“Well, young lady, I see you waited for me to show up. Let’s get you examined and see how much longer—” The monitor started screaming again and it was all Royce could do not to ask Kasey to let up. “Well, well, I guess we’re a little more progressed than when you came in. Let’s have a look, shall we? Royce, you want to—” He glared at the doctor who simply laughed. “I just wanted to see that look. You have my nurses thinking you might commit some sort of fiery dance on them if they cross you. Might want to practice that one for later if you have a daughter. Might keep her safe from boys like you when she gets to dating.”
Royce just wanted to get through this one, thanks. He held Kasey’s hand while the doctor had her put her feet up in the stirrups. She mumbled about it hurting and that she wanted to push when the doctor asked her.
Push? Royce tried to remember when that happened in the books he’d been studying up on and realized that was the end. He started to protest about things suddenly going really too fast when the monitor went off again.
“I think we should think about this. Things are—”
“All right, young man, get yourself ready. We’re about to have us a baby. Kasey, love, when you feel the urge to push, you go right on ahead. And remember what the people in those classes told you, go at it like you have to take a large crap.” Royce had no more time. He was about to have a baby and he realized suddenly he wasn’t sure he was ready.
They laid little Royce Lee York Hunter on his mother’s chest eighteen minutes and forty-one seconds later. Royce knew because he’d had the misfortune of hearing the nurse tell everyone that time frame seventeen times as they worked on his wife. Lee, as they were going to call their son, started rooting around as he felt his mother’s skin next to his mouth.
“Got yourself a hungry little man there, Mr. Hunter. He wants his dinner right now, not even five minutes old.” The nurse helped Kasey pull her gown down and bare her breast. “Go ahead and try to nurse him, Mrs. Hunter. It will do you both a world of good.”
Lee latched onto her nipple like he’d been doing it forever. Royce smiled. He supposed he had been. Watching his son nurse was perhaps the best thing he’d ever seen in his life.
“He’s doing it. He’s really doing it. Oh, Royce, I want hundreds more just like him.” The doctor laughed and they both ignored him. Royce reached down and ran his finger over the baby’s tiny little head.
He was beautiful. Perfectly formed and pink. The nurse told him that his first reading was perfect and she expected no less of him when they did the second one. When they asked to take him to be cleaned up, Kasey watched with tears in her eyes as they took him away. Royce followed them to the little basinet in the corner.
“He weights seven pounds and ten ounces and is eighteen and three quarters inches long.” Royce pulled out his phone, snapped a picture of his baby, and put in the information as the nurse gave it to him. He wasn’t sure why anyone but he and Kasey would care what size his head or chest was, but he typed it in all the same. When she told him that he was perfect, as he’d already guessed he was, he put that in there as well and sent it to his family, including his newly acquired one with Jay and Suzy. He put his phone away and walked back to Kasey.
“I love you. Thank you for my son. He’s perfect.” He kissed her again and reached into his pocket and pulled out the blue box he’d been carrying around for three weeks. “I know that you don’t care for jewelry that much, but I thought you’d like this.”
He’d had it custom made for her. And when she opened it and she cried, he was sure he’d made the right choice. It had taken a lot of figuring and a great deal of help from her uncle Jay.
The bracelet was filled with small charms and pictures. There was a blue bootie that he’d had made with the baby’s initials on it and the year. A pair of rings like the ones they wore with their initials and the year they’d gotten married. The pictures were in small frames and that was what had taken the most time to get together.
Several of them were of them together. There was one each of them as a baby. Jay had found a whole box of pictures when he’d gone to clean out his sister’s apartment. He’d wanted to put all of them on there for her, but there were hundreds of them and he was sure she’d not be able to lift her arm with them there.
But the ones that he’d taken the most care with were the ones of her mom. Two of them were of Leah alone, one of her while pregnant with Kasey. The other when she’d been on vacation somewhere before she’d been ill, Jay had told him. Then there were the ones of mother and daughter together.