Valerie emerges from the medical wing, looking cute and just a little bit slimed in her pink scrubs. Evan gets up from the couch in the wide hallway to give her a hug hello, but she waves him off.
“Let me change out my scrubs first, big guy,” she says. “Lucie’s a ticklish squirmer and I got some of the gel on me. I’ll be back in a few. You can go in and take a look at the pictures if you want.”
“Everything looking good?” he asks.
“Yeah, no problems,” she says. “Mom and fetus are both doing great.”
She heads past us towards her room. Evan, Louise and I step through the big double doors. The atmosphere changes suddenly from mansion to hospital. Even the smell is different. The big window into the empty nursery fills the wall on our right in the hallway. I’ve only been in here a couple of times, though from my bot senses I know the layout well. The checkup rooms are just ahead.
Keeya and Lucie are inside with the door open. Keeya is sitting in one of the chairs holding the printout of the ultrasound pictures. Lucie stands looking over her shoulder, staring adoringly at what looks a lot like one of those ink blot tests to me. The first pictures I’ve seen of the unborn child of my arrogant, overbearing, amazing brother Chad.
“Knock knock,” I say.
“Hello, Noah,” Keeya says cheerfully. “Come in, please. Did you want to see the ultrasound images?”
I haven’t talked to her in a while. Her accent is getting more American since they moved in here, but you can definitely still hear a lot of Botswana in her voice. We step inside, filling the room.
“Hello, little nephew,” Evan says, looking at the pictures. A boy then. I have no idea how he got that from what he’s seeing. “Have you decided what you’re going to call him?”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“Chad,” Lucie and Keeya say together.
“After his father,” Lucie adds, her words shaped by her unique accent that combines French, Afrikaans, and British English. She straightens up and looks like a snake that swallowed a basketball. I’m glad she and Keeya decided to come here instead of staying back in Africa. They seem to like it on campus. I hope they go through with their original plan to stay and raise their baby here, but they haven’t confirmed any of their long term arrangements yet.
“I like that,” Louise says, taking her turn holding the pictures then passing them to me.
I examine the black and white papers that are trying their best to curl up. Yeah, I don’t know how anyone gets anything from these things. I can kind of see something vaguely skeletal on one of them, the rest are meaningless splotches of black and white to me.
“Chad sounds like a great name,” Evan tells them.
My history with Chad was a pretty mixed bag, and I’ve never liked the name, but I don’t want to rain on their parade. I just smile and keep my mouth shut.
“I’m glad you like it,” Lucie says.
I hand the ultrasound pictures back to Lucie and we leave them. Valerie meets us on the way out and we head to the cafeteria.
“It’s so weird,” Louise says as we walk. “One of us having a kid.”
“It’s not that weird,” Evan protests. “We’re adults now. And it’s not like we don’t have the means to take care of them.”
“That almost sounds like you two are starting to think about something there,” I say, looking at him and Valerie.
Evan just laughs. “It feels like I just barely got past her calling me jailbait, brother. And we’ve got enough on our plates for now with Jeff out there. But yeah, someday. We’ve talked about it.”
Valerie smiles and nods.
“We’re still thinking at least a few years out, though,” she adds.
“Really?” I respond, surprised. “That’s amazing. Good for the two of you.”
I can imagine Evan as a father. He’s nurturing like that. I can see him being great at it. We do need to deal with Jeff and the illuminati before anything like that could be possible, though. Another reason we need to track him down and take care of him as soon as we can.
“All right,” I say, taking my lunch to go. “I’ve got things to do and a brother to hunt down. I’ll catch you all later.”
We should be starting to get access to the first of the video feeds Alan was working on soon. With any luck they’ll give us some kind of trail to follow.