11. Liv
Chapter eleven
Liv
Three different temperatures. And I don't know what is normal for Iris.
And Josh is at work.
Iris squirms on the changing table. She’s fussy. She can’t be hungry. I fed her twenty minutes ago. She’s not wet. I just changed her diaper. She just can’t seem to settle.
I have three numbers and one fussy baby.
Probably fine is not a plan.
I text Josh.
Iris seems off. Three different temperatures. High of 100.2. Pediatric contact?
The stroller is in the living room where we left it last night. I start packing it while I wait.
Bottle cooler in the under-carriage. Spare onesie. Diaper bag. Blanket. Rain shield. Giraffe.
Who knew babies were such high maintenance. I click my brass pen twice while I run through the checklist.
My phone buzzes.
Already done. Dr. Barkwell, peds wing. Side entrance, third floor. They’re expecting you.
Not “I’ll look into it.”
Not “let me make a call.”
Already done. The path cleared before I finished asking.
He did not tell me to wait for him. He did not ask if I was sure. He did not take the decision out of my hands.
He opened the door and trusted me to walk through it.
I pocket the phone and turn my attention to Iris.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Field trip.”
She does not look reassured.
I lower her into the stroller, snapping the left waist clip, then the right. Done. Until I notice two completely mysterious straps pinned behind her back.
I stare at them.
Right. Five-point harness.
I sigh and unclick the first two buckles to fish the shoulder straps out. Iris lets out a disgruntled squeak as I awkwardly maneuver her little arms through the nylon.
“Don’t give me that look,” I tell her, finally snapping all the pieces together into the central buckle. “I’m new at this.”
Iris stares up at me, her tiny brow furrowed in deep, four-month-old skepticism.
I pause. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
I pick up the plush giraffe and tap it gently against her nose. She blinks, distracted for a split second. She is still fussy but no sign of the atomic tomato.
There is a version of me that would have called Josh to confirm the route, the side entrance, the doctor’s name, and whether I should bring anything else.
That version has not slept much.
This version has notes.
I steer the stroller to the door. The wheels catch briefly on the threshold before rolling free.
***
The nurse at the third-floor desk looks up before I’ve reached the counter.
“Dr. Miller’s family?”
“Yes.”
That answer came too fast.
Rationally speaking, or the next eight days, I am the closest available category.
She directs me down the hall. Dr. Barkwell is already there with a consult slip with Iris’s name written across the top. She was obviously given some information before I arrived. I don’t know what Josh stepped away from to arrange it.
Dr. Barkwell looks up from the consult slip. “Are you mom?”
“No,” I say. “But I have notes.”
She nods and reaches for the thermometer.
The check takes eleven minutes.
Dr. Barkwell examines Iris, asks when she last ate, how much she took, how many wet diapers she has had since morning, whether she has been unusually sleepy, whether she has vomited, whether she has been pulling at her ears.
I answer the first three from the log.
The next two, I answer before looking down.
Dr. Barkwell officially diagnoses her as “perfectly fine.” A 100.1 temperature is completely normal at this age. As long as it doesn’t spike past 101 and she keeps eating, we’re in the clear.
“Any other questions?”
“Two.” I ask them. She answers both without padding the response. I appreciate that.
I thank her. I settle Iris back into the stroller — she’s mostly asleep, whatever had been bothering her has been, apparently, quieted by the warmth of the room and being held. I check the harness buckle. I turn toward the exit signs.
***
The corridor branches twenty meters past the elevator bank. Just before I commit to the right fork, a voice bleeds through the glass of a nearby set of double doors. Flat, direct, and absolutely certain.
It takes me a second to place it.
Josh.
It sounds nothing like his apartment voice. Nothing like the low, contained register I have been hearing at two in the morning, half asleep, with a bottle between us and Iris making her working-it-out sound.
I slow. Then look.
Through the window, a cluster of residents is gathered around a case board. Josh stands at the front in scrubs, one hand resting casually on the board’s edge. I can’t hear every word, but I immediately recognize the rhythm. He has total command of the room.
I pull the stroller to the wall.
When a resident asks a question, Josh pauses, rephrases, and waits.
He doesn’t rush them. He just watches until their pen stops moving, and then he continues.
Iris breathes softly below me, her chin dropped to her chest.
A second resident raises a question. Josh points once at the board and the resident nods and writes. Josh steps to the next case. The group shifts with him. Josh asks a question. A resident answers. Josh gives another nod and moves forward.
I should have turned for the exit four minutes ago. I am still at the window.
I have seen Josh steady in my kitchen with a crying baby against his shoulder.
I have seen him tired enough to scrub the same bottle twice.
This is different.
My world is full of arrogant men who yell because they are afraid no one will listen.
Josh does not raise his voice.
He does not have to.
I force my eyes down to the stroller to remember what I’m supposed to be doing.
The far door opens.
A charge nurse comes through with a chart, moving at the pace of someone mid-task with several others behind it. She takes in the stroller and Iris asleep. She takes in me, standing there with my hand on the handlebar in front of a window I have no reason to be standing in front of.
She puts it together quickly.
Stroller.
Baby.
Then raises her voice toward the resident group without breaking stride.
“Dr. Miller. Your wife is here with the baby.”