A Mother's Secrets (Parent Portal 4)

Jamie’s first glance of Christine’s belly exposed on the examining table might have been a bit of a struggle for him to get through, except that he couldn’t really see her. Not her belly. If he leaned slightly, he could see her face. The technician, Danielle she’d said her name was, had positioned him in the best place to see the monitor, and it happened to be right behind her, the technician, who mostly blocked his view of Christine.

She talked to them about the coolness of the gel, about the process, and then said, “Let’s see what we’ve got,” in an almost singsong voice.

Heart pounding, he stared at the screen. Hard. Saw shadows, some much lighter than others. He’d seen sonograms on television, had seen one that friends of his and Emily’s had shown around a few years before when they’d been expecting their first child.

He’d looked at some pictures during his reading over the past few months.

But this wasn’t like any of that. The screen in front of him—that wasn’t just a picture. It was his life. More valuable than his life, though.

“Here we are,” Danielle said, seeming to direct her words over her shoulder to Jamie, not to Christine who, other than saying she was fine, hadn’t spoken a word. He glanced at her face. She was lying there with her eyes closed.

Not looking at the screen.

Not sharing the mom

ent.

“This is your baby,” Danielle said, pointing to the screen. He could barely make out the form that outlined the baby, but he got there. Stared. Could hardly believe it.

When he looked closely, he could actually make out a head. A torso. The beginnings of a human being. And it hit him so hard he lost the air from his lungs.

He was going to be a father.

A real, flesh and blood father.

He glanced from the screen to Christine, needing her to know how much her gift meant to him. He’d never be able to thank her enough. To repay her.

Her eyes were still closed, but he thought he saw a tear slide down the side of her cheek. He could have been wrong. The room was illuminated only by under cabinet lighting above the counter along one wall. He hoped he was wrong.

The last thing he wanted was for his future joy to be causing her pain.

* * *

Clearly Danielle had been told that the baby wasn’t Christine’s. That she was only the surrogate. The woman had been completely respectful and attentive to Christine’s physical comfort, but she’d placed the monitor so that Jamie could see it clearly. Christine would have had to turn her head over and up to see.

She discreetly thanked the technician as they left the room less than ten minutes from the time they’d entered. Jamie already had a strip of printed photos in hand. She could see them if she looked.

She didn’t.

She’d prepared herself to feel the baby kick inside her. To care about it and then, as soon as it left her body, to move on down the road.

For some ungodly reason, she’d failed to think about how watching the miracle of its growth would affect her. She’d only had one ultrasound with Ryder.

She’d stared at that photo for hours, slept with it under her pillow, carried it in her purse, all those weeks she’d thought she would be keeping her baby.

And when she’d made the difficult decision to give him up, she’d put the photo away, upstairs in a trunk in the attic, and had never looked at it again.

“Right in here,” Danielle said, leading them to an opened door leading into an office with a big messy desk and two chairs directly in front of it, telling them to have a seat.

She didn’t want to have a seat. Not in the enclosed space, alone with Jamie. She just needed a minute or two by herself. To breathe and distract her mind from things she couldn’t change and guide it to that which made her happy. Her work. The clients at The Parent Portal. The lives of the healthy children she’d helped others bring into the world. The families her work helped create. Picturing the bulletin board filled with their pictures on a sidewall in her home office, she took the seat closest to the door.

And talked about the fact that it looked like it was going to rain. There was a window in the room. She focused on the sky and tree limbs she could see beyond it.

Dr. Adams didn’t keep them long. She didn’t have a lot to say, other than that everything looked pretty good. She was a little concerned about the lining of Christine’s uterus, wasn’t sure it was thickening as much as she’d like. Said she wanted them back for another ultrasound in a month and said that while there was absolutely no worry, she might put Christine on progesterone shots as the pregnancy progressed.

“I don’t understand,” Christine said, sitting up straight. “I had no problems whatsoever when I carried my son. I’m older now, but still well within healthy childbearing years...”

She was making too much of a small thing. She knew it even as she said the words. This whole thing was hard enough, though, without finding out that there was something lacking in her.