Shadows Have Gone (16 page)

Stacy was in one of the treatment rooms when they came in. Beth Dooley was seated on the exam table, her shirt pulled up to expose her back. Beth was another of the newcomers who had joined them last winter. She used to be a software engineer and was the type who kept to herself. Carly hadn’t spoken directly to her more than once or twice since she’d moved in, but Beth quietly contributed her part to the community by growing vegetables in her garden plot and working in the communal fields when needed.

Veronica stood nearby with a clipboard, taking notes. Stacy moved over to partially close the door to give Beth privacy, and Veronica slipped through it, her face alight in a grin.

“Hi, Carly! Hi, Mindy!”

“Hey, Veronica, how are you?” Carly took a seat on one of the mismatched chairs in the waiting room and sat Dagny on her lap.

“Great! Stacy will be just a minute. She’s still looking at Beth’s mole. Beth is scared it’s skin cancer, but Stacy doesn’t think so. Not yet, anyway.”

“Well, um, that’s good it’s not cancer,” Carly said. “But you probably shouldn’t tell anyone in the waiting room what other patients are here for.”

Veronica’s face fell. “But you’re not
anyone
.”

Carly laughed.

Veronica giggled. “That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re different.”

“Not when it comes to this. Stacy will tell me if I need to know something, okay?”

Veronica looked abashed. “Okay. Sorry.”

Carly patted her. “It’s okay. Now, tell me how Buttercup is doing.”

“I’ll show you!” She opened a door and a few moments later, she carried the puppy out.

She was as cute as a button. Carly did not know what kind of dog had bred with Buttercup’s bulldog mother, but it had given the pup a longer snout than usually found in the breed and a long, thin tail that curled up over her back. Her brown coat was wrinkled, like most bulldogs, but covered in a thick, soft fur.

Dagny squealed in delight and reached toward the puppy. Veronica lifted her and cautiously allowed Dagny to pat her palm against the puppy’s fur, but when her hand became grabby, Veronica drew the puppy away, much to Dagny’s indignation.

The door opened, and Beth came out into the waiting room. “We’ll just keep an eye on it,” Stacy said with a pat on her shoulder, though Beth still looked worried. She gave Carly and Mindy a small wave on her way out the door.

“Come on back,” Stacy said to Mindy.

“You’re coming in with me,” Mindy told Carly in a tone that allowed for no argument. Carly obeyed.

“I was wondering when you were going to come in,” Stacy said. “Hop up here.”

Mindy obediently sat down on the chair. The clinic used to be a dentist’s, so it had reclining chairs instead of the platform beds of most doctor’s offices, which Stacy felt was preferable. She had a flat bed in another room and a stainless steel table she could use if she needed to operate, but for most situations, people were more comfortable in the chair.

The office had large windows along the top of the walls that allowed for natural light but protected privacy and windows at ground level that had been covered with louvered shades. They had removed those. Curtains could be drawn for privacy, and the lamps lit, but they tried to use natural light whenever they could to conserve fuel. Stacy had a generator out back that she could fire up if she needed to use the powerful lights mounted above.

“How far along did you say you were?”

“I’m thinking about twenty weeks. Maybe a little more.”

Stacy gave her a chiding look. “You should have had me check you out before now.”

Mindy flushed a little. “I know. Here I am one of the community’s medical practitioners, and I’m not practicing what I preach. I know. I was being avoidant, I suppose. At first, I wasn’t sure. Then I was afraid to hope. I had this almost superstitious fear that if I took a pregnancy test, I’d find out it wasn’t true and be crushed. By the third month, I was pretty sure, but I didn’t want to tell anyone yet, and by the time I was ready, all that stuff with Marcus was happening . . .”

“Still, you needed vitamins and regular checkups.”

“I took the vitamins,” Mindy said. “When I first started to suspect, I started taking them. I hid it from Stan, but I made sure I took them every night before bed.”

“Did they make you sick?” Carly asked. “I swear, they made my morning sickness worse.”

“Not that I noticed.” Mindy shrugged. “I didn’t really have any morning sickness.”

“I want to hit you,” Carly muttered. She had been utterly miserable.

Stacy giggled as she took Mindy’s blood pressure, and Veronica noted the numbers on the clipboard. Mindy relaxed when she heard them, so they must have been in the normal range. Stacy drew a blood sample while Mindy winced and looked away. Carly fully intended to tease her later about being able to draw samples from other people but being squeamish when it was her own. Oh yes, tease her
mercilessly
. Carly smothered a grin.

“I’ll use it to check your sugar levels. It sounds like everything is normal, so it’s just a precaution.”

She measured Mindy’s belly and carefully palpated it, trying to see if she could feel the baby. “There it is,” she said with a big smile. “You’re actually a little on the big side for being twenty weeks. Are you confident about the date of your last period?”

Mindy shook her head. “We’re not confident of the date of anything anymore, Stacy. I mean, there was so much going on that I really wasn’t paying attention. It just kind of struck me that I hadn’t had one in a while, so I tried to think back . . .”

Stacy put the prongs of the stethoscope in her ears but paused before she put the chest piece above Mindy’s belly. “If I’m not able to hear a heartbeat, please don’t panic. This is tricky since the stethoscope can pick up your heartbeat or the sounds of the blood in the placenta. Plus, we’re not sure of the exact age of the baby, so it may be too early yet. Promise me—no panicking.”

“No panicking,” Mindy said. But she took Carly’s hand in her own. Carly squeezed it and gave her a reassuring smile.

Stacy moved the stethoscope on Mindy’s swollen belly and stopped for a moment. She repositioned it and listened again, then moved it another couple of inches. Her eyes widened slightly, and she moved it to another spot.

“Can you hear it?” Mindy demanded.

“I think so. Let me listen . . .” She paused again and took the earpieces out.

“What is it?” Mindy said. Her hand tightened on Carly’s to the point of pain. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Stacy said. Mindy’s grip relaxed a little, and her head fell back to the pillow. “I really . . . I’m not sure, but I think I hear two heartbeats.”

“Are you sure you’re not just hearing Mindy’s?” Carly asked.

“I’m pretty sure. The baby’s heartbeat is much faster, a completely different kind of sound. I’m just not sure it’s two, or if I’m mishearing . . .” She put the earpieces back in and listened again, her face intent.

Twins, Carly thought. She held her breath, as though to make the room quieter.

She knew from reading during her own pregnancy that twin births could be a little riskier. Twins might be smaller at birth and could possible come at a premature date. What would they do if that happened, if the babies were born too early? Her mind was whirring, but she realized Mindy had to be even more worried.

Carly wished Miz Marson was here. The elderly lady had never functioned as a midwife, but she would have been able to comfort Mindy with her own memories of pregnancies before modern technology. She’d probably snort and say Mindy was worrying for nothing. She’d tell stories about the Dionne quintuplets or multiple births she’d seen, and her calm, stoic demeanor would put all of them at ease. She’d known how to do that, to say just a few terse words and somehow drain away anxiety.

“I really do think I hear two of them.” Stacy handed the earpieces to Mindy who listened for a long moment.

“Hear it? It’s like a tiny echo after the beat.”

Mindy shook her head. “I don’t hear it.”

Carly listened when she handed over the earpieces. She heard a faint, swift swishing noise, but when she listened hard, it did seem to separate into two separate sounds, but she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t just a trick of her ears. “I think I hear it, too. I think so.”

“Twins,” Mindy said, and her voice held both delight and a tinge of fear. She took Carly’s hand into her own again. “Do you think Justin could go looking for an ultrasound machine somewhere? We could hook it up to the generator.”

Stacy shook her head. “It wouldn’t do any good, Mindy. I wouldn’t know how to use it and how to read it. We might be able to see the baby, but without years of study, I wouldn’t know what to look for. Even those machines to listen to the fetal heartbeat . . . without training, I could pick up the sound of the blood in the placenta instead of the baby’s heartbeat.”

Carly thought of all the times she had reassured Justin and known even as she was saying the words that it wasn’t doing any good. She could only hope that Mindy wasn’t as pessimistic. “Mindy, instead of focusing on the very small chance that something could be going wrong, focus on the reality that your baby—or babies—are likely quite healthy and growing stronger every day.”

Mindy took a deep breath. “You’re right.” But she kept her grip on Carly’s hand.

“We’re going to put you on a two-week schedule for checkups,” Stacy said. “Again, just as a precaution, but until I can determine whether or not we’re actually dealing with twins, I want to have a listen every couple of weeks.”

Mindy sat up, expelling a slow breath. “Twins,” she said. “I never expected that.”

Stacy wagged her finger. “We can’t be sure.”

“In this new world, the only thing you can expect is the unexpected.”

The slow pace of life reasserted itself, and the punishing heat of summer began to fade as fall approached. The whole town threw themselves into harvesting. After the potatoes were dug and the oats threshed, it was time to collect and shell the corn, a chore Carly despised.

After they brought the corn back to the barn, the work shifted to shucking it and prying the kernels off their ears. They all sat on the lawn beside the barn, ripping the leaves and dried silk off the ears, then prying the kernels from the cob. Carly was sure there had to be something that mankind had invented to ease this task, but none of them knew what it might be. Some people had repurposed gardening tools to rip off the husk and to chip out the corn faster, but none of them had settled on a universally helpful design. Carly supposed it would be a matter of experimentation, but in the meantime, despite her thick gloves, she always came home with raw and blistered hands.

Dagny enjoyed pulling the leaves away from the ears one by one, “helping” the adults as she tried to sing the Alphabet Song with Carly. Justin would sing it on occasion and pretend to be offended when Dagny squealed with laughter at his tone-deaf yowls and dramatic pauses.

“Okay, here comes my favorite part
. L-M-N-O-Peeeee
! Man, I love that lyric.”

Dagny demanded, “ ’gin!”

“Again? Okay.”

“Oh God, no,” Grady buried his face in his gloved hands and groaned. “You’ve left scars on my ears. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to enjoy music again after this.”

Justin just grinned at him and began singing again, much to Dagny’s delight.

They spread the corn out on tarps in the sunshine to make sure it was completely dry before storing it in plastic tubs. The small children were tasked with keeping birds away, and Mrs. Davis had devised a learning game for them to play while they were doing it.

Shadowfax neighed loudly from her little fenced in pasture beside the barn and stomped a hoof. Carly could almost see what the horse was thinking. Shadowfax saw no reason she and Storm shouldn’t be allowed out to roam and possibly grab a nibble of the corn from the tarp when no one was looking. She had done the work of hauling, after all—she should now get the fun of playing, too.

The kids, taking pity on the horses, would occasionally grab up a handful of corn and go over to the fence, screeching with giggles as the horses used their prehensile lips to scoop the corn from their palms. Carly had shown them earlier to keep their palms flat so they wouldn’t accidentally get nipped.