at ease for a little while.
That sound is all I have to live for now.
I keep wondering when this will all get easier, if one day I'll wake up and the hurt will go away, the sadness will go away.
When the love I had for you will go away.
And every day I wake up and I feel like I'm reliving the horror all over again.
She helps me sit up and hands me a manila folder, the results of every test in the book so that I can rest assured that this baby is healthy and I don't want to open it.
Because I know what it will say.
So she opens it for me.
I scan over the words and they all blur together behind a layer of tears I refuse to let spill and I can't read it.
Normal, she says.
Everything is normal.
This baby will be making it's arrival in six months, healthy and happy. A healthy and happy baby boy.
A boy.
A son.
My heart sinks a little, not because it's a boy, but because he'll never have a father to teach him how to play catch, or to coach his little league games.
Or to teach him about Eugene Foote.
Or the trumpet.
If I could just wake up and have this all be a dream, I swear that I'd give you this child that you wanted so badly without reservation.
I'd marry you and give you a family.
If I could just wake up and have this all be a dream, I'd do anything you'd ask. I'd go to the ends of the earth for you.
I'd live to lay on my chest and listen to the beat of your heart, instead of the heart beat of our son in my abdomen.
I would do anything to hear your heartbeat instead of his.