The doorbell rang. Glit slipped out of the room to answer it.
“Matthew and I wanted to wait to meet him before we decided on a name,” Damien admitted. At the time it had felt like a good choice, but now the possibilities were overwhelming. Seeing his son’s small button nose and pouty lips put more pressure on him than ever. They weren’t deciding a name for a concept anymore—they were deciding it for someone who was there in their arms and depending on them not to fuck it up. “Matthew, do you have any ideas?”
“I might,” Matthew admitted, but was unable to complete his thought. Glit returned to the room with two paramedics in tow. They’d brought along a stretcher.
The next several minutes proved chaotic. The paramedics chased away a swarm of Single Dads, identified Damien as the father of the child and Gwynn as Matthew’s father, assessed Matthew and the baby quickly, then instructed that the child be held by a trusted family member while they transferred Matthew to the stretcher. All of a sudden, Damien found himself holding a very small, very delicate, and slightly sticky human.
A human that he’d made.
He peered down at his son’s wrinkled face and fell in love all over again.
“Um, wait,” Matthew said as the paramedics went to move him. “I’m—ugh.”
Damien switched gears from sentimental to hyperalert. “Ugh” was not a healthy sound, and he found himself afraid that whatever had caused Matthew so much grief in the first place had come back for him. “Matthew?”
“I—ahh.” Matthew winced. “Okay. Okay, I’m gross, but you can lift me.”
The paramedics transferred Matthew from the bed onto the stretcher. In the place where Matthew’s ass had been was something red, slimy, and vaguely jellyfishesque. It was approximately ten inches across and one inch thick at the middle, but thinner toward the perimeter. Beneath its translucent, slightly bloody membrane was a mass of blood-rich nightmare fodder that would make a Bobbit worm look like a puppy in comparison.
The placenta.
Damien almost dropped the baby.
“Holyfuck,” Damien gasped, scrambling back as far as the cluster of people around the bed would allow. “It’shuge.What the hell! No one told me it’d be this big!”
Both paramedics already looked sick of his bullshit.
“It supplies blood, manages waste, and provides nutrients to the baby, Knot,” TD said once he was done laughing. “Did you think it could be small?”
“The placenta is intact,” Glit observed. He’d donned another glove and wastouchingit. The way it moved like jelly under his fingertips ensured that Damien would feel forever nauseated by anything that wobbled. “Matthew, do you want to eat this thing or what?”
And so it was that Damien received his first lesson in parental multitasking—noping the fuck out of a room full of vile, treacherous men while protecting his newborn from the evils of the fleshy pancake he’d once been symbiotically attached to.
“Welcome to fatherhood, Knot!” Gwynn called after him, laughter in his voice.
Harley pumped the air with his fist. “One of us! One of us!”
Years later, Damien wouldn’t remember the uncomfortable ride in the back of the ambulance with Gwynn, or the fact that the Dad Police had grounds to arrest him for the crimes he’d committed against the hot dogs he’d left on the grill. What he would remember was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt on the way down the stairs, the alien anomaly chilling on his bedsheets be damned.
49
Matthew
Bryan Broderick Bigg was born at just short of seven and a half pounds and a hair over nineteen inches long. He had sparse dark hair that covered most of his head, ten perfect fingers, and ten adorable toes. According to the hospital staff, he was as healthy as could be, which meant that he was allowed to stay in Matthew’s hospital room while they were kept overnight for observation.
Matthew spent as much time as he could with Bryan in his arms, establishing the skin to skin contact that cemented their bond. He’d forgotten how good new baby smell was, and how quickly it made him forget the pain of labor.
The next morning Matthew was discharged and wheeled from his hospital room into the lobby. Like in any metropolitan hospital, it was chaotic. Men and women occupied the rows of waiting room chairs, some sleeping, others glued to their phones, and some with their hands clasped between their knees while they stared at the floor. Nurses in scrubs of all colors and patterns whipped by, some at a run, and others only at a jog. A garbled announcement proclaimed something Matthew only half understood. He was too distracted by what he saw near the hospital’s main entrance to pay it much attention.
Damien and Emily were waiting for him.
“Daddy!” Emily squealed when she spotted him. She broke from Damien and sprinted across the lobby, skidding to a stop at Matthew’s side. She craned her neck and leaned over Matthew while the nurse wheeled him onward, getting as close to the baby as she could without touching him. Damien had no doubt told her that her new brother was delicate, and that she’d need to be extra careful around him. “Daddy, look at the baby! What’s his name?”
“Bryan.”
“Bryan!” She hopped away from Matthew and skipped back to Damien. “Mimi, can we call him Bimimi?”
“Only if we can call your dad Mimimi.”
