Zero to 165

by A. R. Moler

  Cam's arm was crooked under the infant's head. As soon as the nurse let go, the baby relaxed and began to settle.

  "Wow, I've never seen her act like this. Are you sure you've never met her until today?" asked the nurse.

  "Sometimes biology trumps logic," said Mason.

  The nurse stood watching for a minute. Cam cuddled Jocelyn close to his chest, terrified he would drop her or squeeze her the wrong way. She seemed content in his arms and intermittently stared up at him. Satisfied that the situation seemed under control, the nurse left. Mason grabbed a stool and sat down beside Cam.

  "Do you think she… likes me?" said Cam. His throat was so tight he could hardly get the words out.

  "Yes, very definitely," said Mason.

  "Can you check her out and see if you find out what's wrong besides, well, the psi stuff?"

  "Of course."

  Mason slid an arm around Cam's shoulders, hugging him, and gently touched the baby's arm.

  ***

  Mason touched his fingers to the baby's skin and opened all his senses. He could feel the sedatives in her bloodstream. They were slowing her nervous system down, making her less responsive. In the given situation, he supposed it was the best the medical staff could come up with. The NG tube was a minor annoyance to her and there was discomfort where the IV was in her arm. There was nothing majorly wrong on a physical level, mostly just frazzled, jangled nerves traumatized by too many unfamiliar touches by headblind but well meaning staff. In short, typical psi trauma was totally overwhelming the immature nervous system. There was still some confusion but she was as happy as she was likely to get at the moment. She was being held by someone whose presence didn't hurt.

  "She's pretty much okay, just incredibly traumatized and unhappy from the whole deal. I suspect she doesn't even begin to comprehend why her mommy won't come and cuddle her," said Mason.

  "Normal psi problems?"

  "Yes. Not that that hasn't sparked off some physical problems in response, but she's not in any sort of life-threatening danger.

  "Been there, done that… and I'm an adult," said Cam.

  "Uh-huh. We need to get her out of here as soon as feasible. I think I need to call Peter and see if he can arrange some Division P clout to make it happen."

  "Okay. Just…" Cam trailed off.

  "Just what?"

  "Just stay here with us for a little while first. I'm so afraid I'm going to do something wrong."

  Mason gave him a smile. "You're doing just fine. And I don't have to go call right this minute anyway." Mason kissed him softly on the temple.

  ***

  Melody watched from across the room. They're a couple, she decided. The way the doctor had his arms around Mr. Bradshaw. The way the father leaned against him. The kiss. They are so in love, she thought, and now they're a family.

  It was unbelievable how content baby Josie was in her father's arms, almost like magic. Good. After losing her mother so tragically, the child deserved a chance at a happy life.

  ***

  It took a little coaxing but Mason convinced the doctor assigned to Jocelyn's case to delay the next dose of sedative. After all, the infant was drowsing quite peacefully in Cam's arms, with all her vital signs strong and steady.

  Cam had finally relaxed a bit, fingers tracing lightly over delicate baby skin. Mason went out into the hallway and called Peter to try and initiate proceedings for taking the baby out of the hospital.

  "I'll get Bottman on it if possible," Peter promised, referring to Division P's director. "If Cam's name is already on the birth certificate as the father, I suspect it shouldn't be too hard. Damn… Talk about a bombshell. How's Cam holding up?"

  "Fair. I think he's still in shock just a little bit, but the baby needs someone so badly, he's trying to step up."

  "How 'bout you?" asked Peter.

  "Uh… I'm problem solving and I don't think it's quite entirely sunk in that Cam has a daughter."

  ***

  A little trickle of relief threaded its way through Cam as Mason returned to the PICU. The nurse, Melody, had said it was time to feed Jocelyn and Cam wasn't really sure what that entailed, but he suspected he wasn't going to get handed a bottle.

  "Do I need to hand her back to you?" Cam asked.

  "Nope, you're fine. Truthfully, we never have enough people to hold all our little ones when parents aren't around." She did something with the long slender tube taped to the side of the baby's face and attached a plastic cylinder to the end of it. "I'm going to clip this to your collar," she told Cam." Just let it dangle. There shouldn't be more than a few inches difference between where the bottom of this is and where her belly is."

  "This is how you're feeding her?"

  "Between the seizures and her refusal to eat, it was necessary. Try not to worry. You know… since she's actually so mellow with you holding her, I'll go get a pacifier. I'm not sure she has any sucking reflex left but it's worth a try." It took Melody a minute to go find one. "Tap it against her mouth and see if she's interested." She handed the pacifier to Cam.

  He did as he was told and his daughter slowly opened her mouth a little and allowed him to put it in. She made slow lazy sucking motions for a few seconds as her blue-gray eyes studied him. Cam stroked her fist with a finger. She was so unbelievably beautiful. The wisps of dark hair, that intent gaze, the way her fingers clung to his index finger like he was her last hold on survival… Cam's chest tightened and he realized he would do anything in the world to keep her safe.

  "I'll fix it. I promise. I'll find a way to protect you from all of this… somehow," he whispered.

  ***

  Half an hour later Cam reluctantly allowed the nurse to put Jocelyn back in her little bed. The baby definitely wasn't happy with the plan and screamed so hard her pulse raced and her oxygen sats dropped. It took all of Cam's self-control not to push Melody out of the way and scoop his daughter back up into his arms. Mason was standing right beside him and hugged Cam tightly while sedatives were administered to Josie.

  "Josie will be okay," Melody said. "The meds will help her sleep. Why don't you go to the cafeteria and take a break?"

  "I'd… I'd rather stay here," Cam said.

  "You and I need to talk for at least a few minutes," Mason said. Cam looked at Mason for a long moment and acknowledged that Mason had a point.

  He let Mason guide him out of the PICU and down the hallway. There was a room labeled "chapel" at the far end of the hall. When they went in, it was empty. Mason sat down on one of the wooden benches and gestured for Cam to sit beside him. Cam did so.

  Cam felt uneasy and wiped out tired and had absolutely no idea what to say.

  "Are you okay?" Mason asked.

  "Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

  "In the past eight hours, you've found out you're a father, that your daughter is suffering pretty badly from psi shock, and you've just had eighteen years worth of responsibility dumped in your lap with no warning what so ever."

  "I know this isn't what you signed on for. I'm sure you envisioned a child-free life with me. If you want to opt out, I get it. This is a thousand times more complicated than you and me or DADT or Division P issues. I just…" Cam's voice broke. He wasn't sure if he had the right to ask for this kind of commitment from Mason.

  "You don't have to do this alone. I'm not going to walk out on you. I love you, Cameron Bradshaw. I won't deny that my head is still spinning a little about all of this, but that baby needs you. And I need you too. You asked me a few months ago if I'd ever wear a ring for you. The answer has always been yes. For better and for worse and all the things that happen along the way."

  Cam pulled Mason into his arms and held on tight. "I love you so much." His mouth found Mason's and he kissed Mason. It was long and slow and more than a touch desperate.

  They sat there in each other's arms until Cam's stomach growled and Mason chuckled. "I think there was supposed to be food involved here at some point."

  ***
<
br />   It may have been called a baby superstore but Mason thought it was something of a nightmare cross between death by cuteness and gadget hell. After staring at car seats for ten minutes, he gave up and called Tyra.

  "I need help," he said.

  "With what? You took out of here this afternoon with Cam like something was on fire. Is everything okay?" she asked.

  He spent the next five minutes trying to give her the short version.

  "Wow. Most people get nine months warning to figure stuff out."

  "Yeah, something like that. I need you to give me a clue on what I need to buy to get us through the next week or two. I'm waiting on some red tape to go through to try and get her released into my care maybe by the end of the day tomorrow."

  "Are you sure that's a good idea? She's been in the ICU for several days," Tyra said.

  "She has a sensory processing disorder that I've run across with the people I do the emergency planning work for," said Mason. It was a response that Peter had designed to try to explain the psi problems in a more easily accepted way. "The longer she stays in the chaos of the PICU, the harder it is on her."

  "Okay," Tyra replied. She began listing off the couple dozen essentials, starting with bottles and diapers and ending with a specific type of car seat. "You also need to come get the cradle."

  "Are you sure? I did actually make it for Libby." Mason had made a beautiful cherry hooded cradle when Tyra was pregnant with Libby. Tyra had protested at the time about receiving such a lavish handmade piece of furniture from her friend. Mason's rationale had been that that was as close as he was ever likely to get to making furniture for his own child.

  "Mason, she's too big for it now and it was always really too gorgeous a thing to keep for myself. You need it for Jocelyn."

  "Thank you. You know I'm going to be calling you in desperation for months on end."

  Tyra giggled. "I know. Congratulations hon'."

  Mason hung up and stood staring at the ceiling for a minute, thinking about the cradle. He had poured love and elbow grease into making it, sure that he would never have cause to use such a special thing. Now… he had promised to help Cam raise his child… Their child? He'd never have a biological child, but there were a lot of parents in the world that shared no genetics with their children, not to mention all the families blended by divorces and remarriages.

  A part of his brain was entertaining thoughts of a minor panic attack. He took a couple of deep breaths. How was this any different from what dozens of other people had gone through? If he'd been straight, he could be facing a girlfriend announcing an accidental pregnancy. You had to let the shock blow on past and then get on with solving the problems.

  As Mason loaded a shopping cart with things from the list, two separate clerks offered to help the "husband sent out on his own." He firmly refused, not wanting to get pulled into having to give explanations. Cart nearly full, he paused next to a bin of stuffed animals. The one that caught his eye was a sheep with tight curly fur and a dopey smile. He set it in the cart, wondering if it was just the first of hundreds of toys he'd buy over the coming years.

  ***

  "How'd the shopping thing go?" Cam asked. He was sitting on a stool beside Josie's hospital bed, with his hand on her foot when Mason came back into the PICU. It was ten p.m.

  "Fair. I resorted to calling Tyra because I couldn't figure out what qualified as necessary and what was just trendy," replied Mason.

  Cam gestured at the object in Mason's hand. "What's that?"

  "A sheep."

  Cam smirked. "A sheep?"

  "I thought it was cute. Everything else I bought was… practical. How's she doing?'

  "All right, I guess. As far as I can tell, she's doped to the eyeballs and sleeping until the next time she gets fed."

  Mason sat the sheep off to one side of the tiny bed. "At some point you're going to need some sleep too."

  "I don't want to leave her alone. I mean I know she's not alone, but you know what I mean."

  "Go talk to Melody. This is a hospital, which means they have beds. I'll stay with Jocelyn for a while and you can try to catch a couple of hours of sleep. Besides, if it's quiet in here for a little while, I can do my thing and try to settle her nervous system down some."

  "Um, okay, what about tomorrow?"

  "If we can wrangle getting her transferred to a regular room in the morning, it might have a sofa," said Mason.

  "One of us is going to have to drive all the way back home to get clothes for us."

  "That should probably be me." Mason laid a hand on Cam's shoulder.

  "If you spend the night dumping energy into her, you're going to be running on empty," Cam said.

  "Maybe, it's not that kind of problem though. It's more finesse work, like me working on the nerve problem in your leg after the accident."

  "Still…"

  "I'll try to get some sleep in the early morning. We need your car too, because the back seat will handle the car seat better than my Mustang."

  ***

  Cam looked almost dead on his feet as he carried the basket style car seat into the house.

  "Just go on to the bedroom," said Mason. "You both need some decent sleep." Mason lugged a box of feeding tube and monitoring equipment as well the backpack style diaper bag he had bought a couple of days before. He ditched the box in the den; it wasn't likely to be needed.

  Cam sat the car seat on the bed and began carefully unlatching the harness so he could remove Josie from it. He stopped what he was doing and sat staring at the cradle that was three feet from the bed.

  "Where did that come from?" Cam asked.

  "I made it."

  Cam looked both surprised and puzzled. "Not in the past two days, most of which you spent in Richmond with me and Josie."

  "I originally made it for Tyra's daughter Libby. Tyra insisted I come get it back since we actually need it," replied Mason.

  "It's gorgeous. Should I put her in it to sleep?"

  "Maybe later. Right now, take off your shirt. Strip Josie down to her diaper. Change it and then the two of you are going to get a little sleep, together."

  "Jesus, won't I squish her or something?" Cam looked worried.

  "I'll keep an eye on you both, but it's unlikely. Right now you're wound so tight, if she so much as moves, I think you'll notice," said Mason.

  It took a number of minutes to remove the zippered snowsuit and the rest of the baby's clothes. Lying back against a stack of pillows, Cam stretched out on the bed. Josie lay curled on his chest, her naked skin against his, fast asleep over his heart. He had one hand cupped around her little butt and the other on her back. Mason draped one of Cam's sweatshirts over her for warmth.

  Mason grabbed his laptop from the den and sat slouched in the easy chair in the corner of the bedroom that he sometimes used for reading. This was exactly what Cam and Josie needed. Bonding. No hospital. No strangers. Just a fragile psi baby and her daddy.

  Josie slept for a couple of hours, and woke making small sounds of fretting. Cam jerked awake, hand tightening slightly against Josie's body.

  "It's okay. She's safe. I think she might be hungry," said Mason. He carefully scooped Josie up off Cam's chest. Cam sat up rubbing his hands down over his face then back through his hair.

  Josie was still fussing slightly. It was nothing like the frantic cries in the hospital.

  "Why don't you go take a shower while I feed her and dress her?" Mason suggested.

  "That sounds like a fabulous idea. Do you need me to do anything to help you though?"

  "No, I've got it."

  ***

  A long hot shower did amazing things for tired, kinked muscles. Cam toweled off and put on sweats and a T-shirt before going to look for Mason and Josie.

  He found them in the den and stood for a time watching them. Mason was sideways on the sofa, knees bent so that Josie's back rested against them, her little legs crooked against his stomach. A short chubby bottle was in his hand and h
e was feeding her. Her fingers were tightly wound around his index finger. Mason was talking to her softly.

  "I guess I'm going to have to hit up my friend Tyra for advice on clothes for you, because the footy pajama look's going to get boring. I bought you six of them. She said it was a good default choice. Do you like dresses? Seems like that would make your legs awfully cold. Ten years from now, though, you're probably going to be rolling your eyes at me and demanding designer jeans and two hundred dollar sneakers."

  Cam thought Mason looked both relaxed and happy with Josie in lap. Listening to him jokingly speculate about ten years in the future loosened something in Cam's chest that he didn't know was knotted up. He walked across the room and sat on the sofa with his thigh pressed against Mason's feet.

  "Are we really going to be arguing with her about two hundred dollar sneakers a decade from now?" Cam asked.

  "Or low cut shirts, or boyfriends, or borrowing the car, although that's more like sixteen years."

  "Oh God, I don't even want to think about boyfriends. She's still in diapers. Oh fuck, that means potty training…"

  Mason smirked. "And teeth will fall out and there will be skinned knees."

  "You're in charge of the skinned knees. You look really happy holding her. You always wanted children, didn't you? That's kind of what the cradle was all about."

  "I always assumed my chances of being a parent fell between slim and nonexistent."

  "You're a doctor. You have a steady, really decent income and respectable career. You could have adopted or tried the surrogacy thing."

  "Yeah, maybe, but I don't think I'd reached that point yet, then I met you and it all got back burnered," Mason said.

  "And now?"

  "Josie is magic and fear and worry and wonder all tied up in a tiny little helpless package and dropped into our lives. A part of me thinks there was a reason. A psi baby being raised by a headblind parent creates a kind of misery that you and I have both been through," said Mason.

  Cam nodded. There had been some "lost in the void" moments in his childhood. "If Stephanie had survived…"

  "This would be even more complicated than it is now."