H is for Hawk (Men of ALPHAbet Mountain)

My eyes widened as adrenaline shot through me, waking me up far more effectively than any pot of coffee. I ran to the bedroom and slung the door open. Rose was in her crib. The crying had slowed a bit as she was seemingly crying herself to sleep, but the bedroom was otherwise empty. All of the supplies that I had paid for were around, including the car seat. And Kim’s duffel bag.

The only things that seemed to be missing were Kim and her phone. I looked around, somewhat panicked. Why would Kim go somewhere without her baby? And without telling me? I didn’t understand, and as I stood in the doorway of her room, the baby’s cries began to pick up again.

Then I noticed a note by the bed. It was folded up and had my name written on the outside in Kim’s handwriting. My heart sunk. She didn’t do this. She couldn’t do this.

What was I thinking? The Kim that had shown up at my door absolutely could do this. She was a long way from the girl who had cried on my shoulder when our mother died, no matter how much the last two days had felt like she was still there.

I picked up the note and read it. With every word, my heart sunk a little further, and panic began to clench my heart.

“… I just hope you don’t hate me,” the letter said near the end. “I just can’t do this. I can’t be a mother and I don’t really want to be. But she is safe with you. You can protect her the way that you always tried to protect me. Hopefully she won’t be as much trouble as I am. I am sorry. I love you, brother.”

I let the letter fall to the floor as I looked around the room. It still smelled like her perfume. The bathroom had her shampoo and conditioner in it, and there were still sneakers by the door that I’d bought her that had their tags on them. She never even put them on after we left the store.

She had just up and walked out with just the clothes on her back and the phone. She mentioned in the letter that she wasn’t going to answer the phone for a couple of days but that she would text me eventually. She just needed to get away and get her space. As much as I wanted to absolutely fume at her over it, I knew blowing up her phone with angry voicemails would just ensure she didn’t call back anytime soon.

I sat down heavily on the bed.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?

From the crib, Rose began a new wave of crying, and the only thought I had was that I had no idea how to change a diaper for a little girl. Pulling out my cell phone from the pocket I had stuffed it in when I woke up, I opened YouTube and searched for a video I hoped wouldn’t put me on any watch lists.

10

DEE

Aside from the stress of making sure I made Dr. Sutton happy, the biggest downside of the job would have to be the hours. When I worked in telemedicine, my hours were whatever hours the calls came in for, but I was usually on duty overnight. I wasn’t much of a night owl as a kid, but it was kind of fun to do the overnight thing for a while as a job. Eventually, as it started to get old, I switched to swing shifts, though I was on a pretty strict schedule and clocked off after eight hours unless I volunteered to do more or covered someone else’s shift.

Working in the hospital had a similar switch, first with me working five days a week overnight at eight hours, then swing shifts of five ten-hour days for quite a while. Now, I was working four twelve-hour shifts a week, but with the recent retirement of two of the nurses and my dedication to the job, it was turning into more and more days drifting to fourteen or sixteen hours at a time.

In order to fix the time I got off, Dr. Sutton started scheduling me earlier, making my clock-in time be two in the morning oftentimes. What this did was make it so that I only ever saw the outside when it was dark, and only saw the inside of my house under lamplight unless I was off. Since I was taking a few days off coming up for my sister’s wedding, I was stuck working more than usual, taking other people’s shifts so they would take mine.

I was still getting used to the length of the shifts, though, and getting there at two in the morning was the hardest part of it. Especially if I did anything the night before. It was dragging on me being there so early and not wanting to have a life outside of work for fear of screwing things up once I got there.