Robert Tine - The Astronaut's Wife

“Did you find your dish unsatisfactory, ma’am?” the servant asked diffidently.

“It was fine,” Jillian replied. “I just was not terribly hungry, thank you.”

Just then Jackson McLaren returned to the room in time to hear the exchange between Jillian and the waiter. His wife was right behind him.

“Are you sure, dove? Howard usually makes quite a cunning langoustino.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

The waiter cleared the plate, the uneaten crustaceans staring up at her like big orange bugs.

“Brandy anyone?” Jackson asked. “Oh hell… let’s all have one, shall we?”

Shelley looked at Spencer and Jillian. They were still sitting close to one another, they were still hand in hand.

“Jackson,” Shelley said softly, “remember when we used to sit close like that?”

“No,” said Jackson.

“This is going to feel a little chilly at first,” the doctor said. She squirted a thick snake of clear gooey gel on to Jillian’s exposed, swelling belly. The doctor swirled her gloved fingers through the mound of viscous stuff, spreading it in a circular motion in a specific area on her abdomen. The stuff was a little cold and she shivered under it.

Jillian was lying on a gurney in a curtain-enclosed examining room, the doctor, a precise and thoughtful young woman not long out of medical school, standing over her. Like a good and dutiful husband, Spencer had taken time out from his busy day to attend his wife’s ultrasound examination— it was the first of several and he felt that he should be there for it. He stood off to one side, feeling a little like an outsider in a particularly feminine ritual.

Standing next to the gurney was a large gray machine topped by a black-and-white video monitor. The screen was blank but the machine hummed, ready for use.

The doctor picked up the sound wand from its rest and turned it on. “Well,” she said, smiling down at Jillian. “Let’s have a look in there, shall we?”

She put the wand on Jillian’s belly and navigated her way around her body by watching the image on the screen. The gray and black images that the sound waves outlined inside of Jillian’s belly did not look like much to either Spencer or Jillian. but to their physician it was as clear as if reading a roadmap.

She stopped the wand over a confused mixture of colors. “There it is. Let’s take a measurement.”

“There’s what?” ask Jillian peering at the monitor. “I can’t make out what it is.”

The doctor smiled. “It will come clear in a minute.” With one hand she kept the wand on Jillian’s belly. With her other she punched a few action codes into the keyboard mounted on the front part of the ultrasound machine. A graph appeared on the monitor image of Jillian’s insides and the doctor peered at it.

“Well,” she said, “based on the size here I would say six weeks, give or take a few days. Everything looks fine. Embryo is a good size… well positioned.” She focused the wand a little and the distinct outline of a head came into view.

“There,” said the doctor. “There’s something that looks like something. There’s plenty of amniotic fluid. And it has everything it is entitled to at this point.” She pointed to a spot on the monitor. “See this here?” She was indicating a wavering spot on the monitor screen. “See this flickering?”

Spencer leaned in and pointed at the monitor. “This place here?” he asked.

The doctor nodded. “Yes,” she said. “You’re looking at the heartbeat of your baby.”

Jillian looked at that blurred little spot and felt a great surge of emotion, of love. Tears sprung into her eyes. She could not believe that this little thing was living and growing inside of her. She had never experienced anything like it.

Spencer seemed a little put out, though, unwilling to join his wife in her happiness. “That’s the heartbeat?” he said. “Is it supposed to be that fast?”

The doctor smiled. “Let me put it this way… I’d be worried if it weren’t going that fast.” She moved the wand around again, bombarding her insides with sound waves from a number of angles. The images would blur and settle as the wand moved and stopped. “I have to say, Jillian, everything looks just fine.”

She was just about to shut down the machine when she stopped and peered at the monitor. “Oh,” she said. “That’s something. That’s very interesting.”

She kept one hand on the wand and then began to work the keyboard, her fingers flying.

“What is it?” Spencer asked.

Jillian felt her heart clench as she felt a bolt of fear pierce her. “Is there something wrong?”

“Wait… no, nothing wrong. I’m just not sure…” She looked closely at the monitor. “Yes. Look here.” She jabbed at the screen. “See this? Here? Next to the heartbeat?”

Jillian and Spencer looked at the screen, but could not see what the doctor was getting at.

“Here,” she said. “It’s a second heartbeat. See? Two heartbeats.” She sounded quite excited by the discovery. “Two heartbeats. It’s twins, Mrs. Armacost…,”

“Twins,” said Spencer, as if tasting the word.

“Of course,” said the doctor with a laugh, “you know this means that I’ll have to double my fee.” She laughed a little more and then looked down at Jillian.

Jillian wasn’t laughing. Jillian and the doctor retreated to her office and had a little chat, Spencer waiting in the waiting room.

“I couldn’t help but notice that you weren’t overjoyed when you discovered you were carrying twins,” she said. “In fact, you looked quite distressed.”

“I… can’t say that I wasn’t. It was such a shock,” she said. “I didn’t know what to think.” Jillian spoke quickly, but she felt that she was coming off sounding like an idiot.

“Mixed feelings during pregnancy are perfectly normal, Jillian,” the doctor said soothingly. “And they are particularly normal when you’re talking about twins.” She grabbed a piece of paper from a pad and wrote something on it in her careful handwriting. She pushed the paper across the desk toward Jillian.

‘This may help,” she said.

“What is it?” Jillian asked.

“It’s the telephone number of a support group for women who are expecting twins.”

Jillian took the paper and looked at it, but the number seemed meaningless. She felt as if she was beyond sitting around with a bunch of women with distended bellies complaining about swollen feet and midnight food cravings.

But she felt the need to confide in someone, even if it was in this doctor whom she had only met a couple of times before today.

“I’ve felt so odd lately,” she said quietly. “Bad dreams, terrible thoughts… loneliness.”

The doctor leaned back in her chair, a kindly smile on her face. “Your body is undergoing a tremendous change,” she said. “It has been for nearly six weeks now. Massive amounts of hormones have flooded into your bloodstream.”

“And that could cause this kind of… distress? The strange feelings I’ve been having?”

The doctor nodded. “It could cause nightmares, depression, anxiety, food aversions, giddiness, even disturbances in your hearing. You understand what’s going on with you, don’t you? It’s quite dramatic, you know.”

Jillian sounded a little uncertain. “Well, I know’ that my body is undergoing changes…

The doctor laughed again. “Undergoing changes? Basically, Jillian, you are mutating completely. But don’t worry about it, women have been doing it for millions of years, your body will know what to do… even if you think that you don’t.”

Jillian shifted slightly in her chair, wondering if she should go on, telling her doctor everything. It took her only a second or two to realize that she had to say more.