Pieces of Him (3 page)

“Here we go, Daddy.” The nurse comes back, her arms holding a tiny little thing wrapped up in a blanket. I barely catch a glimpse of his little blue hat and I want to bolt. I’m thinking she senses this when she says, “Just relax, sit back, hold out your hands, and I’ll do the rest.”

“I think he’s too small.”

“No, he’s just fine, almost eight pounds. He’s not as fragile as you think he is.” She smiles and bends down, gently placing him in my arms. “I’ll give you a minute alone with him,” she says. She’s gone before I can object. I let out a breath and look down at the sleeping baby in my arms and something strikes me. A pain in my chest, a pang of guilt, for bringing him into this clusterfuck of a life. I feel a sense of sadness that the only person who was willing to fight for him is gone, and I hate that for him. Regret fills me because he’ll never get to know what a good girl she was. He’ll never know how badly she wanted him. He’ll never understand how she took care of him while he was growing inside of her, how she researched every possible scenario, every possible outcome, and did whatever she could to make sure the odds were in her favor to deliver a healthy baby.

“I’m sorry, bud. This isn’t what your mom had planned for you, but you’ll be all right. I’ll figure something out. I'll make sure you’re taken care of somehow.”

I hold him that way for a while, resting his little body against my chest. It’s surreal having him here, seeing him and knowing I was nowhere near prepared for what’s happened.
But it doesn’t matter now. I can’t change any of it; all I can do is find a way to move forward. I
thank God that the nurse comes back just as he starts to make little crying sounds.

“I’m not sure what’s wrong with him,” I tell her in a full-on panic.

“He’s probably just hungry,” she says, pulling out a small plastic formula bottle from below his crib thing. She opens the bottle and screws on a nipple before handing it to me. “Hold him up a little higher,” she says moving my arm to show me how to elevate the baby so his head is slightly higher. “This helps to minimize gas.” She guides my hand with the bottle to the baby’s mouth, and sure enough, he takes it in no time.

“How’s he know to do that?” I ask her, kind of stunned that he’s latched onto the nipple so quickly.

“He just does. Miracle of life, I suppose,” she gives by way of explanation. “We’ll let him drink a bit, and then I’ll show you how to burp him. You’re doing great.”

Her words are encouraging, but they do little to ease my anxiety. Nothing can help me deal with the grandness of this moment. A moment so huge I feel small. I’m as lost as I’ve ever been. So lost I might never find my way out. I know it makes me a shitty person, an even shittier father, but the only solution I can see to this problem is to give him up for adoption. It’s the only way I know for sure we’ll both be okay. I get my life back, and he gets a good family and a better life.

“Do you have a name picked out?”

A name. Wow. That question hurts. It was a hurt I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. The question stirs a memory, makes me think of her, and how badly I wish I could bring her back.

“Hey,” she said as I pulled open the front door. I couldn’t help but notice how much rounder she looked in the belly, how happy she looked.

“Hey,” I greeted as she walked by me and into the living room. “I know I missed the appointment. I got caught up at work,” I said curtly, throwing myself down on the couch. It wasn’t the first appointment I’d missed, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. At this point, I’d say I had about a fifty percent track record of showing up.

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t have come without calling, but I just wanted you to know.”

“Know what?” I asked, letting my indifference show.

“It’s a boy.” Her words hit me somewhere, somewhere deep I guess as it would for any man hearing that he was about to father a son. I want to ask her to leave, but she looks so excited I can’t bring myself to do it.

“That’s great. Is that what you wanted?”

She smiled bright and nodded at me. “Yeah, I always heard mothers and sons are close. I can picture him playing tee ball, Max.”

“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself, babe. Take one thing at a time.”

“Right,” she responded, moving closer to me. “I was thinking … maybe we can name him Max.”

“No.” I cut her off quickly. Something about giving my son the name my asshole parents chose for me felt wrong. Something about giving my name to a baby I hadn’t planned for or wanted felt worse. “My name’s shit, Keri. What else you got?”

She hid the disappointment as best as she could, but I saw it anyway. Regardless, she gave me one of her more timid smiles and carried on.

“Brandon?”

“No.”

“Brody?”

“No.”

“Dylan.”

“No.” I shot them all down, one by one, each name worse than the next.

“Xander?”

“Xander.” I repeated the name, trying it on for size. “Xander Castillo. I like it, has a nice ring to it.”

“I like it too,” she excitedly agrees. Coming in closer, she wraps her arms around my neck and gives me a hug, effectively shocking the shit out of me. I made no moves to push her away because I’ve been trying like hell over the past few months to treat her to a kinder, gentler me. The last thing I needed was her getting sick over something I said or did, hurting the baby, and then blaming me for it. She took advantage of this fact and shoved her head in the nape of my neck and when she did, she used her new position to kiss me there.

“Keri.”

“I know, Max. I know, but it’s been months, and I just want to celebrate with you. This is amazing news.”

“We agreed.”

“We didn’t agree, you decided. My feelings are in check, Max. I know what the score is but pregnancy hormones are out of control and I need you right now.” Her lips hit my neck again then silently she kissed my jaw and with that shattered whatever resistance I had. It was the first time I’d had her since I found out about the baby, but it wasn’t the last; she hadn’t lied about the pregnancy hormones, and I made sure to take advantage as often as I could.

“Mr. Castillo?”

“Yeah?”

“A name?”

“Xander.”

“It’s a beautiful name.”

“His mother chose it.”

“I’ll make sure it’s added to his chart.”

“Thanks.”

“I imagine you’ll want to stay with him. There’s a chair in the waiting room that pulls out into a bed, and I can get you blankets and a pillow. I can sneak you into an empty patient room for a quick shower and get you a pair of scrubs to sleep in.”

“Oh, that isn’t necessary.”

“It’s the least I can do.” She smiles. She honestly thinks that I’m vying for father of the year here. I can barely decide what I’m going to do in the next ten minutes, let alone what I’m going to do for the entire night. I figure I’ll take her up on her offer, and then sneak out of here once there’s a shift change. I'll go home, get some decent sleep, and then I can decide what happens next. She walks me through the rest of the feeding, when to pull the bottle, and how to burp him. He falls back asleep as I hold him against my chest, rubbing his back. I don’t know why, but it feels almost peaceful sitting here like this with him. My mind goes back to Keri, who’s probably lying in the morgue by now, calling me and asking me to meet her at the hospital because her water had broken. Asshole that I am, I took my sweet time getting here. I showered, shaved, and stopped for a cup of coffee on the way. All the time she was in labor. Even so, when I made it here, she greeted me with her brilliant smile.

"
You made it,"
she’d said with that soft voice of hers, and I could hear the excitement and the nervousness mixed together. She’d already dilated four centimeters by the time I got here, and she kept telling me how happy she was that he was finally coming. That she couldn’t wait to meet him, to hold him, to kiss him. She had so much hope a few hours ago. So many dreams for a future with her boy, and now, she’s gone and she didn’t get to do any of those things she’d wanted. Just thinking about it makes that lead weight in my chest grow heavier, tighter to the point of causing pain. I’m not one for tears, but shit, even I grow emotional at the thought of Keri not existing in this fucked-up world. At the thought that this little baby will never know her or how she fought for him.

I can be a good mom, Max … you have a lot to give a kid.

She was crazy, fucking nuts to think that either one of us could do this. At least with her around, my role in his life would have been minimal, every other weekend and holidays, but trying to take this kid on full time would be a joke, a disaster. Fastest way to fuck up a kid is to leave him with me; what in the hell would I teach him and how would I take care of him? How in the hell will I keep him breathing when I have no clue what I’m doing?

“Do you want me to show you how to change his diaper?”

“Um, can we save that lesson for next time?”

“Sure. It’s a lot of firsts for you, been a rough few hours.”

“Yeah,” I agree with a fucking lump in my throat. She nods knowingly and grabs Xander out of my arms with practiced ease. She sets him in his little crib, and I try to escape, but she stops me before I can get far, hands me some scrubs that she scrounged up from somewhere, and leads me into an empty patient room. Shit. Keri was in this room.

“Her things are still in the closet. We have a few empty rooms right now, so we shouldn’t need this one. You can just stay in here for the night; you’ll be closer to Xander that way. I let the other nurses on duty know, and I’ll order you a dinner tray while you take your shower.”

Jesus, she’s killing me. Her kindness is too much for me to handle right now.

“Why are you doing all of this?”

“Because you look lost. You’ve been through a trauma, and you’re probably not thinking straight. I just want to help.”

Fucking. Killing. Me.

I nod through the newly formed lump in my throat and mutter my thanks.

“I’ll bring Xander in after you’ve had dinner. He should be ready to feed again by then, and I’ll show you how to change his diaper. A hospital administrator will be by to talk to you at some point as well regarding your girlfriend’s final preparations.”

She leaves me alone, and I look around not knowing what to do first. I walk to the small closet built right into the wall and pull out Keri’s duffle bag. Taking a seat by the window, I go through the contents. I open her wallet—credit card, fifty dollars in cash, insurance card, and driver’s license. Inside one of the pockets is an ultrasound picture and a picture of her and me sitting at the coffee house, probably on one of her breaks, deep in conversation. So deep, I had no idea the picture was taken, no idea who took it, or how she got it. I rest my forehead in my hand trying to will myself to get through this shit, pocket the pictures, and replace the wallet. I look through the rest of it. A book that appears to be a journal, some of her clothes, toiletries, and a couple of changes of clothes for him … for Xander. I put everything back, set it on the windowsill, and head to the bathroom ready to wash away some of this stress. I don’t know how long I stay there, letting the hot water wash over me, willing this nightmare to go away, trying to come to terms with the only realistic solution, but it doesn’t matter the time I spend here. It’s not enough. There’ll never be enough time in the world to figure out how to go back. I’ll never come up with a way to change the outcome of things. I know that better than anyone does; Keri knew it too. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think this ending would have shocked her at all. It seems almost apropos. Just another way life fucked with us both, and I deserve it, I know I do—for the way I treated her, for not giving her the things she needed from me, for not being able to love her the way she wanted but she didn’t deserve it. It would have been hard. She would have had challenges and struggles, but she was right … she would have been a good mom because she wouldn’t have taken it for granted. None of it.

Dinner’s already been delivered by the time I come out of the bathroom. I scarf down as much as I can even though I’m not hungry. As I’m finishing, the hospital administrator comes down to give me her condolences and put me in contact with one of the local funeral homes and Keri’s insurance company in order to figure out what, if any, expenses would be covered. I take the information she gives me and the reality that Keri had no one sinks in. It’s just her stupid roommates and me. She made me her family. I’m listed as her next of kin, and I didn’t even know it. I was it for her, just Xander and me. I’m the one who’s going to have to deal with her death. When her roommates, Jessica and Dana, come back, I break the news and watch them as they each break down, trying my hardest to console them when it’s the last thing I want to do. I have so much of my own shit to process. They leave me with their phone numbers, and I promise to call once I make the funeral arrangements. I’m glad when they get gone, probably the first thing I’ve been glad about since I set foot in this fucking hospital.

I sit in the armchair staring at the television, but not seeing it until Nurse Marie wheels Xander into the room.

“He’s hungry. I thought you could give feeding him another go.”