Baby Talk

“Can’t she just stay here for a few days?” Neal blurted. He looked pleadingly from one face to another.

Susan gave Dr. Rayson a hopeful glance. She seemed to have already formed an attachment to the baby.

“I’m afraid not,” Rayson told Neal. “Your daughter’s in perfectly good health. It’s against the rules, not to mention the fact that we’re completely full as it is.”

“It will just be for a couple of days,” Neal said, panicking, “maybe just one day. Just until you can find Annie’s mother.”

Susan said, “We do have enough room in the nursery at the moment, doctor.”

Rayson whirled around to her. “Dammit, Susan, you know better than that! This isn’t a day care center, it’s a hospital.”

“Sorry, doctor.”

There was another page for him over the intercom. A second later, an out-of-breath nurse poked her head in the door. “Doctor Rayson, you’re needed in 604, stat!”

“Allright, allright.” Rayson stood up and spoke quickly to Neal, as if irritated by the entire situation. “You’re just going to have to wing it, Mr. Becker. We’ll look after your baby while you go downstairs and have your foot treated, but after that, you’re going to have to take her home.” He paused and looked at Annie, then turned back to Neal. “There’s no point in you staying here—we’ll call you as soon as your wife comes around.”

Neal stared at Natasha, fear coiling up inside him like a dark, slick snake. She wiggled her legs and arms happily, as if she was looking forward to being all alone with Daddy.

Dr. Rayson took two steps towards the door, but turned back to Neal.

“You do know how to take care of a baby, don’t you?”

The eyes of all the medical personnel focused on Neal’s face.

“Well, sure,” Neal said, trying to hide his uncertainty. “Of course I know how.”

CHAPTER 8

It took Neal a good ten minutes to strap the baby seat into the passenger seat of his car. He and Annie and Natasha hadn’t been on many happy little family outings together, and he didn’t have much experience with the device. He was glad that the orderly who had wheeled Natasha and him out to the car had gone back inside the building and wasn’t watching the struggle.

During this lengthy process, Neal avoided looking at Natasha’s face. She had fallen asleep, but he had a gnawing fear that her eyes would pop open and she would say...well, he didn’t know what she might say. The thought of her speaking at all terrified him.

When he finally finished strapping her in, he went around to the back of the car and tossed the two crutches the nurse in the emergency room had given him into the trunk, along with his unused right sneaker. The nurse had done a good job bandaging up his foot, but there was now no way he could put his sneaker on. It didn’t matter—he could drive just as well shoeless.

It was a depressing night, a cold drizzle falling from the sky. His battle with Natasha’s car seat had gotten him breathing hard, and this had made all the windows to fog up. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment, waiting for the defroster to clear the moisture enough so that he could see through the windshield.

He would not look at Natasha. Instead, he tried to concentrate on the things he would have to do in order to care for the baby until they could track down Annie’s mother. Surely the unpleasant woman would come home tomorrow. Unless she was out for the whole weekend with Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was that she was currently banging. Paula Crawford was trash, as far as Neal was concerned. She cared more about her own sexual escapades than she did about her daughter and granddaughter.

When Neal and Annie had decided to get married, Annie had invited her mother to come down to Atlanta—less than a two hour drive—to celebrate. But Paula had refused because Charlie (the guy she was banging before Dan or Doug or whatever the guy’s name was) was coming through town and she wanted to “see” him. And this was already after she was dating the new guy!