Hot Laps

by Shey Stahl

  Axel then looked at me and wrapped both his arms around me. “So proud of you, buddy.”

  I smiled pulling away from him, our helmets rested together. “It’s good to be your brother, man,” I said.

  There’s a moment in time where I will remember this. Just this moment right now.

  I’ve never celebrated with my dad and brother. We’ve celebrated wins separately and I’ve been in victory lane with both of them. It wasn’t just Axel who won that night. It felt like all three of us had won. There was no better feeling in the world than the connection we had at that moment…nothing would sever the ties we’d strengthened tonight as a family of racers doing what we love.

  Part of me knew once Hayden did go into labor, it would be fucked up just like everything else that’s happened to our relationship. Complicated.

  The day she went into labor was a day the doctor assured us, fucking swore, it was safe for her to travel to Tulsa with me.

  We should have sued those no good assholes.

  Everything was good Saturday night. I raced, finished with a top three finish at a national event and was feeling pretty good. Tired, drunk, but good as we headed back to the hotel.

  Hayden had just given Tommy a muscle relaxer because no one could trust him with the bottle and he’d thrown his back out somehow.

  He gave my dad a piggyback ride is what happened.

  Well, Tommy should have never taken anything Hayden gave him and, as it turned out, Hayden couldn’t be trusted with muscle relaxers either.

  If you remember correctly, Tommy put a snake in my truck. Hayden was bitten by the snake.

  Now she had a chance to get back at him.

  He asked for the bottle wanting another one and she didn’t stop him. Tommy seriously cannot be trusted with anything. He never travels alone, has someone help him fill out anything medical and has to have my mom balance his checkbook. It’s amazing the dude has made it this far in life without being committed.

  So if you’re thinking to yourself, why would he just keep taking the muscle relaxers?

  Well, if they didn’t work in five minutes, he thought he needed more.

  I didn’t realize there was a problem until we got into the hotel lobby after the race and Tommy was hanging on Hayden’s shoulder dragging his feet.

  “Moisttttt.” Tommy said, putting his face in Hayden’s ear. “It’s such a weird word.”

  “What did you give him?” I asked her, turning to face them.

  “He won’t fuck with me again,” she said as I stared at her in disbelief. “I let him have the entire bottle of muscle relaxers.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “He put a snake in your truck. As if you expected anything less from me.”

  Willie’s mouth fell open. “I love her.”

  “Goddamn you, Tommy, stand up!” Hayden grunted pushing his arms off her and then grabbed her stomach in pain. “Oh my God …”

  I knew what that meant. And if I didn’t, the water at our feet told me.

  “She needs to get to the hospital,” Willie said looking at the puddle creeping towards his feet. “She’s in labor.”

  Hayden immediately broke down into tears. “I peed myself!”

  Tommy chose then to lay down on the hotel lobby floor, near the puddle and looked up at me. “Why is the floor wet?”

  Kicking Tommy in the leg, I pulled her into my arms, my lips resting against her forehead.

  “Please don’t cry.” I pulled back wiping away her tears. “I can’t take you crying and Tommy like this at the same time.”

  You never want your girl to go into labor at a time like this. But, then again, she got bit by a snake and got pregnant. As she said, why was I expecting anything less.

  “I feel funny,” Tommy said, looking at the bottle in his hand and holding it an inch from his face.

  “Tommy,” I grabbed the bottle from him and shook the empty container in his face. “You were only supposed to take one of those.”

  “Whoops.”

  It wasn’t easy getting Hayden to the hospital because we couldn’t leave Tommy at the hotel. Why I said that I would drive these two back to the hotel was an idiot move on my part. The next was letting Hayden help Tommy.

  I called my dad on the way to Saint Francis Hospital. “Hayden’s in labor,” I told him, panicking.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Uh, yeah …”

  He was silent for a moment and then said he’d meet us at the hospital.

  “We have a problem.”

  Dad groaned. “Why am I not surprised by that?”

  “Shut up. Tommy took like six muscle relaxers.”

  Another groan. “I told you not to let him have the bottle.”

  “I didn’t.” I defended swerving around a slower car in the fast lane. Another minute and we were pulling up to the emergency room doors and Tommy opened the door before I stopped.

  “Fuck, I gotta go, Dad,” tossing the phone to the side I ran around the other side of the car and helped Tommy up. “Are you okay, man?”

  “Watch him.” I pointed at Willie who was looking pretty scared. Much like me.

  “No way,” he shook his head violently. “It’s not my turn.”

  “Fuck you. You’re worthless.”

  He got out and stood against the side of the car. “You don’t have to be so rude.”

  Hayden got out on the other side and walked over to us, holding her stomach in obvious pain and looking like she was going to murder me any second.

  I was helping Tommy up and then leaned him against the side of the car beside Willie. Then I got Hayden a wheelchair and set her in it beside the car.

  Holding my hands up, I said, “Don’t go anywhere.”

  She flipped me off.

  When I turned back around, Tommy was gone. “Where did he go, Willie?”

  Willie shrugged, “He was here a second ago.”

  We scrambled in opposite directions around the parking lot looking for Tommy when we heard a loud crash in the corner followed by him saying, “I’m okay.”

  When we found him, Tommy was standing there with his pants down around his ankles, peeing on a Jeep.

  That’s when I noticed that Tommy really should probably see a doctor. His face was pure white making his orange hair stand out. “We gotta get him some help.”

  Hayden, who’d been wheeled over by Willie, smacked me. In the fucking ear. “Dipshit, I’m in labor. Fuck Tommy! What about me?”

  Just as she said that, Tommy turned, swung his dick around to piss on her. Yeah, that just happened.

  You couldn’t have planned this shit show if you tried.

  Hayden gave him a death glare. “You motherfucker.”

  Tommy giggled, actually fucking giggled. “Careful there, my dick’s like a fire hose. Once it gets to swinging you never know where it’s going.”

  I had to hold Hayden back at that point.

  I managed, with the help of my mom and dad who showed up, to get both Tommy and Hayden into the hospital.

  “Tommy, sign this,” I handed him a form the doctor asked him for.

  He did and handed it back to me.

  “What is that?” I squinted my eyes trying to decipher what it was he did.

  “My signature.”

  Not shitting you, it was his full signature just one millimeter big. You couldn’t have done that if you tried. No idea how he managed that.

  A doctor came and got him and I felt relieved that I didn’t have to deal with him anymore and went to find Hayden, who was with my mom now, continuing the conversation with my mom about her vagina size again.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No! Do I look like I’m okay?” she screamed at me, shocking my mom and then causing her to start laughing. “Nothing about this is fucking okay. Not fucking okay.”

  “Fuck.” I sighed, running my hands through my hair.

  “Fucking right.” Hayden nodded. “Now go find that useless fucking doctor and
get me some fucking drugs. RIGHT NOW!”

  I’m always calm. I’m the rock. The one who just takes life the way it is. I’m the independent suspension. Right now, I was none of that. It’s kind of like the snake in the car. I lost all sense of stability.

  “It can go from tiny to two inches wide.” Tommy looked down at his crotch. “That doesn’t seem accurate at all. I’m wider than two inches. I’m sure of it.”

  “Tommy is full of all sort of facts about vaginas,” I told Hayden, who wouldn’t look at me.

  “I’m sure,” Hayden mumbled, staring at the door as she waited for the doctor to come back in and my mom who said she’d be right back.

  “No really, he is.”

  Tommy looked at his phone and went onto say, “A girl’s vagina can expand two hundred percent while giving birth.”

  Hayden looked at me. “Get. Him. Out.”

  “What do you call it?” Tommy asked Hayden, ignoring her demand that he leave. He was in a wheel chair hooked up to an IV. He wasn’t going anywhere until someone pushed him out. My dad, as a joke, wheeled him in here and then took off running down the hall. “It says here there are over a thousand names for it.” He laughed, crossing his legs as if he was some sort of professor musing on life’s mysteries. “I once fucked this girl who called it her pink pearl. I thought it was cute.”

  Hayden glared at him, then me sitting beside her. “If you don’t get him out of here, I might kill both of you.”

  Was she serious?

  By the look on her face, she was.

  Taking a deep breath, I wheeled Tommy into the hall, left them out there with his phone and vagina facts and returned to Hayden, doubled over and glaring at me.

  “Do you think Tommy is stupid?” I asked her, wondering if those muscle relaxers might have done some damage to Tommy.

  “Well, are we talking dumb like Paris Hilton dumb or like Kim Kardashian?” she asked in between her contractions.

  “Um, neither of those two.”

  “I would say that I don’t think he’s smart.” She looked at me. “How about that?”

  “I’m kind of concerned.” I took her hand in mine.

  “You’re concerned about Tommy right now?”

  I gave her a tentative smile. “No. I’m concerned about you. Are you going to kill me? You seem … upset.”

  She just gave me this look of total resentment.

  Oh how quickly my night had turned on me. I went from the Chili Bowl to this.

  “I gotta tell you something.” Hayden said, drawing in a deep breath.

  “Yeah?” I swallowed and I’ll admit, my voice was a little uneven. “What?”

  I was starting to sweat. What the fuck did she need to tell me at a time like this?

  “I was so nervous about a doctor being down there, I bleached my asshole so it all looked nice and clean?”

  Wasn’t expecting that at all. Nope. But fuck, why was that hot to me?

  “I don’t understand,” I was moments away from laughing at her. “You’re having a baby not a colonoscopy. What would make you think the doctor would even be looking at your asshole?”

  “Can we stop talking about this?”

  “No. You brought it up.” And then I smiled at her. “Can I see?”

  “No. Stay out of down there. If you ever want to see my track layout again, well, then maybe you can check it out after this and see if there was any structural damage done.”

  I had no response for that one.

  Connector – A device used for connecting cables.

  Casten’s behavior in the birthing room was another matter altogether. I have sympathy for women giving birth. I do not have it for men.

  Having a baby is hard fucking work. And so painful.

  I broke my arm when I was nine. Fell off a swing set and the bone was sticking out of my arm. I thought for sure after experiencing that this labor shit would be no problem.

  Of course it was easy to say it was no big deal, but could I actually do this? Could I have a baby?

  My body was telling me no. The pain was telling me no.

  I was moments away from having the baby, or at least I felt like I was. In all actuality it was more than likely hours but I couldn’t fucking wait for them to give me that magic shot.

  Willie and Casten were engaged in a heated conversation near the window of my room about who knows what when Casten grabbed the plastic knife from the table and stabbed him in the leg with it. It broke but did puncture the skin slightly. Enough to draw blood.

  It was like the lifestyles of the rich and dysfunctional with this group. If they weren’t overdosing on muscle relaxers they were talking about vagina facts and stabbing people with plastic utensils.

  When the doctor came in to give me the epidural, Casten had another panic attack similar to the snake incident when I made him hold my hand.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked when I saw his fists close and his eyes squeezed shut.

  “I don’t like this,” he shook his head unable to look at me.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me. What’s the problem now?”

  “I don’t like needles. Stop talking.”

  “Not a problem,” I rolled my eyes hearing the anesthesiologist laugh as he was poking me with a needle.

  Casten walked out after that. He made some excuse that he needed coffee. He doesn’t drink coffee so who the fuck knows where he went.

  “So it’s not going well?” Sway asked, watching me closely. I was so happy to see that she was here because I needed a mom. I needed another woman who’d been through this and was going to tell me everything was completely fine.

  “Casten’s nervous.”

  “What the fuck do you mean he’s nervous? You’re the one having the baby. Not him.” Sway had this look on her face of total disgust. “I’m not impressed with my son.” And then she tipped her head. “You know, he does this. When he had his appendix taken out two years ago he had a total panic attack right before surgery.”

  “He hates needles and has anxiety about the baby. He just now realized that my vagina may never look the same,” I whispered. “Like vomiting and curling into the fetal position type of nerves.”

  “He realized that your vagina may never be the same, or you did?” Sway knew me too well.

  “Okay, he’s just nervous. The needle freaked him out.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Crying in the hall?”

  Sway shrugged, shaking her head, holding back laughter. “You two are a hot mess. A hot fucking mess.”

  Casten returned, smiling and handed me a cup of ice chips.

  “You’re doing great,” he said when he noticed I was on the verge of tears.

  I wanted to tell him I thought it was cute that he was so nervous but I would be lying. I was trying my hardest to get the negative thoughts away but I couldn’t.

  When the doctor came in and told me I had to start pushing and the epidural hadn’t completely kicked in yet, I freaked out and kicked everyone out but Casten.

  Casten looked at me with a shocked expression. “What?”

  “Get down there and tell me if everything is still there?”

  “No,” he said sternly. “I’m not. You get a mirror and look. I’ll turn my head.”

  Neither one of us got that mirror.

  What he did start with was trying to compare child birth to rebuilding an engine. I wasn’t going for that today.

  “I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop that.”

  He dropped his chin in defeat. “But you usually like that.”

  “You know, I like it when a man talks to me like a prostitute but not when there’s a baby about to come out of my vagina. That’s when it gets trashy.”

  The doctor laughed, no doubt amused by the two idiots about to be parents.

  “Stop talking to me,” I said to Casten who was now in the bed with me whispering in my ear as I laid my back against his chest.

  “Be as aggressive as a tr
ophy dash,” he said, kissing my shoulder.

  “Will you stop it? I don’t even know what the fuck that means.”

  “I’m just trying to help.”

  I gestured to my legs spread open on a table and the doctor’s face down south. “You’ve done enough.”

  He pulled back and looked at me, his eyes focusing. “Relax.”

  Casten was very concerned about me throughout all this. I saw it in his anxious stare and his nervous pacing. Seeing what childbirth was like, I felt he had every right to be.

  The anxiety resurfaced.

  There was no reason Casten needed to know what kind of basketcase he was dealing with. After everything, I had the upper hand here and wanted to keep it that way.

  When I pushed for the first time and felt like my vagina was going to be ripped to shreds, I lost it.

  “You better tell me you love me right now!” I yelled, knowing he’d never said those words to me. I knew him well enough to know Casten didn’t tell people he loved them. He showed them. Right now, I needed to hear those little words for myself.

  “Hayden, I haven’t said it because I’m the type of guy who loves always.” His lips touched my ear, soft pillows comforting me. “I loved you from the first time we met. You don’t remember it but we were seven. I remember. You kicked my shin and told me if I pushed you off the tire swing one more time you’d kick me in the balls.” He smiled at me, sure of himself and his words, like he always was. “I don’t need a word to define my feelings. You’ve felt it from the very beginning, haven’t you?”

  I should have said it back. I should have told him I loved him right then. I didn’t.

  I asked for his mom.

  “I need your mom. Go get her.”

  Connector – Casten

  She looked at me, totally straight-faced. “Go get your mom.”

  “No. I’ll comfort you.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I swallowed. “No …” and then I changed my answer real quick when her hand nearly broke mine. “Yes!”

  She seemed calm by the idea of that so I went with it and walked out of the room to get my mom.