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CHAPTER 145: The Scan
publish date:
2026-07-07 23:24:07POV: Avalon Pierce
The waiting room had three other couples.
He noticed because he couldn’t help noticing. It was what he did in rooms — assessed, catalogued, understood the landscape before committing to it.
They were just standing there, a young couple, probably in their mid-twenties. The woman had her head resting on the man's shoulder, and they were both staring off into space.
Another, older, holding hands across the armrest gap without looking at each other, the way people held on when holding on had become muscle memory.
There was a woman, sitting by herself, with her phone resting in her lap, but she wasn't even glancing at it.
He looked at Selene beside him.
She was reading something on her phone, or pretending to.
He could tell the difference.
"Stop looking around the room," she said, not even bothering to glance up.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
He looked at the wall instead.
Dr. Okafor called them in at ten past.
The room was dim, the equipment humming quietly, everything arranged with the efficiency of a space that understood what happened in it mattered to the people it happened to.
Selene lay back.
Avalon stood beside her.
Dr. Okafor walked into the room with a calm and confident air, the kind that comes from years of experience. She had done this so many times before, but she knew that for the people lying on the table, it was a completely new and possibly frightening experience. Despite her own familiarity with the procedure, she never forgot that for them, it was a first time, and that thought always helped her to stay focused and composed.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes,” Selene said.
The screen came to life.
Avalon looked.
He had caught glimpses of ultrasound images here and there, the kind of thing that you pick up on without really thinking about it. But despite that, he hadn't really expected what he was about to see, and he realized now that he didn't really understand what those images were showing after all.
He didn’t.
Nothing prepared him for the reality of it.
A heartbeat.
Visible. Rapid. Certain.
A faint glow in a quiet room, December's chill outside, and on the screen, a tiny heartbeat, a child's life pulsing with each passing moment.
He felt Selene’s hand find his without looking.
He held on.
"Everything looks exactly right," Dr. Okafor said, smiling. "You've got a strong heartbeat, good development - you're right where I want you to be."
Selene exhaled.
“Can you—” she started.
“Keep looking?” Dr. Okafor said. “ Yes.”
She kept the picture up on the screen for a bit too long.
Neither of them asked her to stop.
Walking to the car afterward Selene was quiet.
He didn’t fill it.
At the car she stopped.
She turned to face him.
Her eyes were wet, not spilling.
“That was real,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I keep waiting for it to feel real and then it does and then it stops and then it does again.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“The heartbeat,” he said. “ That was the first time it felt completely real to me.”
She looked at him.
“Me too,” she said.
He opened the car door.
She got in.
He sat down in the driver's seat, but didn't turn the key to start the car right away, just sitting there for a moment.
“Selene.”
“Yes.”
“We’re going to be parents.”
She looked at him.
“We are,” she said.
He started the car.
They decided to grab some lunch at a random spot, just because it was convenient and they were starving. At that point, they didn't really care about making any more plans for the day, they just wanted to eat. The place they picked wasn't somewhere they'd been before, but that didn't matter - they were too hungry to be fussy.
A small Italian place. Checkered tablecloths. A waiter who called them both friend.
They walked in, didn't even bother to look at the menu, and just ordered. Then they sat down and waited for their food to arrive. When it came, they were pleased to find it was really good. As they ate, they chatted about nothing in particular, just enjoying each other's company.
The foundation briefly.
Maya just got a message from Kofi, and it seems his aunt is wanting to have another video call.
The book Avalon had been meaning to finish for three months.
Normal things.
Ordinary things.
There's a steady pulse that runs beneath everything, it's always there, beating fast and strong.
As they headed home, she turned to him and said, "I think I'm going to tell Maya about it today."
“Okay.”
“And Margaret.”
“Okay.”
"This information isn't ready to be shared with everyone just yet, it's only being told to those who need to know ahead of time, before it's made public."
“Okay,” he said again.
“You keep saying okay.”
“Because I agree with everything you’re saying.”
“That’s suspicious.”
“I’ve been practicing,” he said.
She almost smiled.
“Tell me something,” she said.
“What?”
“What did you think when you saw the heartbeat?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I thought about my dad, and how he never got to experience this moment. I thought about Nene, lying in a hospital bed, being told that he was gone.” He stopped for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “Then I thought about everything I have now, and how it's all a result of everything he's been through. The struggles, the challenges, the warehouse - all of it.” He looked at her, his eyes locking onto hers. He realized that they've earned this moment, not because the hard times were worth it, but because it makes this moment feel real. “It's like all the impossible things that happened before has led me to this point, and it's a reminder that everything I’ve got now is because of what he's been through.”
Selene looked at the road.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “ That’s exactly it.”
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