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Show Motherlunge a novel 50 At the obstetrician's office, hours before, the technician had led us down the hall. She brought us into a small room with a low cushioned table and told Pavia to climb up and slide her pants down. Then the technician-young and fair-haired with a border of peach-colored makeup visible in front of her ears-sat down on a wheeled stool and swiveled to face the ultrasound screen. "First baby?" she sang out to us, fiddling with the controls. i "Yes. Second pregnancy." "She doesn't need to know that," I said. "Actually, it is the sort of thing we ask about." The technician squeezed a neat line of gel on the transducer and half-swiveled back towards us. She paused, one hand on the keyboard of the ultrasound machine, one arm aloft above Pavia's belly. She planted her feet on either side of the stool as if bracing for impact. "This will be a little cold." She slid the sleeve of her lab coat back and lowered her arm. Suddenly up on the monitor, it was like a crash-landing into dark waters: a pulsing roar and the plankton streaming past, ghostly shapes-coral reef? shipwreck?-faintly visible in the agitated gloom. "Let's try over here," the technician said, sliding the transducer over. And there it was, moving jerkily like something caught in a net-something white, cartilaginous, huge-headed, human. It waved its arms and scissored its legs, the |
