Free The Last Honorable Man by Vickie Taylor Page A

what was happening to her own body. That ignorance made her uncertain, vulnerable, and she was too much the survivor to accept vulnerability. She devoured that article, then another, on breast-feeding, but the more she read, the more she realized she needed to learn.
    She started when the ranger touched her on the shoulder.
    â€œSorry,” he said, handing her a clipboard. “But they need some information from you.”
    She scanned the form, her stomach twisting.
    â€œI explained that you, uh…might not know some of the information. That you haven’t had much medical care lately.”
    She filled in the blanks she knew—childhood illnesses, vaccination history and hereditary conditions in her family—and left the rest blank, except for the date of conception. Her cheeks heating, she scribbled in a date and handed the clipboard to Del just as a second nurse, this one in surgical greens, pushed open a door and called her name.
    Bracing herself with a breath, she straightened her back and walked toward the nurse. Del followed.
    Elisa stopped, shaking her head. “No.”
    He glanced toward the exam room door where the nurse waited, then back to Elisa. “You sure?”
    â€œThis baby is my responsibility.” She watched him hook his big hands in his belt and remembered those big hands tending his yellow roses with such loving care. “I take care of what’s mine,” she mimicked his words, turned them to her own meaning to keep him in the waiting room where he belonged. This was a private matter.
    Dr. Marsala was Indonesian. She had a large nose, soft voice and gentle hands. The pelvic exam was completed efficiently and painlessly, and Elisa was prepped for the big moment, the sonogram where she would first see her baby.
    â€œAre you frightened,” the doctor asked as she spread warm gel on Elisa’s abdomen.
    â€œYes.”
    Dr. Marsala smiled. “Good. If you had said no, I would have known you were lying.”
    A computer blinked next to the examination table, andthe doctor tapped a series of commands on the attached keyboard. The gray display on the monitor wavered, then stabilized. Elisa’s name and the date appeared at the bottom of the picture.
    â€œWhat you’re going to see is live video of your child. Or at least live video of sound waves bouncing off your child’s mass.”
    â€œWill you be able to tell if it’s healthy?”
    â€œWe can detect some conditions at this stage, but mostly we’re just looking at the fetus’s size and shape to give us an idea how it’s developing.”
    The doctor pressed a flat wand lightly into the goo covering Elisa’s stomach. Compared to the warm gel, the plastic was cold. The muscles in her abdomen rippled in reaction. Undeterred, the doctor concentrated on the computer monitor, studying gray and black masses as she moved the wand over Elisa.
    â€œThere,” Dr. Marsala declared, smiling and pointing at a blob on the screen. “There’s the sac.”
    Elisa couldn’t make anything of the picture, but she smiled, too. Her heart accelerated.
    Slowly Dr. Marsala moved the wand down and to Elisa’s left, then back. Then again. “There we are. I can’t tell if it’s a girl or boy in this position, but there’s the head, the chest.” She outlined a vaguely human shape on the screen with her free hand. “See the little legs and arms forming?”
    Elisa’s breath stalled as she stared at the tiny being growing inside her. This baby is her responsibility, she’d told Del, and for the first time she was beginning to understand what that meant. To understand the commitment. The joy and the grief, the love and the fierce protectiveness this child brought out in her.
    â€œIs it okay?” she asked, choking back the emotion. “Is the baby healthy?”
    The doctor moved the wand to the right a fraction. Her smile remained frozen