chever way I could. “She had a boyfriend in the Air Force and thought he was getting ready to pop the question. She was going to be an aunt to our baby.” The tears started flowing all over again. “I’ve taken care of her all my life. What am I going to do now?”
“You’re going to miss her,” he said, in a voice that reminded me that he knew what it was like to go through loss and mourning all too well. “For a very long time. And your heart will break when you think of her. You’ll relive memories, and that’ll try to break you, too.”
“But…” he trailed off, looking surprised, “it will start to hurt less than it did. You’ll have memories that will make you smile instead of taking you out at the knees. You’ll appreciate her for who she was and what she meant to you. You’ll forgive her for leaving you. And not once will you ever stop loving her.”
I realized he was clinging to me as much as I was clinging to him.
“I’m so tired, but you look tired, too. How long was I out?” I asked and watched him grimace.
“Five days.”
“Five days?” I echoed back at him, astonished. “But there are things I have to do. Arrangements I need to make and…”
“My brothers have been dealing with that. They didn’t know what you might want, so they put together a closed casket graveside service. They’ve been holding off on it, wanting to wait to see if you’d wake up. We can change anything you don’t like.”
Needing something to focus on, I had Luca ask them to bring me the information. They’d chosen a few things, a cherry wood casket with pink silk lining inside and rose floral arrangements to cover the top, but little else. I added some sprays of irises and gardenias to go with what the Varassos had chosen, and I told them where to find her favorite green dress to bury her in.
I also asked them to locate the contact information for Sergeant Ben Lopez stationed in Saudi Arabia so I could let him know. I’d been around Ben on several occasions and had watched him fall in love with my sister. I’d been happy for them.
I wasn’t looking forward to making that call.
They kept me in the hospital for another week and a half. They’d said they needed to observe the progress I was making, especially since I’d been in a coma for as long as I had. A few days after I woke up, they sent a new lab technician in with yet another scanning machine.
During my time there, I felt like I’d been poked and prodded seven different ways to Sunday. I’d had tests and scans and consultations. It was this endless parade of nurses, doctors, and other medical personnel. But then she spoke, and I knew this scan would be different.
“I’m here to give you an ultrasound,” she said, offering me a hesitant smile. I held my breath. “According to your charts, you should be far enough along for us to hear the embryonic heartbeat.”
What she didn’t say was what would happen if there wasn’t one. If something terrible had gone wrong inside my womb. If my injuries had damaged the life that had been growing within.
I clutched Luca’s hand as the technician raised my gown and rubbed KY jelly on my flat belly. There was no outward indication that I was pregnant at all still, and I hadn’t felt anything. I told her so.
“Oh, you won’t feel anything for a few more months. At six weeks, the heartbeat is just starting to pump hard enough for us to hear it.” She paused, the wand for the ultrasound held aloft. “Are you ready?”
I stared at Luca. I didn’t know if I was ready or not, but as nervous as I felt, he seemed determined. “Go ahead,” he told her. “We need to know.”
One way or the other.
She affixed some sort of belt right at my panty line, strapping it securely in place. I jumped a bit at the coldness of the wand as the technician drew it across my lower abdomen, being careful to not get too near the bandages and gauze on my right side. An image appeared on the screen she’d brought with her, but it was black and white and indecipherable.
“Oh, almost forgot,” she said, looking sheepish as she turned one of the dials to the right. A odd noise began to emanate from the machine. A rhythmic yet sloshy sound, like something wet thumping up against something soft.
Luca gasped, and I brought my attention from the screen to him, amazed to see a huge smile lighting his face. “That’s a heartbeat,” he exclaimed. “The baby’s alive.”
“Definitely,” the lab tech agreed, smiling more fully now, too, as she pointed at one of the indistinguishable blobs on the screen. “See that?” I squinted at it. “That’s your baby. It’s about the size of a sweet pea at the moment, about a quarter of an inch long.”
The blob was infinitesimal. So tiny that if I hadn’t known what I was looking at, I wouldn’t have thought that it would matter at all. But it did. That itty bitty blob was everything. It had all this potential, all these possibilities.
“I’ll print off a picture and bring it to you,” the lab tech promised as she cleaned me up, then left.
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it’s okay,” I said. I’d been so terrified that I’d lost it. So afraid.
“Our baby is one tough cookie, just like its mom,” Luca said consolingly, giving me a peck on the forehead. He wrapped me in his embrace again, breathing in and out with long deliberate breaths. But then his voice hitched with his next words, “I thought I was going to lose you both.”
I lifted a hand to his face. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I love you, Luca.”
He kissed my hand, his dark eyes intense, then leaned down to brush his lips to mine.
After receiving confirmation that I was still expecting, I was anxious to get back up and around. I felt weak from being down for so long and from the loss of blood, so I was required to use a walker to lean on at first. I’d get dizzy easily and had to be careful. A fall wouldn’t only be hazardous to my injuries, it could put my baby in jeopardy.