She listened to the heartbeat.
The sound of it — the steady, absolute, indifferent-to-all-surrounding-circumstances heartbeat of a baby who had not been consulted about anything that was happening and was simply continuing.
She held onto the sound.
'This is yours,' she said to it. Silently. The private, internal-voice communication of a woman to the interior of her own body. 'You are his. I know you are his. This is going to confirm it and then it will be over and we will be —'
The whump-whump-whump continued.
Steady. Indifferent. The heartbeat of something that knew what it was even if everything around it was arguing.
Four hours.
That elastic, interminable quality of four hours in a hospital waiting area.
She sat.
She had found the furthest corner of the waiting room — the chair against the wall, the position of someone who did not want to be visible from multiple angles. Her hands in her lap. Her head against the wall behind her.
She thought about the six years.
