Another Man's Child

He nodded. “There’re a couple of things I want to ask her.”

“I have my end-of-first-trimester check on Thursday morning at ten,” she said, too relieved to further question his change of heart. But the moment pointed out to her just how far from each other she and Marcus had strayed, that she was so giddy over so mundane a thing. The question was, had they become so adept at hiding from each other that they’d lost their closeness forever, or were they finally on their way home?

“I’ll meet you at your office. We can walk up together.” His blue eyes met her brown ones and he actually smiled at her.

For the first time in a long time, Lisa allowed herself to believe in their future.

“HOW MUCH REST is enough?”

Lisa lay on the examining table and bit the sides of her cheeks to hold back her smile. Marcus had been grilling Debbie Crutchfield ever since she’d entered the examining room.

Debbie exchanged a glance with Lisa, hiding her grin behind the clipboard she took a sudden interest in. “Everyone’s different, Marcus,” she said, obviously used to the vagaries of expectant fatherhood. “Lisa’s body will tell her when she needs to rest. I suggest you lay off those books a little. Having a baby is a completely natural process. Just let nature do its job.”

“Books?” Lisa asked. What books?

Marcus looked a little sheepish. “I’m going a little overboard, huh?” he asked the doctor.

“What books?” Lisa asked again. Debbie slid Lisa’s top up almost to her breasts and stretched a tape measure across the slight mound of Lisa’s stomach.

“I assumed you and Marcus had bought out the local bookstore with all the questions he’s been asking,” Debbie said, stretching the tape across Lisa’s stomach at another angle.

“My secretary picked up a couple for me,” Marcus admitted.

Lisa grinned up at him then. He was reading books about pregnancy. “You told Marge?” she asked.

“A few weeks ago,” he replied absently, his eyes on what the doctor was doing. “What’s the purpose of that?”

“We monitor the baby’s growth by the growth of Lisa’s stomach.” Debbie went on to explain to Marcus the different ways they’d be keeping track of Lisa’s condition throughout her pregnancy, while Lisa lay between them, a spectator at her own party.

She stared at her husband, wondering if she was reading too much into his announcement to Marge, into his willingness to be a father, at least publicly. Was she only lying to herself by believing that his reading all those books pointed to a more private commitment? Happiness bubbled up inside her, in spite of her warnings to herself to wait and see. Happiness and a relief so powerful she felt light-headed as she lay there, grinning from ear to ear.

“What about intercourse?”

Lisa’s grin vanished and she felt herself turn ten shades of red. She was a doctor, too, for God’s sake. Couldn’t he have saved that question for her?

“What about it?” Debbie asked, her hand hovering over Lisa’s exposed belly.

“I was under the impression it might be slightly, uh, risky.”

Lisa wanted to pull the paper on the examining table up over her head.

“Not normally. I would think the risk of dying of frustration would be the more serious one,” Debbie said, smiling. She was obviously used to such questions, unlike Lisa who didn’t discuss sex much on the pediatrics ward.

Marcus looked down at Lisa, his eyes sizzling with a heat she hadn’t seen there in weeks. “Good.”

Is that why he hasn’t touched me in all these weeks? He’s been worried about the baby?

“Are you taking your vitamins?” Debbie asked Lisa.

Lisa nodded, struggling to pay attention to what the doctor was saying. All she could think about was getting her husband alone.

“And how’s the morning sickness?”

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; “Better. The soda crackers helped.”

Debbie pulled a pair of double stethoscopes from her pocket. “By the size of things I suspect we might just get to hear this determined character today,” she said.