CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

The clinic was situated in a discreet building on the Upper East Side with so little indication of the place that there was just a suite number on a simple steel plate next to the elevator in the lobby. Farida Osei, MD was a maternal-fetal medicine specialist for twenty years and naturally had the unique trait of someone who has given both bad news and good news in equal measure and has learned to treat both with the same meticulous, calm manner.

Aria was going to her doctor appointments on her own. Not as a way of making a point -she hadn't thought of it that way. It was simply the way it had always been: she managed her own medical appointments, her own health, the various administrative logistics of her own body, and from her perspective, the understanding she had with Adrian did not require him being present for her things that were primarily about her.

It was this thought process which she had been reflecting on while driving to the clinic, and she realized that this was the attitude which she had acquired through years of making herself small in order to not need anyone. She was recognizing these inherited mindsets. She was not yet finished with the work.

She was in the waiting room at 10:10 when the door opened and Adrian came in.

He was still wearing his jacket and his collar was a little flushed as if he had suddenly picked up a quick pace and had yet to completely slow down. Without any difficulty, he located her the room was really tiny, just four chairs around a table with magazines scattered on it and without hesitation, he came towards her, sat down, and spoke with the kind of focus that is typical of a person who is conscious of a time limit but out of courtesy to the moment, chooses to stay.

She gazed at him.

"Elena has given me the date, " he said. "It was wrong of me to not ask you first and I am sorry for that."

She looked at him for a moment. He was not meeting her eye, in fact, he was staring at the opposite wall, where an attractive seascape was trying to give a medical waiting room a less clinical atmosphere. His jaw was clenched in the particular manner of a man who is mildly uncomfortable with himself after having done something imperfectly.

"You said sorry, " she remarked.

"Yes, " he replied.

"That is the second time since I have moved in that you said sorry."

"I say sorry only if I am at fault, " he explained. "At the same time, I try to reduce the number of times that I do have to apologize."

"How is that going?"

It was then that he met her eye. His whole face changed and for a moment, he looked like someone who was dryly self-aware, and slightly weary as if he was the subject of a joke. "Fairly well, " he answered.

She tightened her lips to keep from smiling. The nurse showed up and called her, and after they had both risen, Adrian shadowed her into the consultation room with the quiet, almost unconscious manner of someone who by an act of will had made up his mind to be there and so was.

With the cool, controlled expression of a person who has come across so many different types of people attending these sessions that none of their qualities have managed to surprise her, Dr. Osei did not even look at them but straight through them. She went over the usual examinations  blood pressure, the scale, the increasingly larger numbers which reflected the direction my body's project was going and Adrian ended up in the inching chair in the corner; the look he gave them with his wildly concentrating, a bit bewildered attention was that of a man who theoretically knew something and had just found that it was still a different thing when he actually came across it.

He froze completely when the ultrasound image came up on the monitor.

From her position at the table, she observed him. That tiny swimming form, the sure rapidity of the heartbeat, was nothing new to her since she had already seen it at the previous visit, and she had kept it with all the complex, paradoxical, and tender set of emotions that naturally came along with it. But the expression of his face as he first laid eyes on it was something else. Something that she had not expected to find herself stirred by. He was so still like someone who has just been hit by something so big that he cannot even think fast enough what just happened. It is not the quite-ness of the office that he experiences as he gradually understands that the girl is different. It is the quite-ness of a person who is holding very gently because a less gentle person might spill out a lot too.

"That is" he said and stopped.

"That is your baby, " Dr. Osei said, nicely and clearly. "About fourteen weeks. Heartbeat normal. Positioning exactly as it should be at this stage."

He was quiet for a long time. He took a look at the screen and then at Aria and then at the screen again, and she saw that something that had been hidden in his face was now visiblethat very expression that she had also seen in the library photograph of the eleven-year-old boy, the look of the person who is deciding if they are going to allow themselves to be attracted to the thing they are seeing.

She turned her eyes to the ceiling. She was giving him the benefit of privacy, because he would not have wanted to be seen while he was going through it and she had a great deal of respect for him to understand that.

They drove in silence back to the penthouse for a long time.

Then: "I will come to all of them from now on."

"Okay, " she said.

"I should have the question of who accompanies you to these appointments should have been a matter for discussion with us at the beginning. That we didn't do so was a mistake."

"It was, " she agreed.

"I'm fixing it."

"I can tell that."

He kept silent again. They walked over the bridge and into the city, the city skyline appearing ahead the same way it always does from the north bit by bit, seemingly by itself, gathering layers of detail, until it is the complete, undeniably true identity of itself.

"Adrian, " she called out.

"What?"

"Ochre. Old maps. In case Elena asks again and you want to give her something accurate."

She recognized the faint, barely audible, very controlled "oh" of a person caught off guard and who has, just barely, managed to control the situation. He remained silent for a moment.

"Okay, " he finally replied. The tone, quite low and in his particular voice, conveyed his care which as she realized, was most naturally in that form. Not a grand gesture. No performance. A deliberate and specific piece of work, with the full intention of remembering it.

She gazed at the city. She placed her hand against her belly, flat.

"Hi, " she whispered to the little being whose size she was beginning to be aware of. "Your father was here today. I thought you'd like to know."

She almost expected Adrian to have heard it. She almost expected that, from the nature of the quiet that followed, it was something he did not expect and was not prepared to identify immediately.

She figured it was ok. He could go at his own pace.

She was finding out that things came when they came, and the best she could do was be ready when they were.