Chapter 15: The Doctor's Office
The clinic’s fluorescent lights buzzed like trapped insects, casting a sickly green hue over everything. Peeling posters about breastfeeding and immunization curled at the edges. The smell was a potent mix of carbolic soap, stale urine, and the faint, cloying sweetness of incense from a small clay dish near the receptionist’s grille.Josh’s leg wouldn’t stop jiggling. Preethi sat perfectly still beside him, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on a crack in the linoleum floor that snaked towards the examination rooms.
A baby cried thinly from a corner where a young mother tried to shush it, rocking back and forth on a plastic chair. An old man coughed, a wet, rattling sound that seemed to go on forever. Josh felt a surge of claustrophobia, a desperate need to get Preethi out of this place of sickness and tired eyes.“Preethi Sharma?” A nurse held a clipboard, her voice flat with routine.
Preethi stood.Josh stood with her, his hand finding the small of her back.
“Husband can wait,” the nurse said, not looking up.
“I’m coming with her.” Josh’s voice came out harder than he intended.
The nurse glanced at him, at his young, anxious face, then at Preethi’s downcast eyes. She shrugged a bony shoulder and turned, leading them down a short, dank corridor.The examination room was little better. A portable ultrasound machine sat on a trolley, its screen dark. A cracked vinyl examination table dominated the space.A lone fan turned slowly overhead, stirring the thick air. The doctor was a woman in her fifties, with severe grey hair pulled into a tight bun and eyes that held a deep, professional exhaustion.She motioned for Preethi to lie down.The questions were brisk, impersonal. Last menstrual period?Sexual activity?Any pain, bleeding? Preethi answered in monosyllables, her voice a soft thread in the humming room. Josh answered for her when she hesitated, stating their ages, their lack of family history here.The doctor’s pen scratched against the paper.
“We’ll do a scan. Confirm viability.” The doctor squeezed cold, clear gel onto Preethi’s lower abdomen.Preethi flinched.Josh moved closer, taking her hand. Her fingers were ice-cold, gripping his with a strength that hurt.
The doctor switched on the machine.The screen flared to life, a grainy field of shifting greys and blacks. She moved the wand, pressing it into Preethi’s skin. There was nothing but silent, swirling static.Josh’s heart hammered against his ribs.A mistake.A false alarm. The panic was pure, metallic in his mouth.Then the doctor adjusted a dial. The image clarified, cohered.And there, in the centre of the chaos, was a shape. A tiny, bean-like curve.And within it, a frantic, flickering light. A tiny, rapid pulse beating against the void.“There,” the doctor said, her voice softening by a fraction. She pointed a fingernail at the screen.“See the flicker? That’s the cardiac activity.Very strong. You’re about eight weeks.”
The sound that escaped Preethi was half-gasp, half-sob.Her other hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes, wide and luminous, were locked on that flickering light, that undeniable proof of a future forming inside her. Josh stared, the world narrowing to that pulse.It was alien.It was a miracle. It was a problem of terrifying magnitude.It was theirs.
He looked from the screen to Preethi’s face. The terror was still there, but it was now laced with a raw, awe-struck wonder that cracked something open in his chest. He brought her chilled hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles, her palm, his own eyes burning.
“It’s real,” she whispered, finally tearing her gaze from the screen to look at him.
He nodded, unable to speak.We’re going to be okay, he had promised in the flat. The words felt laughable now, dwarfed by the relentless flicker on the screen. But seeing that light, he felt a stubborn, desperate resolve harden within him.It was a claim.A responsibility. A line drawn.That night, in the flat, the silence had a new quality. It was no longer just an absence of noise, but a space filled with the phantom echo of that heartbeat. They ate beans on toast without tasting them.They washed up side by side, their shoulders touching. The weight of the day pressed down, a physical thing.
He watched her as she unbraided her hair, the long dark waves falling over her shoulders.Her movements were careful, almost ceremonial. When she turned to him, her face was naked, stripped of all its usual resilient guards.
He didn’t speak.He crossed the room and took her face in his hands, kissing her slowly, deeply. A kiss of confirmation.Of possession.Of a shared fate. She melted into it, her body softening against his.He led her to the mattress on the floor. He laid her down and then followed, kneeling over her, drinking in the sight of her in the weak light from the streetlamp. He kissed her eyelids, the hollow of her throat, the gentle slope of her breasts. His lips traced the path his hands had taken so many times, but now with a new reverence. When he reached her stomach, he paused.He placed his palm flat against the warm, smooth skin below her navel. He lowered his head and pressed his lips there, lingering.
“Can you feel anything?” she asked, her voice hushed.“No,” he murmured against her skin. “Not yet.” But he could feel her.The life humming faintly beneath the surface, a secret they now shared.
He moved lower, parting her thighs. The familiar scent of her, musky and intimate, filled his senses.He kissed the inside of her knee, the soft skin of her inner thigh. She shivered.When his mouth found her cunt, she let out a sharp gasp. He licked her slowly, deliberately, tracing the folds of her labia before zeroing in on her clit. She was already wet, her slickness coating his tongue. He feasted on her, one hand splayed on her belly, the other holding her hip down as she began to writhe.
“Josh… please…” she begged, her fingers tangling in his hair, not pushing him away but holding him closer.
He dragged his tongue through her soaking slit, then pushed two fingers inside her, curling them upwards.She cried out, her back arching off the mattress. He worked his fingers in and out, matching the rhythm of his tongue on her clit.Her legs tightened around his head. He felt her inner muscles begin to clench rhythmically around his fingers, the tremors starting deep within. Her orgasm broke over her silently at first, a series of intense, internal spasms, then erupted into a choked, gasping moan as she ground herself against his face.
Before the last shudder had left her body, he was moving up her, fumbling with his trousers. He pushed them down his hips just enough. His cock, thick and aching, nudged against her wet opening. She was so sensitive she whimpered at the contact, but she hooked her legs around his waist, pulling him closer.
He entered her in one smooth, deep thrust, sheathing himself completely in her hot, clinging tightness.They both gasped into each other’s mouths. He didn’t move immediately, just held himself there, buried to the hilt, feeling the last aftershocks of her climax pulse around him. He kissed her, his tongue exploring her mouth with the same desperation his body was now joined to hers.Then he began to move. Not the frantic, punishing pace of their anger or exhaustion, but a deep, rolling rhythm that felt less like fucking and more like a communion. Each slow withdrawal was an agony of loss; each measured, probing return a homecoming.He braced himself on his elbows, watching her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. A single tear escaped from the corner of her eye and traced a path into her hairline.
He felt his own climax building, a warm, heavy pressure in his balls, coiling up his spine.He shifted his angle slightly, driving deeper, and a broken sound escaped her throat. “There,” she whispered. “Right there.”
He quickened his pace, just a fraction, just enough to tip them both over the edge. His thrusts became shorter, harder, losing their rhythm as pleasure blinded him. She met every one, her hips snapping up to meet his, her cunt gripping him like a fist. He came with a guttural cry, spurting jet after jet of his seed deep into her, his body convulsing with the release. She clenched around him once, twice more, a final, squeezing pulse that milked him utterly dry.
He collapsed onto her, careful to keep his weight off her stomach, his face buried in the sweat-dampened hollow of her neck. Their hearts hammered against each other, a frantic, syncopated rhythm slowly settling into one.
Long minutes later, he shifted to the side, pulling her with him so they lay facing each other on the thin mattress. The city’s endless night rumble filtered up from the street.Her hand rested on his chest, over his heart.
“I have to tell my mother,” he said into the darkness.The words hung there, simple and immense.
Preethi didn’t respond for a long time.He felt her breath hitch once. Then she said, “I know.”
“It will be bad.”
“I know that too.”
He turned his head to look at her.Her eyes were open, reflecting the faint light. The fear was back, but it was a clear-eyed fear, unflinching.“She might… she could help. Or she could make it worse.”
“It cannot get much worse, Josh,” Preethi said, her voice quiet but firm.“We are here, in this room, with no money and a baby coming. There is a floor below this one. I do not wish to find it.”
He pulled her closer, kissing her forehead.The resolve he’d felt in the clinic solidified into a cold, clear plan. It wasn’t a good plan.It was a grenade. But it was the only one they had.“I’ll call her tomorrow,” he said. The sentence felt like a door slamming shut behind them, locking them onto a path from which there was no turning back. He held Preethi as she finally drifted into a fitful sleep, his own eyes open, staring at the shadowed ceiling, already rehearsing the words that would detonate their fragile world.