"Juliet Knows Me"

A reminder pops up on my Outlook. “Juliet Meadow knows me,” it says. I had set it when Juliet was going through a phase where she cried every time I got home from work. Melissa said it was her bad time of day. Her “witch hour.” But I didn’t come home at the same time every day, and no matter when I came home, Juliet cried.

I had asked a buddy at work when Juliet would know me. He had said it took his daughter three months. Its Juliet Meadow’s three-month-old birthday. She still didn’t know me.

She knows her mother. She smiles at her, laughs sometimes. I hear Juliet giggling from the other room and run in to catch her. She sees me and stops. Melissa pity kisses my cheek. Juliet cries.

She doesn’t cry all the time when I’m around anymore. She smiles when I’m using the meat scissors to cut off a onesie after she shits through her diaper. You can’t pull it over her head, or she’ll get shit all over her face. So, you cut. And she smiles. Her room smells like shit. She doesn’t mind.

Juliet also doesn’t cry that much anymore when I’m trying to rock her to sleep at night. I swaddle her and pick her up. Her head on my shoulder. She fusses and turns her head violently from side to side. She finds the right position and lets her face smush into the top of my chest or the meat of my shoulder.

It used to take hours, but now it only takes a few minutes. I can’t even write about how long she sleeps. It would be unfair to say. And unlucky.

When I get home from work now, Juliet furrows her brow as if to say “who the fuck are you?” I don’t even know how to begin to tell her. Something else catches her attention. A light. A fan. Melissa. Juliet’s eyes follow her mother around the room. When she loses sight of Melissa, Juliet follows her sound. Without sound, she follows her scent. Juliet is a puppy, only not as smart. And Melissa is her mommy. The only thing she needs.

I put down my briefcase and stand over Juliet at the changing table while Melissa wipes up a Geiko lizard green liquid splatter poop. We replaced the organic diapers with Huggies. We have a hunch the environmentally unfriendly diapers work better. So far, it looks that way. Melissa leans close to Juliet’s face and squeals and quacks. She rubs Juliet’s belly. Juliet giggles. I lean in and imitate Melissa’s moves. Juliet doesn’t smile. She pees. Perfect. “Daddy’s home.”

"Thanks"

It’s been two months. Time hasn’t flied. And it has.

For the first few days after Olivia left, we couldn’t sleep. We were too excited, finally alone in our house with our baby. When Juliet slept, we watched her, sometimes in her room and sometimes on the video monitor. Or we sat in bed and talked about her, giggling like idiots, until it was time to feed her again. We could hardly believe that this was our family.

For the most part, Juliet had been sleeping for three hours stretches. Pretty good for a three-week old baby. I did the midnight-ish feeding, and Melissa did the middle of the night-ish one. We were tired all of the time, but we were living in that new parent daze. The sleepiness was a soft haze around what seemed like it had to be a dream.

I remember when the love train ran out of gas.

I had swaddled Juliet like a psych ward patient, sentenced to sleep, a term of not more than three hours I had figured. As I rocked Juliet in my arms, she screamed. She always fussed a little when she was tired. But then, inexplicably, she’d nod out. It would be sudden and sweet and easy.

But that night, Juliet didn’t nod out. She screamed louder than I had ever heard. She screamed for an hour as I shifted positions, cradling her in the crook of my elbow, holding her head to my chest, bouncing her gently between my knees.

Two hours passed. Juliet screamed.

I sat down on the big green pilates ball we kept in Juliet’s room. Melissa bounced her on it sometimes. Melissa claimed it settled her down and toned her abs. A win, win. I wondered if every baby had a pilates ball in their room. Probably every Jewish baby.

I bounced and Juliet’s screaming slowed to a whimper. I shushed and her eyes began to slowly fade. They closed for a moment and opened wide…and started the slow fade again, and again. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her eyelids finally sealed shut. I watched closely. They could have opened at any second. I’d been fooled before.

I slowed my bounce. My back and abs ached. But the war was finally over, and I’d won. It was an incredible feeling, transforming an apoplectic baby into a sleeping one. It still feels that way, every time.

I gently placed Juliet in her crib. She whimpered and raised her legs once and cooed. I hovered over her crib, watching her face in the dark, wondering whether the slits of her eyes were open or if the dark was playing tricks on me. I tiptoed to the door. As I reached for the handle, I heard the explosion. Juliet is a shit-fart gambler. She loses every time.
I wondered whether I could let her sleep in her shit. Whether it would weigh too heavily on my conscience for the rest of my life. Or, worse, if she’d hold it against me forever. I unswaddled her and unwrapped her diaper. When Juliet realized what was happening, she became hysterical. We were right back where we started.

I remembered that I had promised not to shake the baby. I alternated between the crook of my elbow and my chest and the ball and finally something worked. It’s a different thing every time. There’s no predicting Juliet’s preferences. She doesn’t have any yet.

I held my breath as I left the room. I crawled into bed. Every move I took towards sleep increased the odds that she’d wake up. Some nights, she cried the moment my head touched the pillow. Some nights, I laid in bed and couldn’t sleep because I opened my eyes every time I heard a sound on the baby monitor.

I looked at the ceiling in the dark and I asked Melissa if she was sleeping. She wasn’t. She never did. And the old city traffic and the air conditioner and the water heater all sounded like Juliet, crying for us for reasons none of us could figure out. We laid in bed, afraid to sleep, because a taste of honey was worse than none at all.

We watched the monitor, waiting for her little legs to start flopping up and down or for her little eyes to spring open. Then, we’d run out of our room, frantically warming bottles and changing poopy diapers while Juliet screamed for us to do it all faster. To do it all better. We were trying our best

As I gave Juliet her nighttime bottles, I wondered whether I wasn’t cut out for this. Whether I was more selfish than I ever could have imagined. Whether my perfect little daughter was the biggest mistake I’d ever made.

Then, one morning, as I was about to brush my teeth with my razor, I realized that it was six o’clock. Juliet had been asleep for five hours. I walked into her room. She was right where I left her, in the middle of her crib. Her head turned to one side, her eyes shut. I checked to see if she was breathing. I wasn’t sure. I gave her a little nudge, and her legs flopped as she sighed. Her eyes stay closed. She smiled in her sleep.

I walked back into my bedroom and Melissa was sleeping. Dreaming, probably for the first time in weeks. My girls are all sleeping, my house is quiet and full, and I am thankful.

“Olivia”

Olivia was our baby nurse. She was my sister-in law’s baby nurse too. And a lot of other – what are we called? Yuppies? Yuppies from Boston to Philadelphia who paid cash to ease the transition into parenthood. For two weeks, Olivia lived in Juliet’s room, waking up with her every night. I’m not sure how often. I was sleeping.

Olivia was strict despite her soft sweet voice. But we liked her rules. We liked knowing what to do. We breast feed for 25 minutes on each side. Not 24. We Purelled our hands, and made everyone else too as soon as they walked in our apartment. We rocked her to sleep like Olivia showed us, and put her down as soon as she was asleep so she wouldn’t get used to sleeping on us.

Olivia gave me a list of things we needed from Buy Buy Baby. I went by myself. A mistake. It was easier to get lost in Buy Buy Baby than it is in IKEA. Spatially and emotionally. The aisles are wide and the shelves are a hundred feet high, full of a million mini-sized products. It’s like the stars in space.

I labored through aisles of organic baby wipes and Oscar the Grouch pee pee tepees. My cart was still empty when Melissa called to add to my list.

“Nipple guards,” Melissa said.

I wrote it down at the top of my list - nipple guards. For nipples. Which nipples, I wasn’t sure. I looked at a wall of nipples to the ceiling. No guards. I looked back at my list, hoping to find something I could find. “Rectal thermometer.” Yes. It was. And I was starting to feel as if I had a fever.

That’s when I saw her, bobbing up and down behind a rack of onesies. The Buy Buy Baby river nymph. She had a haircut like a Pinocchio doll. Short, black, little boy in Germany hair. I saw it every couple of seconds, bouncing into view, moving closer and closer. Then, she was in front of me. Four feet tall. Spritely. The demeanor of a chipmunk.

“Need some help?” she asked.

She grabbed the list from my hands.

“I’m Rachel,” she chirped.

Rachel scanned the list, nodding at each item. She mentally mapped our route. I was saved.

“Ok - nipple guards!” she sang.

Rachel sprouted wings and flew up to the top of the nipple wall, where they keep the nipple guards. Actually, they keep the guards on a small shelf, right behind where I was standing.

“Do you know how to use these?” Rachel asked.

Rachel took one out and held it against my nipple. Over the shirt. Of course.

“The milk comes out there,” she said. “See the little hole? Sucky sucky!”

Rachel looked back at the list and skipped off down the aisle. She found the $400 portable hands free breast pump. The Dr. Brown’s bottle scrubber. The Aquafor butt jelly. Soon, the cart was full. I had everything. And all of it had to do with eating or shitting and pissing.

I was a hero.

When I got home, Olivia was teaching Melissa to breast feed. She had one hand on Juliet’s head, the other on Melissa’s – you know. A lot of women had had their hands on Melissa in the past few days. It hadn’t been as hot as I pictured.

“We want Juliet’s neck back when she’s feeding, Melissa,” Olivia said. “And with your other hand, massage the breast where it is hard.”

Olivia massaged Melissa. I dropped the enormous plastic bags.

“It still really hurts,” Melissa said.

Olivia took the bags and began rummaging through them. She put things into piles, and ordered me to put certain piles in certain places. She found the nipple guards, and unwrapped them. She pulled Juliet off of Melissa and armored Melissa’s nipple.

“Oh my god,” Melissa said.

“Good?” I asked.

“Amazing.”

“Daddy,” Olivia said. “We’re also going to need these things.”

Olivia gave me another list. In the two weeks Olivia was with us, I went back to Buy Buy Baby 9 times.

Rachel was always expecting me. She had the video monitor waiting for me. I was having the same experience as every new parent who went into the store. Needing all the same things, everything. And each thing worked when I brought it home, like it was supposed to. For every problem, there was a solution wrapped in plastic.

Olivia watched our every move, and corrected it. Our baby was eating and sleeping and pooping like a baby should. Maybe better. We were well rested, relaxed. At the end of two weeks, we were ready.

Olivia left. And it all went to shit.

"After the After Party"

Our last night at the hospital, we sent Juliet to the nursery. We felt bad about it. Like we were bad parents. We had asked for this, after all. In the middle of the night, the Mean Nurse brought Juliet in crying. She had learned to wake up when she was hungry. Phew.

Shit.

The Mean Nurse ripped off Melissa’s shirt and stripped Juliet.

“Skin to skin,” she said.

When Juliet felt Melissa’s chest, she opened her mouth wide and flailed her head, side to side. Like a fish, out of water, but wanting milk. Even with Melissa’s help, Juliet struggled to latch. When she did latch, she did it wrong and Melissa screamed. The scream startled Juliet and Juliet pulled away, taking a piece of Melissa’s nipple with her.

The screaming attracted another nurse’s attention. She came in and grabbed Melissa’s boob and Juliet’s head and mashed them together. While the Grabby Nurse grabbed, the Mean Nurse massaged, to help the milk flow. So she said.

Finally, Juliet got just the right grip. She took three hard sucks and fell asleep. We figured she was full.

The next day, they said we’d be out by ten. It was almost four when the fourth resident stopped by to repeat what the first three had said. Feed the baby. Bath the baby. Baby the baby. He had us sign a form. It said don’t shake the baby.

Eventually, the Attending came to inspect the carseat. Not the baby, not the base of the carseat in the car. Just the seat. That’s all you need to take a baby home. You can’t drive the car without passing two tests. But you can have a baby if you can get a boner and a carseat. You don’t even have to prove you put it in. Not the boner, the seat.

It still hadn’t hit me when I walked through the door with Juliet. I had thought that would be the moment. My oldest brother said there’d be a moment.

Juliet cried most of the night while we tried to figure out breastfeeding. We felt accomplished when she ate for five minutes. I got out of bed and put her over my shoulder to burp. We walked into the living room and stood, looking out the window at the lights on the Ben Franklin Bridge. I sat down on the couch and Juliet wailed. I stood, and she calmed down. I sat. She cried. I stood. She stopped. And it hit me. Daddy’s home.

“The Afterbirth”

Dad looked at Mom. Mom looked at baby. Baby looked at nothing because babies are blind. We could have sworn she saw us though. Her eyes flitted around the room. ‘So this is what all the fuss was about,’ Juliet thought.

Juliet still hadn’t cried when the nurses took her for tests. We had gotten a non-crying baby. What luck.

We went to our new room. There was dried blood on the shower floor. And on the toilet. That’s where I made the first call.

“Mom,” I said.

“Ahhhhhhh!” my Mom yelled.

“Mom,” I heard Melissa say in the other room.

“Ahhhhhhh!” I heard Melissa’s Mom yell.

When nurses brought Juliet back, she had on a bracelet and an anklet. Her anklet said she was Juliet. Her bracelet said she was Lewis, a baby boy. We looked at her and weren’t sure. We compared her to our pictures. We checked for her vagina. She was no baby boy.

The Bubbies fluttered into our room. They both claimed that Juliet looked like us when we were babies. Juliet slept through it all. They wondered about the color of her eyes. We wondered if she was Lewis, and if Lewis was a hermaphrodite.

As the sun went down, Juliet had slept for the better of ten hours. We had asked the nurses if we should wake her. They laughed, one after another.

The Bubbies came back with dinner and baby pictures of Melissa and me. My Mom also brought one of herself. At the very least, she explained, Juliet looked like she did, from the top of the mouth up. We all examined her tiny toe nails and tiny eyelashes. Melissa hoped they’d get longer, in time.

Hours passed. The trickle of nurses slowed. Juliet was bundled head to toe in pink and light blue. She slept in her bin between Melissa’s bed and my chair. Melissa and I hadn’t slept in over a day, and now we were afraid. But exhaustion trumps fear. Around midnight, 30 hours after Melissa had gone into labor, our eyes shut.

And Juliet’s opened. Our luck ran out. She screamed. I picked her up and she stopped. I put her down and she started again.

“We can’t give in to her every whim,” I said. “It sets bad precedent.”

“You can’t spoil a baby,” Melissa said. “It’s impossible.”

Hours passed. Juliet cried. We picked her up, and she stopped. We put her down, and she started again.

“We’ll take turns,” I said.

“One hour shifts?” Melissa said.

I kissed Melissa’s forehead, then Juliet’s. I cradled Juliet in my lap, and she looked up at me, I could have sworn. She furrowed her brow like something had just occurred to her. As the sun rose, Juliet’s eyes suddenly shut. She hadn’t known about day and night. The morning nurse told us most babies don’t. Moms feel them kicking at night because that’s when they’re awake. The stillness keeps them up. The motion during the day makes them sleepy.

“You have to reverse that,” the nurse said.

We tried to keep Juliet awake all morning, to reverse her. She didn’t want to be reversed. She wanted to reverse us. We couldn’t all get our way. Something would have to give.

“It’s Time, Finally”

For ten days after her due date, the McNugget didn’t come. We had thought Melissa’s belly couldn’t get any bigger. It did. Strangers stopped her on the street.

“Damn!” they said.

The anxiety made us say terrible things to each other. Things I’m not allowed to talk about. We were all about to pop. The doctor said it wasn’t safe to wait any longer. He was right.

But Melissa called me at work the day before the McNugget was going to be forced out of her fox hole. She was having contractions. We talked about them for a while, analyzed them. We had taken a labor class. Still, we weren’t sure.

“What do you think?” Melissa asked.

“I think I should come home.”

When I got home, the apartment was clean. Melissa was bent over the dryer, wincing as she folded my underwear. She asked me to make her a bagel and had a cookie for desert. In between bites, she closed her eyes and silently digested the pain.

“Do you think the food will make me shit myself?” Melissa asked.

“I think everyone shits themselves.”

We parked in the wrong parking lot and couldn’t find the elevator. Melissa’s contractions got worse as we walked down six flights of stairs. That was the first thing she told Nurse Patty, that I made her walk down the stairs. Nurse Patty didn’t care.

They hooked Melissa up to two monitors. One measured her contractions and one measured the McNugget’s heart rate. Melissa was five centimeters dilated. You have to be four for the hospital to keep you, ten to start pushing. We were half way there, but, really, we weren’t even close.

“Find my chapstick,” she whispered.

I rummaged through Melissa’s toiletries. Melissa started doing her breathing exercises.

“All I see in here are eye creams,” I said.

“So, how much did you weigh before you got pregnant?” Nurse Patty was the fifth person to ask.

“Ow!” Melissa yelled.

“Seriously, there are four jars of eye cream in here,” I said.

“You’re weight, dear,” Nurse Patty demanded.

“I need drugs!” Melissa screamed.

The epidural worked. Hours passed. Melissa read magazines and I fell asleep watching Sportscenter. It was like any other night. We had become boring. And we liked it. That’s how we knew it was time for a baby.

When I opened my eyes, Melissa was spread open like curtains on a sunny day, the doctor five fingers deep inside her.

“The next time you feel a contraction, push three times,” the doctor said.

The doctor and Nurse Patty abruptly left the room.

“Where are they going?” I asked.

“I still can’t feel anything,” Melissa said.

“Do you think they’re coming back?”

“Don’t tell them I can’t feel it.”

“I was going to stand behind you, but the bed is up against the wall.”

“You have to watch the monitor,” Melissa said. “You have to tell me when to push.”

Nurse Patty came back in the room.

“Where should I stand?” I asked.

“Grab a leg,” she said.

“Seriously?”

I watched the monitor as I held Melissa’s leg in the air. I had a front row seat to the vagastrophe.

“I think a contraction is starting,” I said.

“Are you ready?” Nurse Patty asked.

I wondered.

Melissa pushed for two hours. Still no pain. Still no McNugget. Just me and Nurse Patty, and the sun starting to rise. Then, Melissa shrieked. I looked, down there. The tip of the McNugget’s head inched forward and retreated with every push.

“She’s coming!” I yelled.

“I want more drugs!” Melissa yelled. “They’re not working!”

“Do you feel pressure?” Nurse Patty asked.

“Ohhh!” Melissa wailed.

“You have to push a little harder,” Nurse Patty said. “Just a little bit harder.”

“Harder, baby!” I said. “Harder!”

Melissa punched me. She shut her eyes and squeezed with every muscle in her body.

“I can’t do this!” she yelled.

That was the moment the McNugget’s head poked out and never went back. As always, her timing had been impeccable. Nurse Patty ran out of the room, again.

“Why the fuck do they keep leaving?” I asked.

“It feels like a ring of fire!” Melissa yelled.

“I always wondered what that song was about,” I joked.

“Shut up!”

Melissa was crying. The McNugget was coming. The doctor ran in. She stretched Melissa’s vagina like a vintage t-shirt around the McNugget’s head. The best ones are always a little small. The doctor asked me if I wanted to touch the McNugget’s head while it was still two thirds of the way inside my wife. Melissa squeezed my hand.

“I’m never doing this again!” she wailed.

With one more push, the McNugget’s head became the face of Juliet. She looked like she had been in a spaghetti and meatballs fight. And lost. She was perfect. The nurses scooped her up and toweled her off. The doctors collected the parade of horribles that followed Juliet out of Melissa. Melissa tried to look down.

“Don’t,” I said.

“My friend says hers is even tighter now,” Melissa said.

Nurse Patty placed Juliet on Melissa’s chest. The doctors set to sewing humpty dumpty back together again. Juliet squirmed and stretched. She found Melissa’s breast. Her body relaxed. She stared up at Melissa, her baby blue eyes opened wide.

“I guess I would do this again,” Melissa said. “One more time.”

“We never called anyone,” I said. “She has your lips.”

Juliet had arrived, and no one even knew. We were the only three people in the world. We had waited and waited. And now that Juliet had come, we realized that we had no idea what to do next.

"Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are"

Everett texted me, “Just read the blog…Melissa had the baby I assume.” No Everett. I did the un-Jewable. I blogged about the baby before the baby was born. Jews don’t set up the nursery before the baby’s born. We don’t have baby showers and we don’t buy baby clothes. That’s bad luck.

But I couldn’t wait. Neither can Melissa. We got Red Zinger Tea and pineapples because we heard that they induce labor. I also heard that pizza and hot dogs induce labor. If you ask around, you’ll find that every food a pregnant woman ate on the day she went into labor induces labor. It’s quite the coincidence.

Melissa spends ten minutes a day bouncing on an inflated green pilates ball, trying to shake the McNugget free. That’s what we call the baby, McNugget. Calling her by her name would be bad luck. Trying to bounce her out on a pilates ball is perfectly safe. Melissa read about it on the internet.

We’ve tried everything. Yes, everything. Perv.

The waiting is agonizing. Every minute could be the minute, but none of them are. It’s a constant disappointment. It’s a new kind of waiting, not like waiting to graduate or for your wedding day. More like waiting for Godot, a play I was supposed to have read in high school.

I read about it today, on the internet.

Wikipedia describes it like this: “Waiting for Godot follows two days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive. They claim him as an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognize him were they to see him. To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, converse, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything ‘to hold the terrible silence at bay.’”

Hmm.

At the end of the play, word comes not to expect Godot for another day. Though they’re disappointed, the men agree not to kill themselves, and agree to do so the next day, if Godot fails to come. Godot, where are you already!

Only, we know. She’s in there. We can feel her, more and more. A leg, a foot, a toe. She’s trying to get out, but there’s traffic.

Melissa got an “internal” exam last week. I imagine it felt like a prostate exam, with an English cucumber. Those are the big ones. Zero dilation and no effacement. Not even a little. Melissa looked down at her belly, anxious to get started working it off, using the pilates ball for - pilates. She looked at me. It’s been the hottest summer in history, we’ve heard. Melissa is getting more and more uncomfortable. She is ready to kill herself. Me too. Not because of Melissa. She is a perfect prego. It's the waiting. We agreed to wait another day.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept picturing Melissa rolling over and tapping my shoulder and telling me “it’s time.” I got up, walked out of our room, through the apartment and into the empty would-be nursery but for that Jewish custom to which we cling for the sake of our parents. My mother, mostly.

I stood in the McNugget’s room. It was black and empty, but I knew the walls were “polar white.” That’s purple. My eyes adjusted. I pictured where the crib would go and walked over to it. I couldn’t picture her there. I couldn’t hear her or smell her. I could only stand in her empty room, waiting anxiously for the arrival of a person I didn’t know and wouldn’t recognize when I met. Or would I? Guess I’ll know, with time – and a little luck.

"Any Second Now"

Melissa was five months pregnant, but she hadn’t thrown up once or asked for peanut butter and pickles or anything. All being pregnant meant was that Melissa had a cute little pot belly that made her look like she hadn’t taken a dump in weeks. Other than that, everything was like it always was. And really, that wasn’t so unusual. So, I didn’t think twice about asking. Yes, I asked.

“Can I go to Alex’s bachelor party?”

“When is it?” Melissa asked.

“August 6.”

"Do you care?"

“Not at all.”

She meant it too, at the time. Me going to Charleston a month before Melissa was due was no big deal. A month was all the time in the world. To both of us. Then, things started to happen, fast. Melissa went from a “b” cup to a “d.” That was nice. Soon, the belly caught up with the boobs. Not as nice. As I kissed Melissa’s belly goodbye, I noticed that it had gotten so big that her boobs looked small again. This pregnancy thing was getting serious.

“You have to have your phone, like every minute,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“Seriously.”

I gave Melissa a list of guys she could call if she couldn’t get me. She put it in the little bag slung over her shoulder and rubbed her belly. She made the sad puppy face, and asked me to call when I landed.

“I’m in Charleston,” I said. “I survived. The others weren’t so lucky.”

“Thanks for not forgetting,” Melissa said.

Alex’s bachelor party was like all the others, and since I used Alex’s real name, I won’t get into it. I’ll tell you this, though. Lap dances are no way to celebrate the impending birth of your daughter.

“Dude, this is Heaven,” my buddy said, placing Heaven’s hand in mine. “Heaven, my buddy is having a baby girl in a month. I want you to show him a good time.”

Heaven leaned in close. She smelled like strawberry bubblegum.

“Hope she doesn’t wind up here,” Heaven said.

“Me neither, Heaven. And now that you said that, there’s pretty much no chance you’ll be able to get me hard, so I’d prefer if you just didn’t touch me at all.”

Of course, I didn’t say that. I’m too nice a guy. Ask my friends. Or my wife, depending on the day. Heaven was mediocre. As a dancer, I mean. Obviously.

The sun was coming up as I fell asleep, drunk. My phone was secure in the waste band of my boxer-briefs. At 8:00 a.m., my eyes shot open. The phone had been going off, ringing and vibrating in the crotch pocket of my underwear. I had thought it was a dream. My heart was pounding. It was time. I was still drunk.

I tried to make out the caller ID. “Kim.” My wife’s sister. I sprung up in bed, scrambling to get over the safety ledge on my top bunk. I answered the phone, and Kim said a lot of words, but the only two I heard were “Melissa” and “labor.” I rummaged frantically through a pile of dirty clothes and empty cigarette packs.

“Kim! Wait, hold on. Where the fuck is my wallet!”

“So, is she?” Kim said.

I froze.

“Wait, what?” I said.

“Is she?”

“Are you asking me, Kim?”

“Oh my god.”

“Shit, Kim!”

“I’m so sorry,” Kim said. “I had a missed call from her, I just thought-.”

“I hate you, Kim.”

Of course, I didn’t say that. I hung up on Kim before she could say anything else. The other three guys in my room were still sound asleep. I took two puffs of my inhaler and found a cigarette in one of the packs on the floor. I walked out front where the sun was getting higher and higher in the South Carolina summer sky. It was already hot. The door shut behind me and locked automatically. Only two guys in the house had a key. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew they were sleeping. I didn’t have a lighter, or my wallet. Just my phone.