A local woman missing- Mary Kubica

doesn’t reach his eyes. It’s insincere. He’s a tall man. He wears a
white doctor smock over a pair of gray pants and a collared shirt.
He’s about the age I pictured him to be, based on Jeanette’s
description of him. She said that he was uncompromising. This made
him older in my mind, old-school, someone who’s been around the
block a few times and is set in his ways. He’s probably sixty-five,
thinking about retirement, about becoming a snowbird, not wanting
the Tebows’ malpractice case to be the low note he ends his career
on.
Dr. Feingold’s hair is graying and thin. He, himself, is thin.
“Dr. Feingold,” he says. “And who do we have here?” he asks,
meaning me, and it upsets me already that he doesn’t know my
name, that he didn’t bother to look before coming into the room. He’s
businesslike, clinical. My gynecologist is warm. I can’t say with any
certainty that she remembers me from year to year, but she’s never
given me a reason to think she doesn’t. She sits down on her stool
and chats awhile before starting her exam. She asks about my
family. She asks about me. It’s like we’re old friends. Even as a vet, I
let dogs sniff me before I start an exam. It’s our way of getting to
know one another before I touch them.
I tell him, “I’m Kate. And this is my friend Bea.” Bea sits on her
chair. Her discomfort is palpable to me, though I’m not sure he
notices because he never looks at Bea. Her hands are folded
together on her lap and she’s clutching them so tightly that the skin
has turned white. Bea hates the lack of control.
“So you say you’re pregnant,” he says. He sees pregnant women
every day. There’s nothing remarkable about it. Not for him, but for a
first-time mom it’s miraculous. I try to remember this, to remember to
be ecstatic, not scared.
“I am,” I say, beaming. “I took three of those home pregnancy
tests,” I tell him, elated, because any other woman in my position—
having peed on three sticks and saw a total of six pink lines—would
never have a reason to believe she wasn’t pregnant.
“And?” he prompts about the home pregnancy tests.
“All positive,” I say with a grin, setting a hand on my abdomen.
He looks skeptically at me. “All of them?” he asks, eyes narrowing.