Two Months to Go

Melinda comes in from the dining room and offers to dry while I wash. My aching hands feel really good submerged in the hot soapy water, so I am agreeable. She bumps her rounded belly against the counter and says, "Whoops.”
"You should probably not bounce poor Katie around in there too much." I say it lightly. Everything I say about Katie, I keep to a light tone.
"Yeah, it's hard to get used to having this belly stick out so much. She probably feels like she's in a Tilta-whirl most of the time." She reaches up to stash a dish in the top cupboard and her shirt rides up, exposing her turned in belly button. I wonder if Katie will ever actually have a thought, if she will come out with no skull at all and a chimpanzee-like head sloping downwards to reveal a face with Melinda's eyes and Jack's bone structure. Of course, Melinda believes otherwise, even though the doctors have predicted, two of them even, that Katie may not live a month after being born.
Melinda and Jack believe the child will be fine--and I can only outwardly agree with them, while inwardly my spirit curls up in a ball waiting for the reality to happen which will not let me have a niece at all.

Melinda believes so strongly that Katie will be just fine that she has told me her plans for her first Halloween: "I'm going to dress her up as the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz because, you know, he didn't have a brain. Just like they all say about Katie now. But they'll see how wrong they are and the joke will be on them." She giggles and I force out a giggle too, but it sounds more like a hiccup and inside I'm screaming at her to not say such things because it is not funny but very grave--so I pretend to laugh some more then quickly change the subject.
Now she is humming a quiet lullaby for her daughter as she helps me tidy up the kitchen. She sometimes rubs the top of her belly with one hand and I feel like a bug crushed underneath a giant shoe of blind faith and inevitable loss, but with only two months to go, all I can do is tell her how much I love them both.