Chapter 26 – Dice
26
DICE
Seven Months Later
I groaned when my phone rang in the middle of the night. “Hello,” I answered sleepily.
“Hello. Is this Mr. Fox?”
“Yes,” I said and sat up in bed, feeling much more alert. No one called me Mr. Fox.
“This is Jodi. I’m a social worker at Hillsdale General Hospital. I’m calling to let you know Tawny Marshall is in labor.”
“Okay, okay,” I stammered. “Is everything okay?”
“As of right now, everything’s fine,” she assured me.
“What does that mean? As of right now?”
“Things can quickly change with labor and delivery, but everything is going according to plan at the moment,” she clarified.
“Oh, okay. Well, it will take me a little while to get there, but I’m on my way,” I told her. “Please call me if anything changes between now and then.”
I ended the call and reached over to wake Daphne, but she was already awake. “That was the hospital. Tawny’s in labor.”
She jumped out of bed and screamed in delight while doing an awkward little dance. “Sorry! I know we’ve been trying to keep a lid on our excitement in case things don’t work out, but I had to get that out of my system.” She exhaled heavily and closed her eyes while making a cleansing motion with her hand. After nodding once, she opened her eyes. “Composure regained. Let’s go.”
While I rushed around the house like a madman, she was calmly gathering her things while frequently tapping the screen of her phone. I was about to ask her what she was doing when the doorbell rang.
“That’s Ember,” she said.
“What?”
“She’s here to get Diablo.”
“Oh, right,” I said and hurried to the door.
Ember laughed when she saw me. “Daphne was right. You are frazzled.”
“I’m not frazzled. This is a normal response. She’s the one who’s unnaturally calm.”
“Because I have a plan,” Daphne said and placed a kiss on my cheek. She handed me my keys, phone, and coffee before she picked up her bag and her own coffee.
“Ready?” Ember asked.
“Ready,” Daphne said.
I followed her out the door and into Ember’s SUV before I realized something wasn’t right. “What are we doing? And where’s Diablo?”
“We’re taking you to the helipad. Shaker’s going to fly you to the hospital. We’ll get Diablo on our way back,” Dash said.
“You fuckers better not leave without me!” Ink shouted as he ran across his yard, halfway dressed. He practically fell into the backseat. “Please tell me someone has coffee.”
“I got you,” Ember said and handed him a Blackwings tumbler.
“You’re the best,” he said and took a large sip. “Hot! Hot!”
“It’s coffee, man,” Dash laughed.
“I always forget how efficient these things are.”
“I put a couple of ice cubes in mine so I can drink it right away,” Daphne said.
“That’s brilliant,” Ink replied.
“Shit! I need to call Badger and Macy,” I blurted.
“I already did. They’re meeting us at the launch pad,” Daphne said.
“I’d be lost without you,” I said.
“I don’t know about that, but you would certainly be an unorganized mess,” she teased.
It took me a few minutes to realize Dash was driving toward the back of the farm instead of toward the front gate. “Where are we going?”
“When I asked Shaker if he would fly us to the hospital when it was time, he moved his helicopter over here, so we didn’t have to drive to the clubhouse to leave,” Daphne explained.
“You’re the best,” I said.
“Get your own lines, Casanova,” Ink said and jabbed me with his elbow.
“Have your own baby.”
He gasped in mock offense. “Take it back before you jinx me with your wicked words.”
“Fine. I take it back,” I laughed.
“We’re here,” Ember announced.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “I didn’t realize how much I was counting on that two-hour drive to get my shit together until just now.”
“Relax. You’ve got plenty of time. It usually takes a long time to have a baby, especially when it’s the first one,” Daphne said.
“It took me twelve hours to have Raven and ten to have Falcon,” Ember said.
“Yeah, but your mom had the twins in a couple of hours,” Dash added.
“That was completely different, and you know it,” she said and turned around to face me. “That was a special situation. She was in her late thirties, she’d already had three kids, and she was being held hostage when she went into labor.”
“I know. I was there when they rescued her,” I reminded her.
“Oh, that’s right. You and Ink were prospects.”
Badger opened the door and leaned down to look inside. “Are y’all coming or what?” he asked impatiently.
“Sorry. Dice is having a moment. We’re coming now,” Daphne said and got out of the car.
“Fine. I’m frazzled and freaking out,” I admitted. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
“There’s not as long as you do it in a timely fashion,” Badger said.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said to Ember and Dash as I got out of the SUV.
“Good luck!” Ember said. “Be sure to keep us updated.”
“We will,” Daphne promised.
Shaker didn’t waste time with pleasantries or an overview like he usually did before he took off. Once we were seated and the door was closed, we were in the air.
After several minutes of silence, his voice crackled in the headset covering my ears. “Good morning, everyone. We should arrive at the hospital in about forty minutes. Daphne, I believe you’re the only one who hasn’t flown with me before. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you,” she said.
While the rest of the group started talking, I stared out the window and tried not to throw up. It felt like I’d been waiting forever for the day Tawny went into labor to arrive, and once it had, I suddenly felt like I wasn’t ready. What was I thinking? I didn’t know anything about taking care of babies and raising children. Daphne was all in, but I couldn’t expect her to handle everything. It was too much. I’d bitten off more than I could chew, and there was nothing I could do about it. My chest tightened, and I found it hard to breathe, while my stomach rolled with nausea.
“Do you need a barf bag?” Ink asked, causing me to turn my head toward the other passengers. “Oh, fuck.”
“Dice?” Daphne asked. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s fine,” Badger said.
“He doesn’t look fine.”
“That’s the panicked look of a man who’s about to become a dad for the first time. It’s normal,” he said.
“Dice, honey,” Macy said softly. “No one feels like they’re completely ready when the baby comes. It’s normal to feel like you’re going to screw everything up because you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t have to know everything at once. You’ll learn as you go, and you have plenty of people who’ll help you along the way.”
“Can you keep talking?” I managed to ask. “I think it’s helping.”
Macy nodded with a small smile. “For the first few weeks, all you need to worry about is eating, sleeping, and changing diapers. They’ll give you something at the hospital that tells you how much and how often to feed the baby. They’ll also give you information about sleeping. And the diapers are easy. They have indicator lines on the outside that change color to let you know the diaper is wet. If something else comes up or you think something’s wrong, you can call me or any of the old ladies any time and ask us anything you need to. Not a one of us will give you any grief, no matter what you ask.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I have complete faith in you, and I think you’ll do just fine,” she said, but it sounded like there was more she wanted to say.
“But?” I asked.
“It’s not really a but … it’s well,” she said and cleared her throat. “If, for some reason, you truly don’t think you can do this, Badger and I will. I assumed you knew that even though we never said it, but maybe you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted.
“Well, now you do, but like I said, I have complete faith in you. You and Daphne are going to be great parents.”
Ink cleared his throat loudly. “And I’m going to be the coolest uncle ever.”
“I’m going to tell Uncle Buck you said that,” Daphne teased.
“Go right ahead. I’ll tell him he’s my role model,” Ink said and stuck out his tongue.
“Well played,” Daphne said.
“I hate to interrupt, because this has been one of my most entertaining flights, but I’m going to need y’all to be quiet so I can communicate with air traffic control to land,” Shaker said.
“We’re here?” I blurted.
“Almost,” he said. “Take some deep breaths, man. You’ll be fine.”
He lied. I was not fine. I was a pale, sweaty, shaky mess when I entered the hospital. In fact, I looked so bad that one of the staff members offered me a wheelchair.
“He’s fine,” Badger answered for me. “It’s just new dad nerves.”
I grabbed onto Ink’s arm as a wave of nausea washed over me, and a pain shot through my abdomen. “Something’s wrong,” I managed to say before I bent forward and threw up in the closest thing I could find, which happened to be a potted plant.
“Dice?” Daphne asked and placed her hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“Something’s wrong,” I repeated and grimaced in pain.
“What hurts?” she asked.
“Stomach,” I groaned.
“We’ll take that wheelchair,” Badger said.
Two people rushed over to where we were standing. Ink was using his body to keep me on my feet, so I basically fell into the wheelchair when he moved to the side. Somebody put one of those tiny little basins in my hands, and then we were moving.
“You two go check on Tawny,” Daphne said. “We’ll go down to the emergency room with him.”
I knew something serious was going on when we bypassed the waiting room and went straight to a patient room. The pain continued to get worse, and I threw up a few more times. The last thing I remembered was them giving me some medicine in an IV.