Baby Daddies - Tara Brown Page 0,91
push.
Nat doesn’t want to.
The nurse yells and Nat pushes.
A human being comes slithering out of Nat’s vagina into the arms of the nurse. She’s cheering. Nat’s still shrieking. Miguel sounds like he might be crying.
More blood and a thick, ropey science fiction movie thing is sticking out of my favorite place in the world.
I throw up again.
“Mr. Coldwell!”
More throw up.
“Mr. Coldwell!”
Nat’s in a chair, wheeling away with the thing still hanging out of her like a doll’s pull chord gone very wrong. The entourage is gone.
It’s chaos and then silence.
Miguel speaks again, “Brady, you okay, man?”
“Nope.” I wipe my face and stare at my socks. “This is hell.”
“Did you barf, bro?” Miguel’s lost all the telephone voice.
“Yup. And I didn’t grab my shoes and Nat’s water broke on my feet.”
“Oh, my dude. Okay. Strip the socks off. Move the car into a parking place. And go inside and meet your baby. You got this.”
“I don’t.” I shake my head and stare at the car. “I think there’s a shit on the seat. It looks like a murder scene, Miguel. I can’t get in there.”
“Okay. Give your keys to a paramedic and ask them to move it. You have got this. It’s okay.”
“I’m a dad,” a sob tears from my throat as the reality of the last fifteen minutes hits me.
“Yeah, you are. Go and get that baby and kiss your wife. She’s a fucking champion, man!”
“Okay, I’ll talk to you later.” I close the door and walk through the emergency room doors. It’s insane but I follow the trail of filth on the floor to a room where Nat’s on a bed. The baby is on her chest, wrapped up in a little pink blanket. Nat stares at me, savage and sexy and disgusting.
“Look at her, our baby girl,” she sobs, tears streaming her face. “She’s so perfect.”
Everything is erased. I rush my wife and my baby, kissing them both as if the horrors of this are gone. She smells like Nat. She’s so tiny and pink.
“Take her. Take Kara.” Nat holds her to me. Kara Lillian Coldwell.
My hands shake and I’m scared but the moment the tiny bundle is in my arms, everything in the world is all right. “Hey, you,” I whisper and kiss her cheek. “I’m your dad.”
She grunts and smacks her perfect lips.
“She looks like you,” Nat says weakly.
Tears flood my face as I sit and stare, mesmerized by the beauty before me, both of them. I lean into Nat and kiss her. “Miguel said you’re a champion.”
“Whose Miguel?” Nat scowls.
It makes me laugh. But she’s focused on the baby girl we made. I place her back on Nat’s chest.
“How’s the car?” Nat asks, wincing.
“We’ll light it on fire and never talk about it again,” I say firmly.
She laughs and wipes her face. “They said this never happens. First time deliveries never do this. They said it will be even faster next time.”
“Next time!” I gasp. “We’re a one-kid family, Banks. I can’t live through that again.”
“You’ll be fine. But you need to call our parents and friends. My mom and Sami will be furious they weren’t here.”
“Trust me, no one will be upset they missed your vagina’s version of the exorcist.”
She hits me gently as a doctor comes in. “Mrs. Coldwell, you might have set a record with that one. When did the contractions start?”
“I didn’t know they were contractions. Yesterday, I was getting some mild cramping but it wasn’t anything serious.” Nat glances at me. “Remember when I said my belly was getting hard, and I thought it might be getting close?”
“No.” I don’t bother lying. I’m in the aftereffects of shock, a type of exhaustion from the adrenaline.
“Okay, well we have to get that placenta out and you need some stitches. There was some tearing.” She pats Nat on the calf. “And Mr. Coldwell, while we do this part, do you want to go with the baby for her weighing and bath?”
“Sure.” I nod and follow the nurse who takes our daughter from Nat.
The baby doesn’t want to be away from Nat. She starts to cry as soon as we get out, like she knows what’s coming.
She hates the bath.
Detests the scale.
And her little body shakes with rage.
I’ve never been as angry as she is.
When they wrap her up again, she is completely pissed.
“It’s good for the lungs,” the nurse says casually as we walk back to Nat’s room.
“Brady!” Sami shouts my name.
I turn and see them all in the hallway. Sami, Matt,