Authors: Robin Wells
Baby, Oh Baby! (12 page)
. "What kind of potting soil do you use around here, anyway?" Jake said, wiping at the smears on his chest.
The woman grabbed at her glasses as Madeline playfully pulled them off her face. "Oh, dear. That must be the volcanic ash our gardener has just started adding."
"Great. Just great." With a heavy sigh, Jake crossed the room to the trash receptacle, threw the paper towels away, then strode back, eyeing the baby. Madeline's playsuit was filthy, but she wore a huge smile on her face. At least her temperament seemed to have taken a turn for the better.
"Thanks for your help," Jake told the cleaning lady. He reached for the child, only to have Madeline throw her arms around the woman's neck and caterwaul.
The woman's eyebrows rose. The look she cast him was clearly appraising, as if she suspected he was a convicted child beater.
Jake pried the yowling baby's arms from around the woman's neck, shooting her a sheepish smile. She watched him carry the screaming child toward the elevator. "You're forgetting your diaper bag," she called. "You're sure to need it."
Jake hurried back and grabbed the item, trying not to think about what event would precipitate his need for it.
Madeline was still screeching when the elevator door opened on the second floor several moments later. Fortunately, the waiting room was right around the corner.
"Here you go," Jake said, setting the baby on her feet just inside the entrance. Madeline immediately fell silent, putting all of her efforts into waddling across the room.
Jake followed, taking note of the, room's occupants. Two elderly ladies in identical navy blue dresses sat together near the window. On the far side, a lanky young man, probably eighteen or nineteen years old, slumped in a chair, his head against the wall, wearing an expression of disdainful indifference. His left ear held more studs than a framing carpenter's pick-up. His hair was cut in a Mohawk and dyed the color of strawberry Jell-O.
Jake sat down near the baby. Madeline looked up at him, scrunched up her face, and gave a scream straight from a Friday the Thirteenth movie.
"What an adorable child," one of the elderly women remarked.
Her companion nodded. "Yes, indeed. Looks just like you, too."
"That's right," the first one agreed. "She has your eyes, and your hair color, and your chin."
"Not to mention the similarity in our shirts," Jake said dryly.
The white-haired woman gave a high-pitched titter that reminded Jake of a tropical bird. "Now that you mention it, you two are dirty as a pair of grave diggers. What happened?"
"Lilly!" the gray-haired one said in an appalled tone. "That's rude."
"Sorry." She turned back to Jake. "So what happened?"
Jake glanced down at his grime-covered shirt. He was chagrinned to realize that the tail was still hanging out, but he wasn't about to give these old biddies the satisfaction of seeing him tuck it in. He cleared his throat and watched Madeline toddle away from him. "The baby tried to eat some dirt."
The women giggled—both of them in that weird, high-pitched, birdlike cackle.
"Babies," said the gray-hair, shaking her head.' "They'll put anything in their mouths that they can find. You have to watch them like a hawk."
"Like a vulture," the white-haired one piped in, apparently not wanting to be outdone.
The gray-headed woman flashed a pair of unnaturally white false teeth. "I'm Violet, and this is my sister Lilly. Is someone in your family having surgery?"
«Yes"
They looked at him expectantly. Jake sighed. He hated making conversation with strangers, but these two weren't likely to take a hint and leave him alone.
Sure enough, the older of the two leaned forward. "So who is it?"
"The, uh, baby's mother."
"Ohhh. " Violet nodded sagely, then cast a meaningful glance at Lilly. "She must be the hot one."
Jake's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"
"The one with the hot appendix. That's medical talk. I heard it on TV."
Thank goodness. For a moment there, he'd been afraid the two old women had some dirt to dish on Annie. He turned and watched Madeline crawl under a chair. She was already filthy, so Jake supposed there was no reason to keep her off the floor.
"We just love medical shows," Violet was saying. "We watch them all."
Jake knew several elderly people in Tulsa who frequented the courthouse and attended trials for entertainment. Maybe these two did the same thing at hospitals.
"So. . . do you come here when there's nothing on the tube?"
The teenager coughed. Jake looked over, and the boy quickly looked away, but Jake was certain he saw a ghost of a smile cross the boy's face before he resumed his expression of studied disinterest.
Violet batted her eyes. "Oh, no. We're waiting on our sister Rose."
"Yes," the second one explained. "She's having a hernia fixed."
Jake was unaware that women got hernias, but he wasn't about to encourage the conversation.
"Of course, Rose's surgery has been postponed since your wife's condition is so serious," Lilly continued.
Jake squirmed. He was uncomfortable hearing Annie called his wife, but even more uncomfortable hearing about the severity of her condition. Who told you that?"
“The O.R. nurse.”
"That's slang for Operating Room," Lilly chimed in. “She said a young woman with a hot appendix needed surgery right away, and they were going to do her before Rose."
Some kind of apology seemed called for. "I, uh, hope the delay doesn't inconvenience your sister too much."
"Oh, no." Violet waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. "It'll just give her more time to enjoy the drugs." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "The doctor gave her a sedative first thing this morning, and she said it gave her a better buzz than two after-dinner sherries."
The teenager coughed fitfully. Jake glanced at him, finding the boy's efforts not to laugh aloud as entertaining as the two sisters' chatter.
"Rose is ninety-two years old," Lilly contributed. "I'm two years younger. Violet, here, is the baby. She's just eighty-nine."
The teenager's coughing attack worsened, requiring both hands to completely cover his mouth. Jake decided to try to make the teenager lose it.
He looked at the two women. "You two certainly don't look your age."
"We know." Violet stuck out her chest and smiled proudly. "It's hereditary. We come from a family of long livers."
Jake carefully kept his expression bland. "Is that related to cirrhosis?"
The teenager snorted.
"Oh, no," Lilly said earnestly. "Violet means our kinfolk live long lives. Our father lived to be a hundred and one, and our mother was a hundred and seven when she finally passed on. They were married seventy-eight years. Both of their fathers fought in the War between the ..." Her voice broke off. "Oh, my! Your baby's gotten a hold of something."
Jake whipped his head around to see Madeline sitting under a chair, merrily sucking on a shiny object. He sprang to his feet, bolted across the room, and hauled the baby out into the open floor. The lower part of her face was smeared black, and her lips seemed to have disappeared. Jake yanked the object out of her mouth.
It was a large felt-tip marker.
"Oh, hell." Jake grabbed his shirttail again, and once more tried to swab out the baby's mouth. As before, the child screamed at an eardrum-piercing volume.
For all of his efforts, Jake wasn't making any progress His shirt was gaining additional grime, but he didn't see any lessening of the blackness in the baby's mouth. It was black as pitch, and the blackness stretched all the way to the back of her tonsils—which she was showing to advantage as she yelped at full volume.
Alarm raced through Jake. "Hey—does anyone know if ink is poisonous?"
The pink-haired teenager squatted beside him and picked up the marker. "It says right here it's nontoxic." Relief gushed through Jake. "Thank God."
Yanking away from Jake, Madeline threw herself at the teenager as if he were a life raft on a storm-tossed sea. Her crying stopped as she crawled onto his lap. She grinned up engagingly, her mouth looking like a coal mine at night.
The boy's eyes grew wide with alarm. "Hey! What's she Join'?"
"Sitting on your lap. She likes you," Lilly proclaimed.
The baby continued to grin. Despite himself, the boy smiled back. "Ya know, she looks kinda cool," he said. "She's kinda got a Goth look goin'."
"She's a sight, that's for sure," Lilly agreed.
No kidding, Jake thought. Her once-yellow playsuit was covered with marker smudge, ground-in volcanic ash and under-chair grime, and her mouth looked like a black hole.
He was going to have to be more watchful, Jake realized ruefully. It didn't take three seconds for the child to find trouble, and it took even less time for her to get smack in the middle of it.
"It might take a while, but that ink will wear off eventually." The gray-haired woman flashed her dentures in an encouraging smile. "My son got sprayed by a skunk once. It took three weeks, but it finally faded."
The teenager made a face. "Hey, man, speakin' of skunks ... I think you need to do somethin' with her diaper."
Jake's spirits plummeted. Holy Moses—he didn't know anything about changing diapers. Maybe one of the elderly ladies would help him out. He looked over, about to ask, when the gray-haired one leaned over to her sister.
"Isn't it wonderful, Lilly, how involved fathers are these days? I think it's just marvelous, the way they take care of their little ones."
Lilly's white hair bobbed like a snowball as she nodded. "Things are sure different than they used to be. Nowadays, any dad worth his salt pulls his weight with child care. That's what all the TV shows say."
Ye gads
. He sure as hell didn't want to explain to these gals why he'd never spent any time around his own child and didn't have a clue how do something as basic as changing a diaper. Besides, how the heck hard could it be?
Chapter Seven
A whole lot harder than he'd ever imagined. Jake thought twenty minutes later. Why the devil wasn't there someplace to change a baby in the men's room? He couldn't very well lay the baby down on the bare bathroom floor. The only other option was to change her while she was standing. That meant trailing after her and repeatedly trying to steer her away from the urinals, which seemed to hold a strange fascination for her.
"Come on, now. Madeline-hold still for a moment, would you?"
Madeline responded by tottering bare-assed across the room, back toward one of the three urinals. Jake hurried after her, diaper in hand. He'd managed to get her clean, thank heavens—although it had taken the entire box of wet wipes in the diaper bag to do it. What was eluding him now was the trick of taping the diaper so it would stay on. He'd accidently ripped one diaper while trying to refasten the tape, and he didn't want to strike out with the only other one he had. In the game of diapers, apparently each player got only one shot.
Madeline had nearly reached the object of her affection. Her pudgy hand was a split second from making contact with the urinal rim when Jake grabbed her around the chest in a modified wrestling hug and swung her around. As expected, she let loose a wail of protest loud enough to shatter glass.
"Come on, now, Madeline. Help me out a little." Working with one hand, he managed to get the diaper between her legs. He needed both hands free to fasten the tape, but the moment he loosened his hold on her, the child darted back to the urinal as fast as her fat little legs could carry her. The diaper fell to the floor behind her.
Jake picked it up and dashed in pursuit, vaguely recalling a magazine article that theorized people were motivated all of their lives by their earliest thwarted desires. If that was the case, then Madeline was probably destined to a life as a restroom attendant.
Grumbling under his breath, he tackled her again, and was once more treated to an ear-numbing shriek. Holding her between his knees, he got one side of the diaper fastened before the child broke free again. After another brief struggle, he taped the other side. His sense of victory was short-lived, however; the diaper drooped to her knees as she scurried back to a urinal.
Well, he'd just have to rely on her bloomers to hold the darn thing up. Now, if he could just get her legs back into those blasted things...
Ten minutes later, Jake emerged from the men's room, the pink diaper bag slung over his shoulder, a yowling baby in his arms, feeling like a war-weary soldier returning from the field of battle. He'd made it halfway down the hall to the waiting room when a warm sensation slithered wetly down his stomach.
"Oh, good Lord!"
He immediately thrust Madeline out at arm's length, where she proceeded to water his shoes. He gingerly set the dripping child down on the floor, only to have her look up and give an engaging, black-mouthed grin.
Jake felt a nerve twitch in his cheek. Drawing a deep breath, he picked her up under her arms and awkwardly carried her back to the men's room. There he peeled off her clothes and sponged her down with paper towels. The moment he released her, she headed straight back to a urinal.
Jake dashed after the naked baby. What the Dow Jones am I supposed to do now? he wondered. He'd used the last of the diapers, and her clothes were sopping wet. Holding the squirming, howling child under his arm, he rummaged through the diaper bag, hoping to find something he'd overlooked. All he turned up was a small flannel blanket printed with large yellow ducks.
He eyed it appraisingly. Babies had worn cloth diapers for centuries. The blanket was cloth. Hell, he could diaper her with it—if he could just figure out a way to hold it up.
Jake looked through the bag hoping to find some safety pins. No such luck—just a sandwich bag filled with Cheerios, an empty baby bottle, and two small jars of apple juice.
"Looks like we'll have to improvise, Madeline." Jake looked around the room, hoping to find something, anything with which to improvise. There was 'nothing—just toilet paper, paper towels, and soap.