Page 43 of Pas de Trois
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “Months.”
He nods, though his eyes remain fixed on his computer screen and whatever it is he’s typing. “Mm-hmm. Do you have any sense of when you conceived?”
I chuckle unintentionally. “I don’t know. I’ve been raped with intense frequency over the past several years, doctor. My understanding is that my last owner stopped my birth control without my knowledge. I could’ve fallen pregnant anytime over the last six months.”
“Mm-hmm. And do you think you are six months pregnant?” His eyes dip down over the laptop screen, scanning my relatively flat stomach.
Naturally, one of my hands float to rest over my belly button and I look down, too. I feel stupid now to think about it. I had noticed a slight difference in my shape before, but I wrote it off as being a result of my malnourishment and the fact that I couldn’t care for myself properly.
“No,” I finally respond to Doctor Lombardi’s question.
“So, can you give me a guess as to when you might have become pregnant? It will help me to judge healthy development when we do your ultrasound.”
I start to shake my head because I truthfully don’t know when I conceived. But I know when I hope I conceived, so I tell him, “Three months.”
We were at the Leblancs’ three months ago. Three months ago, I had sex with Ezra and Nikolai on the same night. Three months is an estimate that gives me the hope that this baby might not belong to Vigo—even having Nikolai’s baby feels somehow better than that.
I think I know the truth in my heart, or at least, I hope I do. I saw what I want to be the truth so vividly in my dream. That truth is that this baby belongs to Ezra by some absolute miracle, because the odds of that being true are poor at best.
Doctor Lombardi goes through an exhaustive list of health questions, only stopping when we both hear my stomach growl. I need to eat and I’m glad this man at least seems to have the understanding that we need to move this along.
He asks me to lay on the bed as he rolls a cart around with the ultrasound machine. I can’t imagine that the Vittoris just happen to have an ultrasound machine sitting around. The doctor must have brought it here for some reason.
Perhaps she called him and he arrived with it last night. If not, someone else in this mansion must be pregnant, too.
Heaven forbid Renata should ever reproduce, though I wonder if that’s even possible for her in her early forties. The only other women who live in this house are the elderly Vittori mother who I never did meet, children of Vittori cousins, and…the slaves.
I don’t even want to think about what they would do if one of Vigo’s broken dolls had become pregnant.
The same thing they would do to me if Nikolai hadn’t made me a Mikhailov.
Oh, God.
Don’t think about it.
Doctor Lombardi pulls me back to reality as he squirts a gel on my bare stomach—I hardly remember lifting my shirt. I watch the screen carefully, though I don’t really understand what I’m seeing. I don’t understand until…
I see the outline of the baby.
I see the outline of my baby.
“There it is,” Doctor Lombardi says. “You see? Moving a lot.”
I blink at the screen. It wasn’t real until this moment. It was just two pink lines on a stick until just now. Now…now it’s real…so, so real.
Doctor Lombardi tries to measure the baby, but the tiny squirming thing is moving around so much that he has to wait until he’s still. Until then, it’s just quiet, and we watch. Tiny limbs that look like arms wave and his legs kick as his body wriggles.
God, it looks like he’s dancing.
My baby’s dancing inside me.
Doctor Lombardi is clicking buttons on his machine with one hand as he performs the ultrasound with the other. “Heartbeat is strong. Good. Baby is measuring about twelve weeks and five days. You were right, just about three months. A few more days and it will be your second trimester.”
“Is it a boy?” I’m eager as I ask.
“It is a little too early to say with imaging alone. But I will do a blood test to find out. Signora Vittori would like an early gender result, as well. I don’t know whether she’ll share that information with you.”
“It’s my baby.”
