THE VIOLENCE OF LIGHT: Excerpt #1

July 2002

“Just a bit of pressure,” the technician said, guiding the probe, which looked like a curling iron in a condom, inside of Audra. She could feel the instrument pushing around her insides, searching for life. She squeezed Dillon’s hand, and he smiled at her, gripping back. 

On the screen was a grainy image, mostly static, like snow, around a dark, amorphous blob. 

“That’s the gestational sac,” the technician explained, moving the wand inside Audra. “And that,” the technician whispered reverently, tapping her keyboard. “Is your baby.”

“Oh my god,” Dillon breathed. His eyes brimmed with tears as he stared at the monitor. “Our baby, Audra.”

Audra squinted at the screen, trying to make out a discernible shape of a baby, but all she could see was a grey smudge inside the dark oval on the screen, no larger than a grain of rice. The image steadied, and within it, something trembled—a pale, intermittent flash, as if the light itself was breathing. The technician pressed a button, and a white line cut through the tiny shape. The bottom of the screen filled with trembling bands of white, pulsing in neat, urgent rhythm. 

“What’s that?” Audra asked, her eyes tracing the galloping waves. 

“Your baby’s heartbeat,” the technician responded, smiling. 

Then—finally—Audra felt it. The spark. The moment she thought she’d lost, or somehow had not deserved as a mother. An electrical thrill ran down her spine, and she felt her eyes widen, her pupils expanding to receive the full light of the waves of her baby’s heartbeat. They blazed through her, etching a new pathway through the circuitry of her brain. 

She was a mother.