First Sonogram

That sinking feeling, the bottom dropping outfrom your guts, as if in free fall, a shriekgrowing in your throat, but you are not falling.You are lying on an exam table, and your gutscan’t possibly be dropping out because the ultrasoundwand is gently but firmly pressed up inside youas the sonographer, fresh-faced, relentlessly cheerful,asks, “Are you sure about your due date?” “Yes,”you say, “I am. Today I am at five weeks, six days.”A tiny green cursor, shaped like an x, floatsin the upper right quadrant of grainy black,and she says, “I think I see the start of a yolk sachere.” Staring intently at the screen, you seenothing. Your heart starts racing, and you tryto take deep breaths, to keep the exhalationslonger than the inhalations, to remind yourselfthat it’s early, it just might be too earlyto see clearly, don’t panic, don’t panic,don’t panic. She moves the wand, and the imageof uterus and Fallopian tubes and ovaries appearsbriefly, absurdly, like the face of a stag,a ten-point buck at least, and you wonder,“Am I hallucinating? Am I having a babyor not?” Schrödinger’s cat. Alive and dead.Except you opened the box and looked inside.