Are you there?
This sonogram gave us the sound of the heartbeat. On the tinny computer speakers, amplified from somewhere 20,000 leagues into the womb, it came across like a steady knock at the door.
(There it is, the doctor said, matter-of-factly. As if OF COURSE there is a living creature living inside you. OF COURSE, your body has merged with another and brought some spark out of a primordial fire we all sit around.... If we had not all been so well-informed, so well-prepared, so, well, Intellectual, perhaps we might shout: THERE IT IS!!!! A heartbeat, a steady rhythm that will follow this creature even when he/she is unaware of it.... THERE IT IS... that steady pulse of life in the background.)
I found myself asking the doctor about the gap in the regular beat... the silence... She attributed it to a shift in the recording device.
Only afterwards did I realize it was my own heart stopping at the idea now that this one might not keep beating forever.
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