by Emerson Rose
“I want to give him your name. I know we aren’t married yet and he’s not biologically…”
“Stop. That is something I don’t ever want to hear you say again. I am this baby’s father - period. He will have my last name. I will feed him in the middle of the night and change his diapers. I’ll take him to school and coach his sports teams and be his boy scout troop leader, everything, all of it. He is my son and you are my wife, we don’t have to have legal documents or ceremonies to prove it.”
Tears well in her eyes and I consider pulling over to the side of the road to kiss her and comfort her but her grip on my hand tightens again. No time for mushy shit, this kid’s coming soon.
“You’re amazing, I love you, Julián. Thank you for being such an awesome man.”
“Don’t mention it.” I lift the corner of my mouth in a smirk and turn into the hospital parking lot.
“Garcia?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t even think you’re getting out of a wedding.”
“Of course not. I can’t wait to marry you, why do you say that?”
“Because you said you don’t need legal documentation to prove our love.”
“You know what I mean. I have too much money wrapped up in that wedding anyway. I can’t get refunds on all those deposits, you’re stuck with me.”
She chuckles but another contraction interrupts her as I pull up to the curb outside the main entrance of St. Ann’s Memorial Hospital. Adrenaline takes ahold of me and I fight the urge to run into the lobby screaming for a wheelchair for my fiancé who’s having a baby.
I’d probably be met with a lot of annoyed you’re not the first person to have a baby looks and holy shit, what an obnoxious Marine mutterings.
Being a spaz is something I’ve fought to control my entire life. I was an overly excitable kid with a huge imagination. I always wanted to be the center of attention and I was forever the class clown. My therapist says it was my way of separating my identity from my father’s. He was a serious, formal man always dressed in a suit going to business meetings, using a billion different forks at dinner and drinking expensive liquor and smoking expensive cigars. I hated all of that. I hated that he was always trying to mold me into a miniature version of him.
“I’ll be right back, will you be okay for a minute while I get a wheelchair?”
She nods and I take a second to appreciate her beauty. Her long black hair is starting to stick to her forehead and a thin sheen of sweat covers her tanned skin. She’s dressed in a long, simple cotton dress with black sandals but she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Her eyes widen when I don’t move right away. “Going, I’m going, sorry.” I hop out and take deep calming breaths while I get a wheelchair from what looks like a shopping cart corral inside the front doors.
“May I help you, sir?” A woman’s voice comes from behind me as I’m exiting pushing the chair.
“Nope, just gonna have a baby. No biggie.” I smile at the fifty-something woman sitting behind the information desk and she blushes.
“Okay, hon, I’ll call the maternity unit and let them know you’re on your way.”
“Super, thanks.” I take another deep breath and begin doing the Lamaze breathing. Somebody may as well get some benefit from all those classes because Kimber sure as hell isn’t having any part of it.
I open the door but it won’t open more than an inch because she has a death grip on the handle.
“Baby, I’m going to need you to let go of the door handle if you want to get out.”
“I don’t want to get out! I don’t want to move. This hurts, Julián, like really, really, fucking hurts.”
Now my Kimber isn’t much of a swearer so the fact that she just dropped the F-bomb indicates to me that we might want to hurry up. I pull the door open gently bringing her arm with it and pry her white knuckles from the handle when I can get my arm in.
“Come on, baby, you’re not having my son in the Rover.” When the door is open all the way, I scoop her up and forgo the wheelchair altogether when she wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my chest.
Even nine months pregnant she can’t weigh much more than the pack I carried on my back in Afghanistan every day. She hates being the center of attention and more than that she hates people to see her in pain. I’m happy to provide her a place where she can hide from all of that.
I kiss her on her damp forehead as we bob along. A woman approaches from the opposite direction and I can’t help myself. “I’m carrying my babies, both of them, we’re having a baby, get it?” Kimber slaps my chest.
That’s the kind of thing I try not to say anymore but my nerves are starting to get the best of me. I need to rein myself in or I’ll be doing stand-up comedy when Kimber is pushing our son out into the world, definitely not the first thing I want him to experience.
We arrive on the bright sunlit birthing unit with a wall of windows and I wonder why they would have designed a maternity unit this way. Pregnant women would be hot sitting in that waiting room. The woman behind the admitting desk stands up when she sees me carrying Kimber.
“Sir, is everything okay?” She places her hands on the counter in front of her and I imagine her using the tall desk like a gymnastics pommel horse and leaping over it to help. Her brow is wrinkled with concern but the closer I get the more her concern feels like annoyance.
“Yes, Ma’am, her water broke about an hour ago and her contractions are one to two minutes apart.” My military training kicks in, thank God, and I sound like an authoritative Marine delivering logical, important information instead of a bumbling stand-upcomedian.
“Oh, well let’s get her into a wheelchair so I can ask you some questions.”
“No thank you, ma’am, I’ll hold her until you have a bed for her.”
“You don’t have to do…” Kimber tries, but a contraction grips her and she can’t speak.”
“Is this your first baby?” the woman asks Kimber and I wonder why the hell she’s asking stupid questions when she’s obviously in pain. Kimber nods against my chest and digs her fingernails into my neck. I wince when her pain peaks and relax with her when it’s over.
Snooty admitting lady sits and starts typing on her computer. “Name?”
“Kimber West,” I answer for her.
“Address?”
“I can’t do this, Julián,” she whispers into my ear.
“Yes, you can, baby, you’ll do great.”
“No, I mean I can’t wait for her to take all this information, I’m having a lot of pressure…” Her grip on my neck tightens with her next contraction and it occurs to me that I might become a father much quicker than I imagined.
“Ma’am? I know you need all of this information but I think she needs to see a doctor.”
“Oh she’ll be fine, first babies take a while. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
Kimber’s grip tells me that no, shit won’t be fine and she might only have a few minutes left of this pregnancy. I lean as close to the desk as I can holding my beautiful fiancé in my arms. “Ma’am, if you don’t get her into a bed she’s going to have this baby right here in this lobby.” My tone is even keeled and calm but my wide eyes and stern expression conveys my hurry the fuck up message.
She sighs and picks up the phone. When she’s asks us to follow her to room seven, I smile thinking of my suggestion to use our room number as a middle name for the baby. We have gone around and around on middle names never quite agreeing on one. Seven wouldn’t be a bad middle name.
“We aren’t naming it Seven.” She knows what I’m thinking.
“Why not? It’s cool and original, nobody else will have that for a middle name, guaranteed.”
The annoyed admitting woman leads us into room seven and we don’t get to finish our conversation. “Good luck” she says with about as much enthusiasm as a slice of ham.
A beautiful blonde nurse with a halo of sparkles and light is waiti
ng at the bedside holding a hospital gown smiling ear to ear.
“Hi, I’m May. I’ll be helping you bring your little one into the world today.”
“Nice to meet you, May, I’m Garcia and this is my fiancé Kimber.”
She tips her head to the side and blinks her eyes all fluttery as if hearing our names is a big romantic thing. Are people really this happy? I hope she’s not on something. I don’t want a meth head nurse delivering my baby.
“Ya’ll are so sweet. Garcia, if you could put her down I’ll help her into a gown and we can get her settled, how’s that sound?”
“Great.” Not great. I don’t want to put her down. I feel like I’m helping somehow by holding onto her. If I give her up, I’ll miss something.
May notices me hesitate and steps to my side to encourage me.
“She’s gonna be just fine, but for me to help her you need to put her down. You can stay right next to her and hold her hand, I’m not bootin’ ya out I promise.”
Now that sounded sincere and so is the look in her eyes. I step toward the bed when Kimber starts panting against my neck.
“I have to push.”
“She has to push,” I repeat to May but she heard her and suddenly turns all business.
“Into bed.” She points at the bed and sticks her head out into the hall calling for another nurse or a doctor, I don’t know because I have ten fingernails in the sides of my neck.
I sit her down and peel her fingers from my neck. When she looks at me her expression is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Her eyes are wide and wild and nervous energy flows out of her onto me. I’d be more comfortable overseas in a combat situation than this right now.
She starts to strip. It’s not sexy like when she used to dance around taking it all off for me in our living room back in San Diego. This is frantic stripping with a purpose. It’s get the clothes off so I can get this baby out of my body stripping and I help her.
When we have the hospital gown on, I help her lie down and two nurses bustle around the room preparing for the delivery. One wraps belts around Kimber’s waist and hooks her up to a monitor. She explains that this is how they listen to the baby’s heartbeat and watch her contractions. The other dons a glove and I watch her hand disappear under the covers between my fiancé’s legs. Her expression changes from semi-boredto wide-eyed when she tells nurse May that Kimber is complete.
“What?” Kimber says, her voice laced with panic.
“She’s ten already? I thought you guys said first babies take a while. Shit.”
“I don’t get an epidural?” Kimber asks.
“No honey, you’ve already done all the hard work, we’re fixin’ to have a baby now. Do you feel the urge to push?”
“Yes!” she yells pushing her head back into the pillow while I watch the little line on her monitor paper rise with a contraction.
“Perfect. I’ll call the doctor in and we can get busy having a baby, alrighty?” May claps her hands together like this is the first time she’s ever delivered a baby. She really loves her job and it shows. I feel guilty about thinking that she’s a meth head just because she’s nice.
“It’s happening, baby, you’re having a baby. Hey, do I have to stop calling you baby now that we’re having a baby?”
She reaches up to cup my cheek and looks at me the way she does when I’m frayed around the edges and rambling like an idiot. I lean over and give her a chaste kiss on the lips before her next contraction claims her calm spirit.
That’s why I love this woman so much. No matter what a moron I am she still loves me.
An hour later, I am the father of a beautiful little carbon copy of Kimber. He has jet-black hair, long fingers and perfect full lips that are currently stretched taut while he screams like a banshee.
“He’s got a set of lungs on him for sure,” May says cheerfully as she swaddles him in an animal print blanket and hands him to his mama.
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit.” Kimber takes our son in her arms and it’s as if a light turns on inside of her right in front of my eyes. May isn’t the only person in the room bubbling with happiness anymore. I never really understood what people were talking about when they said a woman was glowing until this moment.
Kimber Allison West soon-to-be Garcia is glowing like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. She lifts her eyes to me and they are brimming with tears of joy. “You want to hold him, daddy?” she asks.
“You’re more beautiful than I’ve ever seen you. I’ll just watch for a minute.” She smiles wider and blinks setting the giant teardrops free to slide down her cheeks. I sit down on the bed facing them and feel my heart melt into a puddle when I look into our son’s squinting newborn eyes.
“He’s perfect.” I touch his little hand that’s been left out of the blanket probably on purpose so that it can be examined by his parents.
“We haven’t counted his fingers and toes yet.”
“All accounted for,” May says.
“He could be missing them all and he would still be perfect,” I say.
“Well, I’m glad he’s not. You’re gonna need all your fingers and toes aren’t you little …”
“Grayson. He’s definitely a Grayson.” We had three first names picked out but we decided that we needed to see him before we named him to be sure it fit and Grayson fits perfectly.
“Grayson Garcia, I love it. I love him. I love you so, so, much.” She leans forward squishing our little guy between us and kisses me with her salty, tear stained lips. Something shifts inside me when I hear my name paired with this new little person’s first name. I became a father today, maybe not biologically but no one will ever tell me differently. Grayson Garcia is my son and soon Kimber will be my wife forever. No way does it get any better than this.
Chapter 3
Kimber
The whole experience of giving birth was mind-blowing. Everything happened so fast that there are still moments that it doesn’t seem real. Grayson wasn’t a patient guy. He only took three hours to arrive from the time my water broke to delivery and he’s still proving that impatience is his most dominant personality trait two days later.
Julián is pacing the floor of my hospital room trying to console our post-circumcised little man. It doesn’t help that he’s also hungry, poor Julián never had a chance. Pacing isn’t working but he never loses patience and he won’t quit until he figures out how to sooth him. I know it’s only been two days but I can’t imagine any man being a better father.
“Hun, why don’t you let me try to feed him? I think that’s the only thing that’s going to make him happy right now.”
He stops to look at me and for a second time stands still. His bewildered expression, the way his bronze skin glows in the sunlight streaming through the window of the room and the undying love in his eyes for Grayson and me. How did I get so lucky?
I motion my hands for him to bring the baby to me and he bounces Gray in his arms as he walks toward the bed to hand him over.
“Lucky guy,” he mutters when I slide my shirt up and offer the red-faced screaming baby my breast. He takes to it like a pro and quiets down immediately.
“Surely you’re not jealous of your son, now are you?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. I’m man enough to admit it, he gets all the good stuff now and I’m left out in the cold.” He nods toward my chest and crosses his arms over the well-defined muscles of his chest. He’s not the only one suffering. I miss having his hands all over my body. The way he kisses me so passionately, not the way he’s been kissing me for the past two days. I feel like a delicate piece of bone china that he’s afraid of breaking.
This man lit a fire inside of me that hasn’t dimmed for a second since we met. Caleb never knew me the way Julian does and I was married to him for three years. Being with Julian has taught me that Caleb never took the time to know the real me. He didn’t care enough to ask the deep questions, the kind of questions that really matter.
I tip m
y head to the side and push my bottom lip out in a pout. “I miss you, too,” I say and reach out and pull him into the bed next to me. He doesn’t fit but he does his best to balance half-on and half-off to snuggle with us. He strokes Grayson’s head gently while he nurses and kisses me on the side of my neck.
“I won’t break you know.” He nuzzles into the soft place at the base of my neck and groans. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s just, you know, you’re a mother now. It’s kind of… I don’t know, different.” He sits up right away and looks at me with his cinnamon-browneyes full of worry and begins to backpedal. “Not in a bad way, you’re still the sexiest fucking woman I’ve ever laid eyes on. Shit, I shouldn’t swear in front of the baby, damn it, I did it again.”
I take pity on him and press my fingers against his mouth. He’ll go on forever trying to make me feel better if I don’t and I understand what he’s saying because I feel it too. I’m glad to know he still thinks I’m sexy because I have never felt less sexy in my entire life. Two days with no makeup, little sleep, swollen feet, and my hair tossed into a wad on top of my head will do that to a girl.
“Shush. I don’t think he knows you’re swearing yet and you don’t have to put me on, I know I’m a hot mess right now.”
“That’s not true…” I interrupt his denial and pull him in to cover his mouth with mine in a real kiss, the kind of kiss that will probably bring us another bundle of joy like Grayson in a couple of years.
Our tongues swirl and explore bringing back the familiar feeling of being desired that I crave from him but the other man in my life is not thrilled about sharing me. Grayson squirms and fusses in my arms busting up our mini-make out session and Julián sighs.
“See?”
I laugh. I can’t help it, men… they have such fragile egos. At least my feelings of inadequacy can be blamed on hormones and bloating. He’s just pouting because someone has moved in on his territory and he has to share.
“Think of it this way, this is your first opportunity to teach your son something.”