120 Blind Dates... And Other Short Stories

Surprise!

"Congratulations, you're pregnant!"

These were the magical words Kelsey and Kellie Joiner had wanted to hear for so long as they had been trying to conceive a baby for almost 25 years. But on the day they finally heard them from Kellie's gynecologist, these words came as a shock to them.

"How did this happen?" Kelsey asked his wife's doctor with a horrified expression.

"I suspect the usual way," Dr Grey replied with a benevolent smile on her face.  

Actually, the Joiners had thought the "show" was finally over. Kellie hadn't had her period in three months, and at 48, she thought that was due to the fact that she had entered menopause. That in itself was a huge blow, of course, because she had never really given up on her dream of becoming a mother, although she and Kelsey could no longer afford IVF. There was a huge mortgage on their house as it was because of her previous IVF treatments, which had all been to no avail. So when Dr Grey, who had been Kellie's gynecologist for over a decade, had called her back in after a routine examination and requested that she bring her husband with her, Kellie had been afraid that she might be seriously ill. Perhaps she had cancer and would die. Kelsey had come to a similar conclusion and had been quite desperate when he had entered the gynecologist's office. It had thus irritated both of them that Dr Grey had been smiling when she had called them up and asked them to go to the room where she did the ultrasound scans. 

"Perhaps you believe me if we take a sneak peek at your baby and check whether he or she is doing okay," Dr Grey suggested and asked Kellie to lie down while she got the jelly and equipment ready. 

"Can you do that?" Kellie asked and felt like an idiot upon asking a stupid question like this. She still had a hard time getting her head around the mere idea of a pregnancy. 

"We most certainly can." 

A few minutes later, Kellie lay on the table with her flat stomach partially exposed while Dr Grey explored her uterus or better, its content with a transducer. Neither Kellie nor Kelsey could tell what was going on in Kellie's stomach as the images on the screen looked like a weather map to them. 

"This is very interesting," Dr Grey said after a few seconds during which she had seemed very focused on the tasks at hand.

"Is the baby okay?" Kelsey asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes. This baby is okay... And if I move right here," Dr Grey said and moved the transducer a bit. "You can see the second baby, who seems to be doing fine at this stage, too."

It took Kelsey and Kellie Joiner a few seconds to fully understand what the gynecologist had just told them.  

"Are you saying that I'm expecting twins?" Kellie asked the doctor. 

Dr Grey merely nodded.