DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 14, SECTION 8

Ian carefully pressed the ultrasound transducer into my abdomen, right above my appendix.

The screen flashed, and now a jumble of shadowy images appeared.

"Does that hurt, when I press here?" Ian asked.

"No."

The pain I'd been feeling originated much deeper down, somewhere within my pelvis.

"I'm pretty sure your appendix is fine," he confirmed.

Ian was partly relieved about this discovery, but I could tell that now he was mostly concerned that he hadn't identified the problem.

I said, "It's lower. The pain's coming from farther down."

Ian lowered my pajama bottom's waist, eased the transducer across my jellied abdomen, and brought it to a rest below my belly button.

The jumble of dark blue and light blue shapes flashing across the screen were totally meaningless to me.

Ian adjusted one of the machine's dials and the image intensified, but still I couldn't make sense of the shapes that were supposed to be images of my insides.

"What the . . . " Ian squinted at the screen, confused.

"Don't tell me I'm pregnant," I laughed, then winced in mild pain.

I could tell that Ian was relieved that I was able to laugh—something that would have been impossible fifteen minutes ago—but he still scowled intensely at the screen.

"Ha, ha," he said in mock laughter at my dumb attempt at a joke.

We both knew that it was impossible for me ever to become pregnant. The pathogen had completely taken over not only my amygdalae, but also my ovaries. And the same was true, not incidentally, of Ian's reproductive organs—at least TGVx's gentler pathogens had left them looking normal and intact. Thankfully. But the pathogens had left both of us impotent. I'd known this ever since Chris explained how TGVx worked. Pregnancy, he'd iterated, was a physical impossibility. I'd long ago put the idea that I'd ever have kids out of my mind.

"What is that?" Ian squinted at the ultrasound image again.

A fluttering blue spot, a tiny bean-shaped beacon, flashed rhythmically at the center of the screen.

"Oh my God," Ian whispered. ". . . Oh my God."

He wrenched his eyes from the pulsing image, gently took my hand, and looked at me with the strangest expression of overwhelmed intensity that I'd ever seen.

"What do you see? Ian? You're scaring me! Am I dying? What's wrong. Tell me?"

"No, Ash. You're not dying. . . I think, maybe . . ."

"Maybe what?"

"I think, maybe . . . you are pregnant."

He adjusted the dial to sharpen the image once again.

Now I could see, very clearly, the outline of a tiny head with a tiny nose and mouth, tiny hands with tiny fingers. The fluttering, flashing spot was a tiny heart.

"It's not possible . . ." I mumbled, awed and confused. "How is that even . . ."

"I have no idea, Ash." Ian dropped the transducer wand, letting it clatter to the floor. "I have no idea." He shrugged, threw his hands into the air, and smiled. Then he kissed me, and said, "But we are definitely going to have a baby."

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