I've never heard a heartbeat through an ultrasound before, so I'm not sure what I should be listening for, but I'm pretty certain it’s not this. Static. Like a white noise fan.

            I look at my wife sprawled back on the hospital bed. Her fingers curl into fists against the white paper. The doctor adjusts the wand, leaving a smear of jelly across Mary's stomach.

            "Is everything alright?" Mary asks. 

            The doctor clears his throat. "It's hard to say. I'm not getting a heartbeat right now."

            "Miscarriage?" she says without flinching. Only her eyes give her away. The hard, quick blinking. 

            "Not necessarily. We may be off on the dates; it might just be too early. Come back in a week and we'll look again." 

            He hands her a towel, and she scrubs her belly without looking at me. Her skin is pink and flayed as salmon. She buttons her jeans and pulls her shirt down to hide the evidence.

            In our truck outside, Mary sags back against the bench. I pause with the key in the ignition. 

            “Mare,” I say. She stares through the windshield.

            “Don’t. Just don’t.”

*

Mary calls me at work. At first, I think she’s called me by mistake. There’s only the sound of breathing. Three short breaths, followed by one longer one. 

            “Oz,” she finally says. My name is Oscar, but she’s always called me Oz. Like the Wizard of, she teases sometimes. She’s not teasing now. “Oz, we—” 

            She breaks off again, falling back into the same pattern of breathing, like she’s forcing the air back into her lungs. Like she can force something, anything to stay inside her body. 

            “It’s alright, Mare, I’m here.” She was bleeding in the night. The on-call doctor assured us not to panic. A little bleeding can be normal. Stay in bed. Don’t panic. 

             “Oz, we lost the baby.” 

            Are you sure? I want to ask. But I think better on it. I don’t want to know how she knows.

            “I’ll come home,” I say instead.

            “No!” she says too quickly. “No, you stay there.”

            Perhaps a better husband would insist. Perhaps I should insist. I look at my computer screen, the flood of numbers and code. A landscape safe enough to drown in.

            “Okay.” Then, because I shouldn’t sound so callous, “If that's what you want.”

            “It is.”

            “Alright. I’ll be home by six, then. I’ll pick up dinner.” 

            After she hangs up, I cradle the glass screen to my ear a little longer, feel the slick of sweat on my cheek. We can try again, I remind myself. But what if it never takes?

            I drop my phone onto my desk and descend back into zeroes and ones. 

*

I am not home by six. I may not be home by seven, either, but it will be close. I drive the long road out of town with the radio up too loud, drowning out the diesel engine whose hum is unsettlingly similar to an ultrasound. The world is already dark outside as fall wanes toward winter. A pizza box presses warm on the side of my leg, and I push it away with one hand. When I look back up, a pair of eyes flash in the headlights. 

            I clutch the wheel, white-knuckled. The brakes squeal, and I fight the instinct to swerve. I feel the impact through my hands and feet, and it’s like I’m the one who’s been struck, my breath stuck hard in my throat.

            The truck heaves to a full stop. The engine idles. An ad crackles on the radio. I can’t see the deer ahead. Only a single headlight, pale and gold in the dark. She must have hit the other one. 

            “Damn it.”

            It takes conscious effort to pry my hands from the steering wheel. I park but leave the truck running. The right headlight is shattered, glass and plastic shards like incongruous confetti on the road. The bumper’s bent out of shape. The doe lies flung to the side of the truck, her head turned to look at me, her eyes glazed. Slowly, I crouch at her side, but I already know she’s dead.

            I’ve lived on country roads all my life and killed more than a few deer in my time. Some with cars, others with a good, clean shot. Treat them with respect, my father used to say. So, I leverage one hand beneath her neck, intending to pull her off the road. 

            Then her stomach lurches.

            I jerk back. The glass crunches beneath my feet. Perhaps it was just the last of her nerves still firing. Rigor mortis or something. But I’m looking at her stomach, and I see now what I’d missed before. The white underbelly swollen like a small, fat moon. There’s that strange, frantic lurching again. The barest shape of a tiny hoof flexed tight against the skin. 

            I touch her side with ginger fingers, her fur warm and coarse. The fawn moves in response. If I leave now, this movement will grow still while the mother grows cold. I will have killed twice over. The unborn fawn moves again, pressing against my hand. Something pulses there. A heartbeat, I think.

            I’ve never cut to save a life, but I’ve parceled out meat with clean, careful lines more than once before. I know the shape of her anatomy better than my own. I picture it in my mind; trace a map of sinew and bone; draw my pocketknife, the blade sharp as a scalpel. My fingers tremble.

            Mary will be waiting at home. Maybe still bleeding. 

            I grip the knife and make the first cut. 

*