The Other Life Read Free Page A

better of her.
    Jeanette continued working, pushing the probe around Quinn’s middle, occasionally stopping to press into one section or another.
    “Is that the hand?” Lewis asked. “I thought I saw a little hand.”
    Jeanette’s expression dropped. “Just a minute,” she said. She continued running the wand over the same section of Quinn’s stomach, staring hard at the screen. She pushed a button to freeze the picture, and Quinn thought she heard a small intake of air. Was it her imagination, or had Jeanette gasped?
    “What is it?” Quinn said. “Is something wrong?”
    Jeanette moved the transducer and took another picture. She put the equipment down and gave Quinn’s lower arm a squeeze.
    “I’ll be right back,” she said, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
    Quinn propped herself up on her elbows. “What the hell was that?” she said to her husband. “Is something wrong?”
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    The room was too dark for her to make out her husband’s complexion, but she knew him well enough to sense he had gone ashen.
    “I’m about to freak out,” she said.
    “Don’t freak out,” he said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
    “For ‘nothing’ she sure ran out of here fast.”
    He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Let’s not worry yet. She’ll be back in a minute.”
    “Your hand is cold.”
    He rubbed his palms together, creating heat from friction, and then took her hand again. “That better?”
    “I have to pee.”
    By the time Jeanette came back into the room with a black-haired man in a white coat, Quinn’s armpits were damp, despite the fact that her extremities were now even icier than Lewis’s hand had felt.
    “Is everything okay?” Quinn asked. “Where’s Dr. Bernard?”
    “She’ll be here soon,” he said. “I’m Dr. Peng.”
    “Are you an obstetrician?” Lewis asked.
    Dr. Peng sat in front of the monitor. “Radiologist,” he said. Jeanette leaned over him to press something into the keyboard. The doctor stared at the screen and picked up the transducer. Jeanette squirted more warm gel on Quinn’s stomach and Dr. Peng began swirling the probe over it. The technician positioned herself behind the doctor, her hand over her mouth as she watched the screen.
    “There,” she said quietly.
    “I see,” the doctor said. He pressed the wand harder and harder into Quinn’s stomach. She felt the sweat run from her armpit to her back and swallowed against a hard lump.
    What’s wrong? she asked, but only in her head. She didn’t want to say the words out loud. She couldn’t bear hearing them. At last Lewis said them for her, but the doctor was evasive.
    “Let’s wait for Dr. Bernard to arrive,” he said. “We can chat in my office after the amnio.”
    “Please,” Lewis said. “Tell us now.”
    Quinn knew that bad news was supposed to be delivered across a desk, not in a diagnostic examination room with the patient flat on her back and half-undressed. But the doctor paused, clearly weighing whether the situation warranted a breach of protocol. Quinn held her breath.
    Finally, he sighed. “We think there’s a problem,” he began. “It looks like the fetus’s skull hasn’t fused properly. The ultrasound indicates an abnormality in the forehead.” He ran his fingers from the bridge of his nose upward, as if to illustrate the exact location. Then he turned the screen toward Quinn and Lewis, and pulled a laser pointer from his pocket, using it to indicate a hazy spot on the screen. “It’s hard to tell at this stage in development, but part of the brain or the brain’s cover is likely extending beyond the opening, preventing the bone from being able to fuse. We call this an encephalocele.”
    Quinn’s fingers and toes went numb. “I don’t understand,” she said.
    “Think of it as a fissure in her skull,” the doctor said. “We can see something extending beyond it, but it’s difficult to tell whether it’s brain