Seven Minutes to Noon

trigger her mother’s antenna since it was so clearly untrue.
    A nurse appeared and brought them into an empty examination room. Alice was told to undress while they waited for Dr. Matteo, who arrived quickly. Mike sat in a chair against the wall at Alice’s side as she lay on the paper-covered padded bench. The doctor leaned over her, searching her eyes, checking for signs of concussion.
    “I’m okay,” Alice said. “I think.”
    “Let’s just find out.”
    Dr. Matteo was an elegantly handsome woman who had once outlined her complicated lineage to Alice as Puerto Rican, Greek, Irish, French, Spanish, “and a few drops of Native American.” She was a true, rainbow-blooded American and a vintage New Yorker. The night Alice was in labor with Peter, Dr. Matteo had charged into the delivery room in a sleeveless black gown with a red-satin-lined black cape flung over her shoulders. She had been at the opera, and had been beeped for an emergency that had been contained. “I heard you were here,” she told Alice and Mike, then left the room, returning a few minutes later in her green surgical garb to take over the show.
    Up close, Alice noticed the soft pucker of skin around the doctor’s mouth and realized she had rarely seen her without a smile.
    “Tell me what’s going on,” Dr. Matteo said in a calm yet studied tone. “You got in an accident?”
    “It was my fault,” Alice said, though here the statement had a different effect than on the bus. Dr. Matteo’s expression of concern broadened, pulling the lines farther across her face.
    “Kids in school?”
    What she was asking, of course, was if Nell and Peter had been with her in the car.
    “Yes,” Alice answered. “I wasn’t going very fast. There really wasn’t any damage except a little bit to the car.”
    “Wiggle back a little, okay?”
    Alice inched back on the bench, her feet high in the dreaded stirrups, and held her breath as the doctor gently examined her, feeling and listening and peering. Her stethoscope searched the expanse of Alice’s stomach. Then she asked the nurse to bring in the ultrasound machine.
    “Did you hear their heartbeats?” Alice asked.
    “Shh,” was all Dr. Mateo said.
    Alice closed her eyes and let the paper gown fall open. She heard the scrape of Mike’s chair as he arranged himself at a better angle to view the screen. The doctor squeezed cold gel onto Alice’s abdomen and smeared it around with the plastic-covered ultrasound wand. The nurse meanwhile switched on the machine and set the program to the correct attributes. She typed in the date and Alice’s name. Then she pressed a button and nodded.
    Dr. Matteo slowly moved the goopy wand over Alice’s tummy, her attention fixed on the screen, which the nurse had swiveled toward her. She continued to shift the wand over the vaporous forms of the twins. The doctor remained thoughtful as she searched for heartbeats. Alice wanted these babies, had wanted them every day since the initial shock of twins had worn off. She could not be deterred from wanting them, even knowing all the work that lay ahead of her, because she also knew of the expansion of love that came with the bargain. And now, as the cold, gelatinous wand roamed her skin, she needed these babies as much as she wanted them. She needed their hope and their promise, needed to see their eyes smile at her for the first time, to feel theirtiny hands squeeze her fingers. It was their forgiveness she needed most of all; the forgiveness implicit in the fact of their life.
    “Yes, the babies are fine,” Dr. Matteo said. “But you are not.”
    Alice breathed in those words, the babies are fine. She looked at Mike and they shared a smile at the reprieve.
    “I can’t sleep anymore,” Alice said. “I shouldn’t have been driving at all.”
    “How long haven’t you been sleeping?”
    “The last three nights. And I’ve been feeling sick, which is new for me.”
    “You’re also a little dehydrated,” Dr. Matteo said. “Your amniotic fluid needs to be maintained. Have you been thirsty in this heat, not drinking enough?”
    Alice didn’t know. Maybe she had been thirsty. Thirsty and hungry along with sick and tired. Maybe her body’s revolt these last few days had been stronger than she had even noticed. Strong enough to shut down her brain today, midtraffic, and steer her into a wrong turn.
    “We lost a close friend of ours this week,” Mike said. He explained everything that had happened