Chapter 3
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Sammy was just dozing off to sleep after a long and stressful shift when her phone rang. She looked down, surprised to see that it was Burton. “Hey,” she answered in a sleepy voice. “Problems? What’s the matter?”
He hesitated. “I shouldn’t even be calling you.”
“Well, you have now,” she pointed out, with a laugh. “So, it’s really not a good time to tell me that you shouldn’t be calling me.”
He groaned. “The babies are kind of sick.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re really fussy, and they’ve got fevers.”
“How old are they?” she asked, her mind clearing rapidly.
“Not quite a year.”
“Ah,” she muttered, trying to keep the smile out of her tone.
“You’re laughing. Why? Does that mean it’s not serious?”
“I don’t know for sure because obviously I’m not there, and I can’t see them. So I can’t really tell you for sure, but, at that age, chances are good that they’re teething.”
“Teething?” And then he burst out, “You mean, like getting new teeth?”
“Yes, getting new teeth, so that’s quite possibly what’s happening.”
“Oh my God,” he said.
“What did you expect?” she asked in exasperation.
“I figured that they came with teeth.”
“Yeah, well, have you seen any teeth?”
There was silence, and he muttered, “No, there’s no teeth. … No, wait. There are teeth. Yeah, but they have like what, twenty-two to pop out?”
“Twenty primary teeth. That’ll take a while for all of them to poke out.”
“So, what am I supposed to do?”
“Where’s Anderson? He’s there too, I suppose.”
“Yeah, he’s walking with one of them. I’m walking with another one, and the third one we’re trying to keep asleep.”
“Not going to happen,” she noted cheerfully. “You’ll end up with that third one awake pretty soon too.” And just on cue, she heard another one screaming in the background.
Burton groaned. “How long will this last? … This teething?”
“You go through a few rounds of this, so each time could be a few days to a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” he cried out in horror.
Sammy heard Anderson groaning in the background. “Look. They’re probably fine, but, if you’re really concerned, you should bring them into emergency.”
“Emergency?” he repeated. “And then what? They tell us they’re teething?”
“They might. They’ll check them for fever, and they’ll give you a few options.” Impulsively she heard herself saying, “Look. I can come around and check on them if you like.”
“Yes, yes,” Burton muttered, his obvious relief flying through the phone connection. “Please.”
She laughed. “But that doesn’t mean I’m staying and looking after them.”
“No, no, no, I understand,” he acknowledged, “but it would be nice to know that we were not dealing with something that needed all three babies to be rushed to the hospital.”
She immediately hung up. She’d only been dozing and hadn’t even gotten ready for bed yet, but still, she couldn’t even believe that she had suggested such a thing.
She texted him. Give me your address. It came through immediately. She walked out to the car and headed in the direction of the house. As she pulled up in the front, she heard the din inside, and she just groaned—but, hey, they were sick babies, so what can you do?
She walked up and knocked on the door and heard Burton holler, “Come in!”
She opened the door and stepped inside, the noise level hitting max volume, the two men standing there, clearly miserable. Anderson had two of them, and Burton held just one.
He looked at her and muttered, “Thank you,” and such a fervent gratitude filled his words that she had to laugh.
“Hey,” she reminded them, “hopefully it’s pretty minor.”
“Yeah, I hope so. This is Anderson, by the way.”
She smiled over at him and nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen you at the hospital.”
“Yeah, I really appreciate you coming by. If it’s teething, I presume …” Then he frowned and admitted, “I don’t know anything about this.”
“Pain relief, something for the fever,” she suggested, “and you may want something cold for their gums.” She proceeded to the kitchen and said, “Let’s see what your sister would have had here. The triplets already got some of their first teeth …”
“You know they have teeth, right?” Anderson asked.
“Right, of course. I know that. However, they don’t have all their first set of teeth yet.
” Both men seemed so flustered and out of their depth that she wanted to laugh, yet gave them both a hug instead because they looked like they were in need.
As she went through the procedures of how to handle teething, another knock came at the door, and it opened.
A woman stepped in and looked at her in surprise.
“Hey,” she said, with a smile. “I see they called in for reinforcements.”
Anderson looked at the woman and muttered, “Oh, thank God you’re here, Pamela. We couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t stop crying. We fed them. We changed them. We walked them, but all the normal things wouldn’t work. Burton had to call Sammy to check up on them.”
“And what did we end up deciding?” Pamela asked her.
“They’re teething,” she said, holding one of the triplets. “I’m Sammy. I’m one of the nurses who’s been looking after their mother.” She smiled down at the triplet in her arms, who was already calming down with a little bit of Tylenol.
“Ah, and I’m Pamela, the social worker involved in the case.”
Anderson shook his head. “She’s a whole lot more than that, but I can see that she would probably try to tell you that’s all she is,” he shared with a big smile, as he leaned over and kissed her.
Shushing him, she turned back to Sammy. “Thank you for coming. I would have been here earlier but for work.” Pamela turned to Anderson and plucked one of the babies out of his arms. The little one, as Sammy watched, went straight for her and just tucked in.
“You’re the one who took the week off,” she guessed.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Not supposed to get involved with your work.”
“Oh, I hear you,” Pamela admitted, with a laugh.
Sammy nodded. “Yet I’m here too, but what are you supposed to do when these absolutely adorable babies are suffering?” she asked, with a smile. “As are the men,” Sammy added, with a bigger smile. “Yet you guys are doing great.”
Anderson shrugged. “But is there anything else we need to know about this?”
“It could go on for a while and repeats in spurts,” Sammy noted.
Then Pamela added, “This could actually last a few weeks. … I don’t want to get you guys completely overwhelmed here, but teething is, you know, part of the natural process.”
They just frowned at her, shared a worried look at each other, and groaned. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, very serious.”
Sammy had to chuckle. “Get them through this bout, and you’ll be good for a few days, a few weeks, and then chances are they will do this again, as they bring up more teeth,” she explained, with a wry smile.
They just looked at her as if it were some major trauma.
She chuckled. “If you could see your faces right now.”
“I don’t think we want to,” Anderson muttered, glaring at her now.
“This is already fairly traumatic.” Burton groaned.
“Of course it is,” Sammy confirmed, smiling, “for the babies.”
Immediately Burton winced and nodded. “Right? That’s the reminder we needed. The babies are hurting over this.”
“Right,” Anderson muttered, “so this is a normal dad thing, huh?”
“Definitely. At least it’s a normal mom and dad thing, or a single mom thing,” she added, with a chuckle.
“We’ll start with the whole normal mom thing for the moment.”
“Good, that works. You’ll need a little more patience and tolerance.”
Anderson let out his breath. “It’s not so much the patience and tolerance. It’s the worry, and I guess that’s also something that parents go through all the time.”
“When is it serious?” Burton asked.
“When is it not serious?” Sammy asked in exasperation.
“We see a lot of parents at the hospital in emergency, and it’s pretty minor.
Then again, we see parents come in with critically ill children who are like, Oh yeah, I figured they would just get over it, in situations when they should have brought the child in a whole lot earlier,” Sammy shared.
Something in her tone made Burton turn to her. “That sounds like something you don’t want to relive.”
“Damn right I don’t,” she proclaimed. “Yeah, I’ve seen some lack of treatment and care that you never want to see. But then so has Pamela because social workers also get to see some of the absolute worst in humanity.”
“Right,” Anderson noted, “and, of course, we too tend to think that we see it because we’ve been out in the military dealing with all kinds of issues. Yet you both have been in the trenches right here in this small town.”
Sammy nodded. “In this instance, we’ve all had experience and exposure to some of the worst that people can do to each other,” Sammy shared, “but this is not what we’re talking about right now. This teething is not anything that will affect the triplets long-term.”
“And it’s not your fault either,” Pamela added, eyeing Anderson, then looking back at Burton. “This is literally teething. Just teething.”
Anderson stared down at the little girl who was even now calming in his arms, but she was still looking a little hot and bothered.
“You could try a cool bath,” Pamela suggested. “You can try any number of things. Every baby is different.”
Anderson brushed the hair off his face and checked on each of the three Lisas—technically Lisa, Lily, and Lana.
“They do love their bathtime,” Burton noted. “I’ll go run it now.” And he grabbed one of the Lisas and headed into the bathroom.
Sammy followed, not sure what she was supposed to do now. She watched as he confidently ran a warm bath, and she smiled. “Looks like you’ve had a little experience.”
Startled, he looked back at her and grinned. “Maybe a little bit of experience just recently because of these babies, but it certainly hasn’t been any experience that I’ve ever had prior to this.”
“Well, you’re acting like it’s old news now,” she said, with a smile.
“In that case one or the other of us is lying,” he declared immediately. “Absolutely got to be lying involved.”