The second woman sat down beside me and introduced herself as the department’s senior sonographer. She looked at my chart, then at me, and asked whether I was sure my husband wasn’t coming. I said he had chosen a client golf day instead. She nodded slowly and asked whether I had anyone I trusted who could be called if something unexpected came up.
I thought that was a strange question, but I said no. She didn’t explain. Instead, she started the scan again and spent much longer looking at the baby’s heart than I’d expected. She measured something twice, stepped away from the screen, and asked the other woman to look. They whispered for a moment, then the senior sonographer turned the monitor toward me.
She told me there was something they wanted to check more carefully, but before she could explain, the clinic manager came into the room. She had my husband’s name written on a form and asked me whether he’d been told about today’s appointment. I said yes — twice. Then she asked whether I knew he’d called the clinic the previous afternoon and asked them not to give me any results without him present.
I stared at her and asked why he would do that. Nobody answered immediately. Then the sonographer pulled up the appointment history and showed me something that made my hands go cold. My husband hadn’t simply missed the scan. He’d already been given information about the pregnancy that I had never been told — and he’d apparently known for months…
