Page 57 of Blueline Baby

“Mario,” I try. “Or Dominic.”

“I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m making conversation.”

“You’re listing hockey players.” She shifts in her seat to face me, tucking one leg underneath her, and I can tell by the way she settles in that she’s been waiting to make this case. “You’ve been doing it for a week. You worked Brodeur into a sentence at dinner on Thursday like I wouldn’t notice. And there is a list in your visor with forty-one names on it, Jack. I counted. All of them are hockey players.”

“In my defense, hockey players have some pretty amazing names.”

She laughs, and she tries to swallow it halfway through, which only makes it worse. “You can’t just wear me down. That’s not how we’re picking a name.”

“It’s worked for everything else. I got you to date me by showing up enough times.”

“You got me to date you because you fell through my door and wouldn’t leave.”

“And look how that turned out.” I reach over and lace my fingers through hers on the console.

She goes back to the window, but she leaves her hand in mine, her thumb moving slow over my knuckles the way it does when she’s somewhere else. I know exactly where she is. She’s already at the appointment, an hour ahead of us, sitting in a room we haven’t gotten to yet.

“Hey. You nervous?”

“No.” A mile goes by. “Yes. If there’s no heartbeat today, then all of this⁠—”

She stops and shakes her head at the window instead of finishing.

I squeeze her hand until she looks at me. “Whatever we hear in there, you’re not hearing it alone. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says, quietly. Then, a little louder, “Not Wayne.”

“Not Wayne,” I agree, pulling into the parking lot. “Wayne’s a middle name anyway.”

The tech squeezes gel onto her stomach and Chloe flinches at the cold, and her hand comes off the table and finds mine without her ever once looking at me. I fold it up in both of mine.

The wand presses down. The speakers fill with static, a thick underwater whooshing, and the tech slides it slowly across Chloe’s skin, searching.

Nothing happens.

I’ve spent all week telling her there was nothing to worry about. Now the room is too quiet, and I can’t find a single piece of that confidence anywhere.

“Sometimes at twelve weeks it’s positional,” the tech says. “It can take a minute to find. If the placenta is anterior, it can take even longer to⁠—”

And then it’s there.

Fast. So much faster than I thought it would be, this galloping thump-thump-thump pouring out of the speakers and filling up the whole room.

“There’s your baby,” the tech says, turning the screen toward us. “Heart rate is one fifty-eight. Right where we want it.”

Chloe looks straight up at me to make sure I’m hearing it too.

“I hear it, baby.” My own voice comes out rough, and my eyes are burning. “I hear it.”

The drive afterward feels like a weight that’s been lifted off me. Chloe’s been talking for the past few weeks about how this appointment is the turning point for what comes next and I think now, she’ll finally be able to relax.

“Okay, what about Callum?” she asks from the passenger seat.

“No.”

“You didn’t even consider it.”