Ooh Baby, Baby

by Diana K. Whitney

  So why was she crying?

  As she turned away, movement caught her eye, and she focused on the incubator at the far side of the room. She twisted to her side as the gurney began to move. “That baby in the incubator, isn’t it the same one that was here during the blackout?”

  The female nurse followed her gaze and heaved a sad sigh. “Yes, that’s Christopher. The good news is that he’s doing splendidly and will be ready to go home soon. The bad news is that he has no home. His mother still hasn’t been found.”

  Peggy was horrified. “You mean that poor child has no one to care for him?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. In fact, I doubt there’s a baby on the face of the earth who has more care than our Christopher. We all adore him.” She leaned down and whispered, “To tell you the truth, the staff has grown so attached to him that I’m not sure they’ll ever let the little guy leave. He certainly doesn’t lack love and attention.”

  It wasn’t enough, Peggy thought as the gurney was rolled toward the elevator. Little Christopher deserved a mother’s nurturing love. All babies deserved that, just as they deserved fathers to provide role models of a strong, caring male.

  But her babies didn’t have a caring father. They had only Clyde.

  Still, Peggy was hopeful. She knew Dr. Jennings would explain the situation to Clyde and inform him that if anything happened to Peggy, the twins would be shuttled off to foster care unless he returned to Grand Springs and exercised his parental responsibility.

  But later that morning, after the X ray’s had been completed and Peggy had been returned to her room, she awoke to find Dr. Jennings standing beside her bed with a blue scratch sheet in her hand, pity in her eyes. Peggy knew then that Clyde had refused.

  Chapter Twelve

  Travis bent like a human safety pin, his aching elbows levered over the crib’s lowered side slat. At the business end of the bottles he held were two sticky, sucking, milk-splattered infants, lying side by side in Ginny’s crib. Rubber nipples, Travis had discovered, tended to squirt uncontrollably when tipped toward greedy, biting little mouths.

  Initially, he’d withdrawn the bottles, launched into a face-wiping frenzy that had the twins shrieking and whipping their heads in a desperate attempt to recapture the delivering mechanism of their much-needed meal.

  Eventually, Travis had given up his quest for cleanliness, wishing nothing more than to simply survive the sloppy process before his stooped spine cracked under the strain. It may not be the most practical posture from which to play Mr. Mom, but since the formula was nearly gone, it had clearly worked well enough to resolve the basic crisis.

  In fact, T.J.’s bottle was empty. The baby continued to suck happily, which didn’t bother Travis one whit. Ginny still had some formula left, so he didn’t see any need to take her brother’s bottle away. After all, the little guy was enjoying himself, and it didn’t seem fair to penalize T.J. just because the masculine milk-sucking apparatus was just naturally more powerful than the puny pucker of a baby girl.

  Of course, Travis had expected Virginia to feed more demurely than her brother. She was a nibbler, after all, sweet and delicate and ultimately feminine, just like her mama. That’s how it was supposed to be.

  But T.J. was a rough-and-tumble boy child, a no-nonsense gulping gobbler. There wasn’t a doubt in Travis’s mind that his namesake was destined to be a three-bite burger man.

  Travis couldn’t have been prouder.

  The radio on his belt crackled. “What’s going on?” Sue Anne asked. “Are they still eating?”

  Travis rested the empty bottle on T.J.’s tummy and reached for the transmission switch. “Ginny’s almost done,” Travis told his sister, then couldn’t resist adding, “T.J. finished up a few minutes ago.”

  “Good.” Sue Anne paused. “By the way, you do know enough to take the bottle away as soon as it’s empty so they don’t get air in their tummies, right?”

  “Uh, sure, everyone knows that.” Horrified, Travis realized that T.J. had probably siphoned enough air to float a blimp. As he snatched the bottle away, the nipple snapped from startled infant’s mouth with a noisy pop. “Okay, Ginny’s done, too,” he muttered, setting both bottles on the dresser. “Breakfast is officially over.”

  “Don’t forget to burp them.”

  Travis glared at the radio. “I’m not a complete idiot. I know what to do.”

  Actually, he didn’t, but the thinly veiled amusement in Sue Anne’s voice was beginning to grate on his nerves. He rubbed his forehead, tried to jog his memory. Peggy always breast-fed the babies in private, so Travis hadn’t actually witnessed the post-meal burping process. He had, however, seen a similar activity that consisted of holding the infant upright at the shoulder and patting the baby’s back until the anticipated result was obtained. It seemed easy enough when Peggy did it.

  But the mere thought of holding a fragile infant against his big, bony chest gave Travis palpitations. What if he patted too hard and broke something? What if a bobbling little head flopped backward? What if…?

  T.J. let out a massive wail. Travis wrung his hands, then gently touched the baby’s tummy. It was rock hard and swollen like a balloon. There was no choice now.

  Mumbling to himself, Travis slipped one rigid hand under T.J.’s sticky, powder-gummed little head, and the other hand beneath his diapered, pajama-clad bottom, then took a deep breath and lifted.

  The baby stopped crying, bobbled his little head around and stared at Travis as if he was also shocked by this unexpected development. “Okay, partner.” Travis shifted awkwardly, managing a couple of tentative pats between the tiny shoulders. “Do your stuff.”

  T. J. gurgled, kind of grinned. They smiled a lot now, and not a gassy-type grimace, either. They’d plumped up real pretty over the past couple of months and had learned to sprout honest-to-goodness life-is-swell, happy-to-see-you grins. Travis loved the little critters so much it hurt.

  But he still didn’t know squat about doing for them, and propping such a tiny warm body against his own bony shoulder was just about the scariest thing Travis had ever done in his life.

  He took a shaky breath and turned his head to check the burping progress. It wasn’t going well. T.J. was just lying there, blinking. Milk oozed from his open mouth.

  Figuring that changing the gravitation pull might help a tad, Travis arched his own body backward so the baby wouldn’t fall off what seemed to be an exceptionally precarious perch, then patted a little faster. T.J. drooled happily.

  Frantic now, Travis bowed his poor spine backward until blood rushed to his head. He patted, he rubbed, then he tested a gentle bouncing technique. It worked only too well.

  The burp was so loud it sounded like an exploding football. There was a relieved hiss of escaping air. Travis figured that was good. Along with it, however, came a substantial portion of curdled milk.

  That wasn’t so good.

  “Oh, man, oh, geez…” Snapping upright, Travis hastily returned T.J. to the crib, snatched up a towel, mopped the baby’s gooey face and soggy pajamas, then turned the towel to his own soaked shirt.

  “Sue Anne!” Frantically poking the send button, he blurted, “T.J. barfed all over the place. It’s in his hair, all over his face. His clothes are all sour and stinky. He’s a mess, Sue Anne, a total mess. And…and…” Travis stared in horror as T.J. clenched his little fists, went red in the face. “Oh, no, buddy, don’t do that, please, please don’t do that.”

  A foul aroma drifted up. T.J. blinked happily.

  Travis slumped against the crib. “Ah, sis? We’ve got an emergency here.”

  Her voice tightened. “What kind of emergency?”

  “The, uh, bath kind.” Travis raked his sticky fingers through his hair. “I’ll give you a million dollars if you’ll come over and clean these critters up.”

  The radio was silent a moment, and when Sue Anne spoke again, her voice was quivering with laughter. “The baby shampoo is on the dresser, Travis. Use th
e kitchen sink, not the tub. Make sure the water’s just tepid, not hot. Oh, and don’t drown them. Peggy would take a dim view of that. Dispatch out.”

  “Out?” Travis lurched forward, snatched the radio from his belt and screamed into the speaker. “Oh, no, you don’t. Come back here, Sue Anne. Don’t you dare sign off on me, don’t you dare. Sue Anne!” He strangled the radio, shook it, tried to squeeze the life out of it.

  Finally he tossed it aside, hung his head and trudged off to fill the kitchen sink.

  * * *

  There was nothing on earth as terrifying as a naked baby.

  With stiff arms, Travis suspended T.J. over the sink as if the child was a leaky watermelon. Swallowing hard, Travis stared into his namesake’s wise little eyes. “You understand that I’ve got to do this, partner. It’s for your own good.”

  T.J. gurgled, then whacked a fist against his fat little tummy.

  “It’d be a whole lot easier if you wouldn’t, you know, wiggle so much.”

  The baby seemed tickled by the notion, then blew a wreath of spit bubbles. Travis sighed and lowered him into four inches of lukewarm water. T.J. seemed delighted. He emitted a joyful shriek, churned his chubby legs, smacked the water and gasped as he splashed himself in the face.

  Travis awkwardly swished the baby around as if rinsing out grubby socks. He realized he’d have to do better than that—heaven only knew what kind of disgusting goo was lurking beneath those fat little chin folds—but in order to do the soap thing, he’d have to let go of the baby with at least one hand. That was a frightening prospect.

  Clearly it must be done, however, and even a brain-dead cowboy could figure out that the bottom part of a baby was more logistically submersible than the top. Travis splayed his hand to support T.J.’s upper torso and cautiously lathered the infant, who instantly became as slippery as a piglet in a mud hole.

  Somehow Travis managed to swizzle the little guy off, only to be thwarted by the crust of milk-moistened powder coating the baby’s scalp. The hair thing would be tricky. It took a couple of test runs before Travis figured out how to drizzle water from a washcloth so that the shampoo bubbles ran back into the sink instead of down the baby’s face.

  After what seemed a small eternity, T.J. was ready to be dried, dusted and dressed, a feat no less monumental than the bathing process itself.

  Eventually a squeaky-clean T.J. cooed happily in the net playpen that had been a gift from the Conways.

  One down, one to go.

  The second time around, things proceeded a bit more smoothly. First of all, Ginny wasn’t quite as, well, grungy as her brother. She was, however, even more enthusiastic about bathing. The baby girl squealed with delight, kicking and splashing with such exuberance that she managed to soak not only Travis, but half the kitchen.

  Eventually she, too, was clean, dry, freshly dressed and nested in the playpen. “There you go, darling,” Travis murmured, using the soft bristled brush to sweep short feathers of red hair into a delicate swirl. “Just like your mama does it.”

  Ginny chewed on her fist, seeming pleased by his efforts.

  Travis blew out a breath, pressed his knuckles into the throbbing muscles of his lower back and stretched his torso, trying to relieve the ache. He was soaked to the skin and hadn’t been this tired since he’d entered five rodeo events in one afternoon.

  At least the babies were tidy, which was more than he could say for the kitchen. It looked like it had been water bombed. The floor was swamped, as were the counters. Soapy bubbles dripped from the overhead cabinets and oozed down the walls. All in all, Travis figured it would take the rest of the morning just to mop the place down.

  Unless, of course, he just sat back and let it air dry….

  He issued a pained sigh, eyed muddy boot prints on what had been spotless linoleum, then lumbered to the broom closet.

  * * *

  Peggy fiddled with the button. The foot of the mattress hummed upward. She fiddled with the second button and was relieved to feel her shoulders lift. As soon as the bed had positioned her into a sitting position, she stared at the empty walls, the vacant bed beside her. She longed for a roommate, someone to talk to. The room didn’t even have a telephone. She’d asked for one and been told that telephones had been removed in all but private rooms because the constant ringing annoyed other patients and interrupted the recuperation process.

  There was a public telephone in the hall. Peggy was just about desperate enough to yank out the IV needle and go use it to find out what was happening with her babies. What if Travis had simply given up, handed them over to social services and taken off?

  That’s what her own father would have done, and although she refused to acknowledge it aloud, Peggy secretly suspected that it’s also what Clyde would have done. Assuming, of course, that he ever got close enough to his children to walk out in the first place, a possibility that grew more remote by the day.

  Logic told her that Travis would never do such a thing, but Peggy had been wrong about men before. In fact, when it came to the male of the species, it seemed that Peggy had never been right. If she had a talent in this world, it was for consistently being in the wrong place at the wrong time and placing trust in the wrong people. Peggy Saxon was the hands-down champ of being wrong, wrong, wrong.

  Trusting Clyde Saxon had been the biggest mistake of her life. How could she trust anyone now? How could she trust Travis?

  Peggy had no choice but to trust him; he had her children. So she lay there, weak and helpless, and told herself that Travis wouldn’t betray her trust. And prayed that for once in her life she was right.

  * * *

  Travis’s back felt like it had been stomped by a Brahman. Kitchen cleanup had indeed taken the entire morning, but the danged floor shone like polished leather and there was nary a soap bubble in sight. Not a bad day’s work, he decided, feeling enormously pleased with himself.

  This parent-thing wasn’t so tough, after all.

  Travis’s satisfied gaze swept the shiny room, landing on the refrigerator. His stomach growled. He’d just opened the fridge door and set his sights on a bowl of tuna salad when Ginny started to fuss.

  He glanced over his shoulder, frowning. “What’s the matter, darling? You don’t need another change, do you?”

  She hunched her shoulders, twisted on the playpen floor and issued a cranky wail.

  Travis tossed a final longing glance at the tuna salad, then closed the fridge and ambled over to check the diaper situation. Things were thankfully dry, so he was at a loss as to what the baby needed. He tried the pacifier. She spit it out and gave him a reproachful stare. Her chin quivered.

  “Aw, c’mon, sweetie pie, tell Uncle Travis what you want.”

  She fussed, squeaked and issued a cranky cry. T.J. joined in with a loud me-too wail that had Travis grabbing for his two-way. “Sue Anne? Are you there? Dang it, Sue Anne, I know you hear me.”

  The speaker hissed. “So, how goes it, baby-sitting brother of mine?”

  “They’re crying again,” he shouted, covering one ear to block out a small portion of the twins’ lusty screams. “They’re all clean, and they don’t need changing, and they won’t take their pacifiers…what do they want, Sue Anne, what am I supposed to do now?”

  “Hmm, they do sound a bit perturbed.”

  “Huh?” He turned away, pressed the radio to his ear. “What did you say?”

  “Look at the clock, Travis.”

  He frowned, did as he was told. “Yeah, so?”

  “It’s almost noon.” She waited a beat before adding, “Lunch time, bro’. They’re hungry.”

  Travis dropped the radio, stared at the gaping pair of cavernous little mouths and realized that he had to start the whole thing all over again.

  He could have wept.

  * * *

  The more Peggy fretted about past mistakes, the more concerned she became about the here-and-now. Her heart ached. She missed her babies and was desperately worried about
them.

  And right outside her door was a telephone.

  Peggy swung her legs over the mattress, waited for a wave of weakness to pass, then focused on the tangle of tubes extending from the taped splint on her arm to plastic bags suspended from a metal hanger attached to the bed. If she unhooked the bags from that hanger, maybe she could carry them and—A swish of movement by the open door caught her eye.

  She turned, saw nothing but an empty doorway. Still, someone had been there. Or something.

  A shadow fell across the threshold. She saw the brim of a hat, a pair of blinking eyes. The eyes darted left, right, settled on Peggy. They crinkled at the corners, then withdrew.

  Peggy leaned forward, wondering if she was dreaming. “Travis?”

  He stepped into the doorway, his head swiveling to check both directions of the hall before he reached out for something that was just beyond Peggy’s view. A moment later, he swung the object around, wheeling it into the room.

  Peggy clutched her throat, overcome with emotion.

  The twins were nested in the double stroller, all gussied up in matching apple-green jumpsuits. Ginny wore an elasticized headband with a fluffy white bow. T.J.’s sparse hair had been neatly parted and slicked back in a decidedly masculine style. Both babies were wide-awake and seemingly quite interested in their new surroundings.

  Travis poked his head back into the hall for a final look, then closed the door, jammed his hands in his pockets and gave her a sheepish grin. “They, uh, don’t allow babies in the patient wards. Some kind of dumb hospital rule.”

  All she could do was nod.

  Travis glanced down at her bare feet dangling over the floor. He frowned. “Going somewhere?”

  “I, ah—” She cleared the lump from her throat. “The telephone. I was going to call you.”

  His gaze slipped to her bandaged arm, then traveled up the dripping tubes to the fluid bags. He went pale. “Lordy, they’ve got you trussed like a thrown steer.”

  “It looks worse than it is.”

  “So you’re okay? I mean, they’ve got you all fixed up?”