Immaculate by Katelyn Detweiler

Author:Katelyn Detweiler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-05-11T04:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

“It’s hard to believe that you’re already twenty-two weeks in,” Dr. Keller said, flipping her folder open as she rolled her stool over to the exam table to face me. Her assistant Jamie hovered just behind, a quiet, obedient shadow. “How have you been feeling? Anything concerning you?”

“No, nothing I didn’t expect at this point. A little aching in my back, some soreness and swelling in my feet, but otherwise I’ve been feeling good. Much better than the last few months, actually.” I was surprised to hear myself saying that out loud, and even more surprised to realize that I actually meant it. It had already been more than a month since the Three Wise Men debacle, and so far, miraculously, nothing else too cataclysmic had come out of the big reveal. Jesse, fortunately, had got away with only a warning, given that he’d had an unblemished record and Kyle had already been an established troublemaker. People stared at me more maybe, whispered more, but I was becoming a master at tuning them out. I hadn’t seen visions of Iris again, either, and no matter how illogical I knew it was, a part of me hoped that she’d actually been there, even for a second. I wanted to believe that she was watching me, that she hadn’t abandoned me to deal with all this on my own.

“Good. And have you felt the baby move at all yet?”

“No,” I said, my hands automatically settling around my belly, a position they were in more and more often lately. I usually woke up that way, holding my stomach in my sleep. My arms felt too heavy and inconvenient, unnatural even, if I just left them dangling at my sides. “But that’s not abnormal, right?”

“No, not for a first-time pregnancy. It’s true that most women feel movement closer to twenty weeks, but it’s nothing to worry about right now, Mina. I expect it’ll happen soon. Can you lie back for me?”

She was quiet as she and Jamie went through the motions, taking my blood pressure, feeling my abdomen, checking my hands and feet for any swelling. When it was time to use the Doppler to listen to my baby’s heartbeat, I closed my eyes and let the sound flow through me. The perfectly rhythmic thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump was just as mind-blowing to me as it had been the first time I’d heard it, maybe even more so now. The more I processed and accepted what was happening to me, the more amazing it became. I wanted to carry the sound with me all day, a constant reminder that there was a real miniature person with a beating heart growing inside of me. Before now I had never thought about the fact that pregnant women held two working hearts—and I was pretty sure that even after the second heart was no longer physically inside my body, emotionally I would have double the hearts, double the love within me for the rest of my life.

“Well, Mina, everything is looking good, perfectly normal for this stage.

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