Asher ✓

02 | future

AUGUST 1,1996 / DENHVOY ALVOROD, FIRST STEPS PAEDIATRIC CLINIC

Ekaterina Delrov was no fool.

The staunch new mother had an intelligence quotient of 158 (still not high enough, in her opinion) and more knowledge under her belt than there were stars in the sky. When she woke up that morning, groggy-eyed and hoarse in her throat, Ekaterina would have traded every shred of knowledge she had, every milestone she had passed, everything, for her baby to be okay.

A creeping suspicion had tiptoed into Ekaterina's over-active mind two weeks ago, when, at early months of age, Asher had developed a blue tint in the whites of his eyes. Against his hazel irises, the colours clashed horribly with each other - both beautiful on their own, but when mixed, left a bitter worry in Ekaterina's mouth.

Mastering the hang of sitting up by himself was long overdue, though every textbook on birth and childcare, every internet blog penned by stay-at-home mothers had stressed that babies developed at their own paces.

Still, something felt wrong.

Call it a mother's instinct, call it paranoia, but Ekaterina Delrov had babysat her niece, Aria, when she was younger than Asher, and her other nieces and nephews. All of them had been relatively active by six months. The problem wasn't that Asher didn't want to crawl around - he could be seen stretching his hands and legs like he wanted to move - but was, rather, that he couldn't.

"Mrs. Delrov," Asher's paediatrician was finishing up a session with another mother when Ekaterina and Vasily walked into the waiting room. "Asher's check-up is not for another week or so."

Tentatively, with shaking hands that didn't deserve being trusted with a child, Ekaterina passed her son to her husband. Vasily was the best father, in Ekaterina's opinion. He knew exactly how to rock Asher when he was fussing, talked to him like Asher understood and felt confident with his parenting skills.

Ekaterina still thought that she could handle machinery better than she could handle children. But Asher was hers. And she would fight for him.

In hushed tones - she had not shared any of her suspicions with her husband, in case it was nothing - Ekaterina murmured, "I think something is wrong with Asher."

Concern fell on the doctor's face, and she opened the door to her examination room, "Come in."

It was the same procedure Asher had gone through for his first check-up, at the hospital when he was four days old, and when he was a month old, here. Dr. Walsky measured his height, by rolling a measuring tape across the baby mattress where Asher lay, clutching his mouth and giggling.

Ekaterina noted that by the day, he seemed more and more like a younger Vasily - happy to the point of it being slightly annoying, amused by everything and determined. Very determined.

Asher cried a little in the unfamiliar arms of Dr. Walsky, so the paediatrician gave Asher back to Ekaterina after the routine measurements had been taken.

A blood sample was taken - Asher cried for three minutes after, but settled down when Vasily sang a lullaby - and sent to be tested. In eight days, Asher would be back here for his six-month vaccinations, but Ekaterina's nerves would have been frayed to the point of insanity if she had to wait eight days to guarantee her baby's health - it was a maddening kind of torture even waiting for the blood results to come back.