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Because Polly was carrying his baby in her womb. This was the result of their night of passion, his loss of control. The culmination of a hundred things that felt unlikely and yet right at the same time.
He felt...gratitude that transcended logic. He felt something that he could not easily name. He felt everything. All at once. Like the cover had been lifted on something bright and intense inside of him, and now that it was revealed it couldn’t be hidden.
He looked at Polly, because suddenly it was very important that he see her face. That he see what she was feeling.
Her eyes glittered, but he couldn’t figure out what exactly the tears were for. Tears, he found, were a constellation. They could contain many truths. They were never half so simple as sadness, or happiness. They spoke of intensity. Overwhelmed. Sometimes he thought it wasn’t that he couldn’t understand what other people were feeling, but that people were very quick to simplify feelings. Tried to put one name to them when they had a depth, and all-encompassing nature that was different than simply happy or sad.
Often he was angry because he was afraid. Often he was happy, but tired, because that happiness had come at a cost. From many sleepless nights. Right now he was grateful, but with it came a measure of awe. Of uncertainty.
He moved closer to the screen then, and began to examine the black-and-white image. Because emotions might be something that he found difficult and complex, but there was nothing complex about the physical.
To his eye, everything on the scan looked normal. “Go back,” he said.
The ultrasound tech looked at him. “To where?”
“I would like to get a look at the heart chambers.”
“It is very early.”
“I would still like it. Along with a full panel of blood work.”
“I don’t order blood work. The doctor will, if she sees a need.”
“I see the need.”
“Luca,” said Polly. “Let’s discuss this later.”
She was speaking to him like he was a naughty child. And that irritated him as much as he had been awestruck the moment before.
The ultrasound tech moved back to the heart, and he watched. Watched it move. Flutter.
“Thank you.”
When they were finished, Polly demanded he turn around again so that she could get dressed. At that point, the tech left the room.
“You didn’t have to be that difficult,” she said.
“I’m not being difficult.”
“I didn’t know that you were coming here and you were going to try and act as a doctor. I thought that you were here as the father.”
“I was,” he said. “But for me the two things are not different. Because nothing inside of me is different.”
“You cannot be this obtuse. Surely you understand why it’s frustrating for a professional to have somebody looming over them like that.”
“It was not looming.”
“You were,” she said.
They exited the exam room, and went out into the front of the office. She made a new appointment.
“That is during my workday.”
“I don’t care.”
They walked out, and a car was waiting for them. She got into the back, not waiting for him to let her in.
He slid in beside her. “Did you need to be told that I was going to want to have involvement in the medical side of this?”