Heartbeat

There is a terrifying moment while lying atop the crinkly paper on the exam table with cold goo all over your belly, the doctor standing over you with the Doppler wand pressed to your skin, when all you can hear is an empty crackling noise, like static over the loudspeaker in the subway, or recordings from outer space.

This is the vast universe of your belly.

And the doctor's face is carefully blank as she moves the wand around, and you think, oh if there is no heartbeat, this will be hard. This will be the hardest thing I've ever faced.

But then the doctor smiles and nods, and through the static, you hear it, a miniature thumping.

Fast, fast, fast.

For some reason, you think of a frog. You imagine a pulsing white light in the center of a vast darkness, and your entire body is tingling as the doctor adjusts the volume. She is smiling widely. She is so young, and graduated from Pitt medical school, and it pleases you that you have the same alma mater. Only your job is delivering books and her job is delivering babies. You are so close in age that, when you lived in Pittsburgh, you might have shared a beer together at the Squirrel Hill Cafe, or cheese fries at the O.

The doctor gets your cell phone so you can call your husband in Pittsburgh, and you do. And his voice is thick with anticipation, and when you hold the phone up to the Doppler, you can hear his tinny voice through the earpiece: "Oh my god!"

"Oh, my god," he breathes again, and your eyes fill with tears at the awe in his voice, and you can tell that he is smiling. Then he says:

"It sounds like techno music!"

And a few hours later, after you've happily eaten the foam from the top of a cappuccino and you're standing on 14th Street and waiting for the light to change, you hear the rhythmic thump thump thump of techno music from a passing cab.

And you can't help but smile.