“Say that again, Hubba Bubba.”
“Mommy peed on the floor and said it feels like she’s going to poop. I know you said I can’t talk about it until I’m twenty, but the words didn’t come out of my mouth, so does that count?”
Alex scribbled something on his notepad and held it up for me to see.
She’s in labor, dumbass.
Rolling my eyes, I’d just opened my mouth to tell Shanti she was being silly when a noise that scared the ever-loving shit out of me came through the phone. It was like the love child of a horror movie, Jurassic Park, and a flock of seagulls screeching.
“Shanti, what are you watching?”
Alex tapped his pen on the notepad furiously, but I just shook my head. He didn’t know my family like I did. Shanti had accidentally stumbled onto the movie channel five weeks ago and had fallen in love with action movies. That’d led to an accidental viewing of a horror movie that’d kept her up for three days, and since then, I’d had to repeatedly change the code on it because she kept figuring it out and watching more of them.
“That noise keeps coming from her, Daddy. The psycho’s in the building with me.”
“Shan—”
Another roaring screech cut me off, and then my phone vibrated with a text message from Jeremy.
J: On the phone to Naomi, and she went into labor. I wasn’t made for this shit, man. Do something.
Turning slowly, I looked at Alex’s notepad, then back down at my phone.
Shit, I wasn’t made for this either.
Spinning my chair around, I put my hands together and begged for the first time in my life.
“Help me, help me, please, God, help me.”
It didn’t matter how many times you drove the route to the hospital, how many books you read to prepare yourself for the birth, how many times you told yourself this shit was going to be easy…nothing prepared me for what happened fourteen hours later.
“I think we should consider doing a cesarean, Naomi,” the OB-GYN, Nora, said as she stood up from the stool she’d been sitting on while she examined Naomi again. “You’re not progressing, even with the Pitocin, and I think it’d be better for both of you if we do the section.”
Exhausted, Naomi made her decision in a split second. “Do it. Get this little assassin out of me.”
It was all going well until the doctor held the baby she’d just cut out of my wife up, its body covered in goo, blood, and gross shit. Then, it blew a goo bubble out of its right nostril, making me feel slightly light-headed, just as the nurse who’d been standing next to us told me to cut the cord. Instead of remaining seated, I stood up and saw over the sheet they’d put up so that what happened next didn’t happen.
I saw my wife’s insides. I wasn’t that great at biology, so I couldn’t list what it was that I saw, but it reminded me of something out of Star Wars and Saw.
Instead of doing the intelligent thing and looking away or sitting back down again, I remained standing, staring into my wife’s abdomen. The nurse was nudging me and kept repeating something, but all I could see was what I was fairly certain was her womb with some intestines around it.
On the next nudge from the nurse, my eyes rolled into the back of my head, and I passed out. Come to find out, thankfully for me—not so much for her—the poor woman broke my fall, so I didn’t hurt anything. When I came back around, I found my brother-in-law laughing at my expense, having heard the story from the doctor when she’d come out to tell them it’d all gone perfectly.
But I had another daughter.
I might have missed roughly ten minutes of her existence, but the second I got to hold her, I swore I’d never put her down again. And then my eldest baby crawled onto my lap and whispered a name in my ear for her little sister.
Willow.
I’d considered myself blessed the day the adoption had been finalized and Shanti had legally become my daughter. I’d been there since she was twenty months old, but finally knowing she was mine and I could look after her like Callum would have wanted her to be… it was an honor.
I’d also considered myself blessed the day Naomi had become my wife. In the grand scheme of things, that little piece of paper was irrelevant, but to me, it was worth more than gold.
And holding Willow, seeing how excited Shanti was to be a big sister, and knowing I was the lucky dad of two perfect little girls? I hadn’t been handed happiness, I’d been handed the world.
Three years later…
“He’s disgusting,” Shanti screeched, storming past me, her little sister following behind her.