Read Online Hiding In His Dreams by Jason W. Chan - Free Book Online

white, it
was now a charred black.
    * * * * *

Chapter 7
    Three months
later…
    On a beautiful summer day, Luke picked
up Alyssa from work to go to Vancouver General Hospital for an
obstetric ultrasound. It was sunny, but not too hot. The breeze was
light and refreshing.
    The sun shone down on their convertible
as they cruised along. Luke snuck a peek at her when they stopped
at a red light. She was in a pretty white summer dress. And her
pregnancy was starting to show.
    They arrived at the hospital, and were
escorted to a private room.
    Alyssa sat down on the examination
table as Luke held her hand.
    “ I’m sure it’ll be fine,”
Luke said.
    “ Yeah,” she said, although
she sounded uncertain. “Of course it will.”
    She patted her own stomach. “Everything
will be alright, my little girl. Our little girl,” she said, eying
Luke. “We’ll love you as soon as you come out of me. In fact, we
love you right now, even when you’re still in there.”
    So she wasn’t kidding about talking to
the child, Luke thought.
    He was in awe of the love that Alyssa
was so capable of giving, both to himself and to the
baby.
    There was a knock on the door and the
obstetrician came in. The doctor was old, with white hair and
old-man glasses. He looked like he had been practicing medicine for
a long time, Luke noted. That made him feel better.
    “ Hello,” the doctor said in
a grandfatherly tone. “I’m Dr. Best. How are we doing
today?”
    “ Not bad,” Alyssa
said.
    “ Great. If you’ll lie down,
we can get started.”
    Alyssa lay down and the physician
picked up the transducer beside the medical sonographic instrument
and began to trace Alyssa’s abdomen with it.
    Luke looked at the sonogram. He saw
certain bulges where the baby was, and the outlines of a head, arms
and legs, but something looked off. He rubbed his eyes.
    It looked really cramped in there. He
saw two outlines of two heads, two sets of arms and two sets of
legs.
    The obstetrician finished his scan.
“Everything looks fine to me. You have a little surprise though.”
He grinned. “You have twins. Fraternal twins. A boy and a
girl.”
    Alyssa turned to her boyfriend. A smile
took over her entire face.
    “ Isn’t that great?” she
exclaimed.
    “ Yeah. Thank God I got that
promotion,” he said. Twins? He had not been expecting
that.
    She tried to get up, but then slipped,
hitting her stomach on the edge of the examination
table.
    Luke grabbed her immediately, before
she could fall.
    “ Oww,” she said, rubbing her
stomach.
    Dr. Best rushed to help her. “Do you
feel any pain?”
    She shook her head.
    “ I better scan it again.” He
placed the transducer on her stomach and traced it around. “It
looked fine to me,” he pronounced, after a careful scan.
    “ You have to be careful,”
the specialist added. “Unnecessary stress on the mother can kill
the babies.”
    Alyssa nodded, and squeezed Luke’s hand
even tighter.
    Luke repeated the advice in his mind
like a mantra.
    Unnecessary stress can kill
the babies.
    * * * * *
    The next day, Luke sat in his new
Junior Manager office at work. It was twice as big as his old one,
and had a nicer window view. He could see Burrard Inlet where he
was sitting. A Chevron gas station floated on the water.
    After working tirelessly for the past
three months, his supervisor finally graced him with good news.
Next stop: Full Manager. Now that there were twins, he and Alyssa
would need the money.
    He looked at the ring on his desk.
Four-carat diamond.
    He did not know when he would propose.
Had he been using his lack of promotion as an excuse not to marry
her? If he had, then he had run out of excuses.
    He flayed the doubts in his mind,
flayed them so hard that he was sure they were dead.
    He would propose to her that night, he
decided, after dinner, late at night. He would take her back to the
place where they had their first date. Taylor Park.
    It was time.
    * * * * *
    That evening, when he got home, he
found