His stomach dropped. Details were necessary. They’d been told about two kinds of bleeding. One that was common during implantation. The other, a regular monthly cycle, that likely meant no baby.
“I’m sorry. I should have called,” she said, glancing at him as the elevator stopped at their floor. “But it wasn’t enough to indicate anything, and I knew we were going to be here today...”
They stepped off the elevator, his heart beating a little harder than normal.
“It just felt...a little awkward, you know?” she continued. “Oh, hi, it’s Christine Elliott. I just went to the bathroom and saw this... How’ve the past two weeks been for you?”
Her gaze was open, searching as she pulled him aside. “I’ve never talked to anyone about my monthly cycle, other than my doctor and the high school nurse when I started the first time. I’m not...”
“Shhh.” He shook his head. Aware of far more than he could consciously understand. Aware of her. “It’s okay. We’re in the learning stages here.” Standing against a hallway wall, with doors into office suites around them, he spoke as though there was a microphone nearby. Barely above a whisper. “So...it wasn’t like normal monthly stuff?” he asked, as delicately as he could manage.
She shook her head.
“So, do you feel anything?”
“Of course not. It’s way too early for that.”
He knew. He’d read. Just...
He wasn’t ready to go in. Wasn’t ready to move past the point of getting started.
Wasn’t ready to be disappointed.
“Do you think you might be?” he asked, when what he wanted to do was grill her on her normal monthly cycle. Was she ever late? If so, how often? Did she ever spot first? If so, how much and how often? What kind of chances were they looking at here? How did the data figure into percentages?
With a crook of her head and a small smile she turned toward the door closest to them. “Let’s go find out, shall we?”
Jamie followed right behind her.
* * *
She’d opted for both urine and blood tests. The first to get an answer quickly, and the second because it was the contractually required confirmation method. Minutes after she’d done both, she sat with Jamie in Dr. Miller’s office, waiting for the results. Jamie was to be present for distribution of all medical information relating to the pregnancy.
He sat unmoving, his hands on his thighs, not even a hint of the finger twitch she’d noticed in her office more than seven weeks before. He hadn’t looked at her, or spoken, since he’d entered the office.
She wanted to ask him how he was feeling.
He seemed so alone and someone needed to care.
And then she noticed the wedding band he still wore. And remembered that in his world she wasn’t so much a someone as a something.
That in order to get this job done well, she had to rein in her usual nurturing instincts. She had to quit being motherly to have a baby. She was chuckling inwardly over the irony of that one when the door opened and Cheryl Miller, a woman who’d known her mother and had been the original and sole doctor at The Parent Portal when she’d first opened, walked in.
She knew the second she saw the smile on Cheryl’s face what she was going to say and so was looking at Jamie when the doctor spoke.
“Congratulations, Dr. Howe, you’re going to be a father!”
His mouth open, he looked immediately at Christine, met her gaze, and for one brief second she felt like the mother of his child. Felt as though they’d just been told they were going to have a baby.
She wanted to jump up. To hug him.
To kiss him long and hard.
Then his gaze dropped reverently to her belly.
And she came to her senses.
* * *