“The kind that just found out,” Leigh said as she entered the common room with bags and bags of baby stuff. She pulled out a pack of diapers first. “Bring the baby over here. We’ll find out while I teach you how to properly change a diaper.”
Layla handed the baby back to me, and I approached Leigh as if she were holding a ticking time bomb instead of a tiny diaper. Leigh shook out a folded pad and placed it on top of one of the tables. Then, she carefully put the baby on the pad and unwrapped the blankets.
“What in the hell is that?” I shouted. “Its insides are coming out of its stomach! We need to go to the hospital!”
Leigh started chuckling. “That’s the umbilical cord,” she explained. “It turns black and falls off within a week or two.”
“You ever seen this shit before?” I asked my brother.
He shook his head. “Nope. Knew what it was though.”
“Sure you did,” I grumbled.
Leigh was still studying the umbilical cord with a look of concern etched on her face. “Something wrong?” I asked and wanted to laugh because I should have asked if something else was wrong.
Leigh silently reached for the tiny hat covering the baby’s head and gently lifted it, gasping when the baby’s clearly unwashed head came into view. “Bronze,” she said slowly, cautiously. “You were right. We need to go to the hospital.” She paused. “Right now.”
“What? Why?” I shouted, failing to quell the internal panic building inside of me.
“Because this baby is very, very new. Maybe only a few hours old.”
“Okay, okay. I’m following your lead. How do we get it there?”
Leigh turned to Copper. “There’s a baby carrier and car seat base in my trunk. Will you get it and install it in whichever vehicle y’all are going to take while I help Bronze get the baby ready to go?”
“Why do you have that?” I asked.
She huffed. “I bought it on sale a few months ago because I liked that pattern, and I knew one of you were bound to need it sooner or later.”
“Or you were saving it for when Judge and River have one,” Copper said knowingly as he picked up her keys from the pool table where she dropped them with the bags she was carrying.
“All right, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Leigh announced and started to unfasten the diaper. My world froze. Because a part of me already believed that the baby squirming on the pool table was mine. And I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to know if I had a son or daughter. I wasn’t ready for any of it.
Closing my eyes, I heard her gasp and waited for the words I knew would forever change my life.
“It’s a girl.”
When I opened my eyes, blue-gray ones that mirrored my own were staring back at me. With one look, she stole my heart and replaced it with her soul. Reaching out, I ran my fingers over her tiny cheek. “You sure are a beautiful little girl,” I murmured.
She closed her eyes and clenched her hands into fists as she let out a hellacious wail and proceeded to pee all over me, Leigh, and the pool table.
“How is she doing that?” I blurted as I watched the tiny little baby continue to anoint the common room with an impressive arc of piss.
“Where is it coming from?” I asked and genuinely wanted to know because there was no way a baby her size could piss that much. Nope. Wasn’t possible.
“Quit gawking and get some damn towels!” Leigh snapped.
“On it.” I turned and rushed down the hall to whichever bathroom I came to first.
When I returned, Leigh wrapped the baby in a towel and held her out to me. “What? No,” I said and waved my hands in front of me.
“You can take the baby in the clean towel or wipe up all the piss. What’s it going to be?” Leigh demanded.
I nodded and reached for the squirming bundle. Her cries had tapered down to little whimpers, and I briefly wondered if she might be cold. Before I could say or do anything about it, Leigh was reaching for her again.
“Did you wash your hands?”
“Of course, I did,” she huffed.
I laughed and handed her the baby. “I know, but after all the times you’ve said it to us, I’ve always wanted to have a chance to say it back to you.”
“I don’t even want to know what else you’ve been waiting for