2. Tyler
TYLER
"Is that… is that a baby screaming in the background?"
"Yeah. She was on my doorstep. Her name is Harper. There's a birth certificate. Em, she's mine, and I have no idea what I'm doing, and she won't stop crying, and I tried to make a bottle, but it didn't work and—"
"Tyler." Her voice shifts, shock still in it, but underneath that, something settles into focus. The Emma who handles things. "Tyler. Breathe."
"I am breathing."
"You're not. Breathe." A pause. "Did you feed her?"
"I tried. I made a bottle, but she wouldn't take it."
"Okay. Did you boil the water?"
"I used tap water. It was faster, she was screaming—"
"Tyler."
"It was really fast—"
"No. No, no, no. You cannot use tap water for formula. You need to boil it." She's already moving. I can hear something in the background. "Do you have a kettle?"
I grab the electric kettle. My hands are shaking badly enough that I nearly drop it.
“Yes.”
"Fill it, boil it, then wait thirty minutes for it to cool. Thirty minutes, Tyler. Not five. Not fifteen. Thirty. It needs to be warm, not hot, or it'll destroy the nutrients."
Thirty minutes. Harper is going to scream for thirty more minutes, and I might not survive it. I fill the kettle and flip it on anyway.
“Okay.”
"Good. Now read me the formula instructions."
I read them aloud. My voice shakes worse than my hands. Emma walks me through it one step at a time, the way you walk someone through something critical: two ounces of cooled boiled water, one level scoop of powder, lid on, and shake until it dissolves. She makes me repeat it back twice.
"I'm setting a timer for thirty minutes," Emma says. "Don’t worry, I'm staying on the phone."
The waiting is its own kind of misery. Harper screams herself hoarse while I pace the kitchen with the phone pressed to my ear.
Emma talks. Ethan's soccer practice. Sofia's new obsession with dinosaurs, the plastic kind that she lines up along the windowsill every morning.
Normal things, real things. Things that exist in a world where I have not just had a baby left on my doorstep.
I focus on her voice and try not to think about the fact that I have been a father for approximately four hours, and I am already failing.
The timer goes off.
"Measure carefully. Two ounces exactly."
I burn my finger on the kettle lid. The word I say makes Emma sigh.
The water sloshes when I pour, some of it landing on the counter, and I measure two ounces three times before I believe it's right.
My heart is going the way it does before a penalty shot.
It's formula powder. It shouldn't feel like this.
"One level scoop."
I dip the scoop and try to level it off, and white powder explodes across the counter when I tap it. I stop. Breathe through my nose. Try again, slower, and get it into the bottle without disaster.
"Lid on. Shake it."
The powder clumps and then gradually dissolves. I shake harder. Some leaks through the nipple and soaks my hand, and I barely feel it.
"Test it on your wrist. Warm, not hot."
I squeeze a few drops. It's warm. Maybe too warm. I genuinely cannot tell anymore. I tell Emma I think it's ready, because I have to say something.
"You've got this. I'll stay on the line."
I put the phone on speaker and pick Harper up from her carrier. She's red-faced and rigid, fists balled like she’s preparing for war. I settle her in the crook of my arm and touch the bottle nipple to her lips.
She turns her head away.
"Come on," I whisper. “Please. I made it right this time. I promise."
I angle the bottle differently.
Her mouth opens. Latches. And then she's drinking, and the screaming stops so completely that my ears ring from the silence.
"Em. She's eating."
"I told you." There's a smile in her tone. "You did it."
Harper's eyes drift closed as she drinks. Her fists unclench, one finger at a time, and she makes these small, satisfied sounds that I didn't know a person this small could make.
She was just hungry. That's all it was. She was hungry and scared and in a strange house with someone who had no idea what he was doing, and that was something I could fix. I fixed it. I don't know whether to feel proud of that or just relieved that I didn't make it worse.
Probably both.
"Tyler?" Emma's voice goes quiet. "You okay?"
"No." My eyes are burning, and I don't know why. "But she's eating. So that's something."
She walks me through burping, halfway through the bottle, then again at the end, which produces a spectacular amount of spit-up on my shoulder. I have a cloth ready this time. I am learning things.
"I'm leaving Hartford now," Emma says. "Mom and Maya are packing the car. Eight-hour drive. We'll push as far as we can tonight."
I just have to survive one night.
"Thank you." My voice breaks. "Em. I don't know what I would have—"
"You're going to be fine," she says. Firm. Like she's decided it. "Call me if you need anything."
She hangs up, and then it’s just me and Harper in the too-quiet house. She's awake now, looking up at nothing with those unfocused blue eyes, and I look back at her and have no idea what to do with the next hour.
The answer, apparently, is another diaper change.
This one is catastrophic. I gag twice. I use forty wipes. I strip her naked on a towel on the living room floor because the onesie is a loss. She cries halfway through, and I talk to her the whole time, apologizing and explaining, voice pitched low, the way I've figured out she responds to.
"I know. I know. I'm sorry. Almost done."
My phone buzzes on the carpet.
Emma: On the road. Mom and Maya are with me. Hang in there.
The afternoon blurs. More bottles, more diapers, more crying.
I learn things through repetition. She settles faster against my left shoulder than my right.
She calms quicker if I walk than if I stand still.
She has a preference for which side of my chest she likes, which is a level of opinion I didn't expect from someone who has been alive for eight weeks.
Small things. Microscopic—but she's alive—and I haven't dropped her, so I'm calling it. That's the bar for today. She’s alive and unhurt. Tomorrow, maybe the bar moves. But right now I can't think that far ahead.
By late evening, I'm feeding her in the dark, both of us exhausted. She takes the bottle without protest, eyes drooping before she's finished. I burp her, and she spits up on my shoulder; I'm ready for it this time. I settle her into the carrier.
I sit on the couch next to it and watch her chest rise and fall.
What if she stops breathing? What if something happens and I don't notice? What if she's sick and I can't tell? What if that screaming earlier wasn't just hunger? What if it was something I missed? What if—
She stirs. Whimpers. I'm moving before I've decided to, lifting her, settling her against my chest. She quiets immediately, her tiny fist finding my shirt and holding on.
I'll hold her for a few minutes. Until I'm sure she's settled.
I don't put her down.
I make another bottle at some point in the night. My hands are steadier now. The motions have a shape to them. She wakes up making hungry sounds instead of screaming, which feels like communication rather than a crisis. Progress.
By early morning, we're both wrecked. I'm sitting in the armchair by the window with her heavy against my chest, watching the gray dawn come through the curtains, and I think about nothing for a while. Just her weight. Her breathing. The faint click of the heating turning on somewhere in the walls.
She's breathing. She's fed. She's safe.
I did that. Soon Emma will be here, and I won't have to do it completely alone anymore. I close my eyes and let myself believe, just briefly, that I might be capable of this.