Lost You by Haylen Beck

Author:Haylen Beck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

30

ANNA SAT IN A SEMICIRCLE with two other young women, all facing Dr. Holdsworth. As the doctor talked, Anna observed the others. She guessed the ages as anything between twenty-five and thirty-five. Both of them white, well-dressed, healthy-looking. Just like her.

A projector beamed an image of a baby in a womb onto the whiteboard behind Dr. Holdsworth. It lay upside down, its head down close to the cervix, its legs curled up to its chest, its arms crossed, hands tucked up to its chin. Boy or girl, she couldn’t tell. Lately, she’d been wondering about her own baby. She hoped it was a boy.

Not that it should matter to her.

She’d slept poorly the night before. Little Butterfly had been kicking something fierce, and she’d had to get up to pee three times. She knew the shape of him now. Yes, him, Little Butterfly was a him for now, and would be until she found out otherwise. She had tried to convince herself to stop thinking that way, to stop naming him, to stop assigning him—him—a gender. But she couldn’t. Not when she could see and feel his feet pressing against the inside of her, not when she could cup his bottom in her hand while it pushed against the other side.

Idle daydreaming had become a dangerous thing. The stories she had been imagining for herself were beginning to take on a solidity, as if they were only a step away from reality. Playing, cuddling, running, swimming, riding, talking. All the things she and Little Butterfly would never, ever do together. At the same time, the certainty of having him taken from her had cracked, shards of it falling away. The unthinkable had become more real, the real more unthinkable. It frightened her, so she tried not to think about it.

But then he would move, turn over, remind her he was there, alive, growing, growing, growing. Last night, her mind had raced through the darkness, settling on images that could never be. First steps, first words, first teeth. And she had buried her face in her pillow, willed the images away, because Mr. Kovak would not approve, no, Mr. Kovak would be displeased, and that idea terrified her more than anything.

“Anna, are you listening?”

Anna blinked at Dr. Holdsworth, her mouth opening and closing before she could find her tongue. “Yes,” she said.

“Good,” Dr. Holdsworth said. “I’m trying to make this easier for you all. The more you know what to expect, the smoother things will go. Now, let’s—”

A knock on the door stopped her. It opened, and a young woman stood there, her arm held in the large hand of Mr. Kovak.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, guiding the young woman inside. “Sarah forgot to set her alarm for this morning, so I gave her a ride here.”

Sarah’s face was flushed pink, her eyes red and brimming, her fear obvious to everyone who looked on. The room’s temperature seemed to drop. All of the women, including Dr. Holdsworth, shifted in their seats.

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