I toss the water on his head. He sputters and starts to wake up. Finally, after a couple of false starts, he sits up and shakes the water off his face. Bits of vomit fling out of his hair and plop onto the walls and floor. All the research I’ve been doing to staycalm when dealing with a stressful situation almost leads me to take a slow, deep breath in through my nose, but the stench in here is threatening even my iron stomach.
“Dad?” Liam slurs.
“Wake the fuck up,” I growl.
“What crawled up your ass?” Liam mumbles to himself as he tries and fails to stand.
I pinch the bridge of my nose as a reminder not to breathe in right now. Pointing back to the living room, I clench my jaw using all the self-control I have not to shout at him and say, “Your baby is sitting in a dirty diaper, probably for hours. She’s cried so much she’s lost her voice. Do you even give a shit that your child is suffering because her father is such a miserable drunk that he’d rather lie in a puddle of his own puke and piss than be man enough to step up and take care of her?”
At least he doesn’t try to argue with me. He flops against the wall and hangs his head down. “Natalie is here? Honest to God, Dad, I didn’t know. I went out last night with a couple of the guys from school and overdid it a little. Audrey must have snuck her in when I was sleeping it off.”
I shake my head. “Sleeping it off implies that you went to bed.” I hold my arms out wide. “You’re in the fucking hallway. When is it going to be enough? Natalie could have died, or she could have sat here for a few more hours until someone bothered to miss you and found her sitting in her own shit not far from the dead body of her father. If you’d passed out on your back or face down, you could have choked on your own vomit. That’s all it would have taken.”
I’m pacing now. “I saw your car in the yard. The door is open, so the battery is probably dead. I’m guessing that your brilliant ass decided to drive home shit faced. You were clearly bad enough that you didn’t even park the fucking car. What if you’d killed someone?”
If it were possible for a person to shrink, my son was doing so in front of my eyes. Not that I have hope that a single word I’m saying will sink into his dense skull. Still, there’s something cathartic about unleashing all of the fears I’ve been holding in where he is concerned. That tight band across my chest loosens slightly.
It’s not gone. There’s still the voice whispering far back in my mind that I’m the one who broke Liam, and I’ll only do it again to my new baby. I don’t have the time to listen to that right now, and I certainly am not going to be a little bitch and run off on my wife and child. I won’t be like Liam or my parents and hide inside a bottle either.
Life happens whether you face it or not. I’d much rather brave the storms, because if you hide, you’ll miss the sunny days too. As I pick up the baby carrier, I realize that I’m heading straight into the eye of a massive storm.
“I’mat the hospital with Natalie,” I shout into the phone.
Calling Charlie seemed like my only choice. He might have busted my balls when Wren and I first got together, but he’s never not had my back. The only thing I didn’t think about was how loud it is at the shop and that I’d have to shout into the phone to try and have any hope of him hearing me over the constant noise of machines while he and our younger mechanic, Julio, work on cars.
Business has been booming. That’s why we’re expanding to another location. Right now, there’s enough work at the Harriston shop, even as small as the town is, for four mechanics to be working full time. They were already at a disadvantage when I left to open the Centralia garage, but with Liamdisappearing on benders, there’s far too much for the remaining two mechanics.
If I ask Charlie to drop everything and meet me down here, he absolutely would. Then he would go back and work late into the night to make sure that the car he’s working on still gets done when he promised it would be. I know a lot of people write him off as a carefree playboy, but he’s actually one of the most solid guys I know.
He would have my back, just as he has since we were kids, and not say one word about the plans he had that he’s now going to have to cancel because he stayed by my side. That’s what makes him my best friend, but if I were to ask him to do that, I would not be acting like his.
The sound on the other end of the phone quiets down. “I stepped outside.”
I can hear him exhale, which means he used my call as an excuse for a smoke break. I open my mouth to lecture him for probably the billionth time, but decide to pick my battles. There will be a next time for that fight.
“Did you say that you’re at the hospital? Why?” he asks.
“Audrey dropped the baby off with Liam today. I doubt she even bothered to check and see if Liam was conscious. He wasn’t, by the way. I found him lying in a toxic mixture of piss and vomit. He’s lucky he didn’t choke on his own puke. The baby had cried until she lost her voice. She was sitting for God knows how long in a diaper filled with shit. I think she’s dehydrated and I want to make sure she’s not going to have some kind of mutant diaper rash,” I fill him in.
There’s a long pause on his end. I know he’s still on the phone because of the ambient noises, cars on the street, birds in the trees, and the sound of the wind whistling across the phone. Then he exhales long and slow.
“What is it going to take for that fucking dumbass to get his shit together? Fuck!” There’s a crash of something, and though I don’t know exactly what, I can tell that Charlie kicked whatever got set closest to the door.
There’s always an empty case or pallet stacked up. Julio’s boyfriend, Matt, likes to repurpose the wood, so we always set them aside for him. From the sound of the crash, I think he’s going to need to wait a bit longer for a new supply.
“Do you need me to come there?” he asks after a moment.
That is what I intended to ask when I dialed the phone, but a different question comes to mind. “Would I be an absolute dick if I ask Wren to come here?”
He doesn’t immediately protest and tell me that I wouldn’t be an asshole for asking my pregnant wife to come to the hospital to help me take care of her ex’s affair baby.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” I grumble.
“What are you going to do, man? If Liam’s side bitch ran off, who is supposed to take care of the kid? Doesn’t she have grandparents or something?”
“I’m going to give you a second to let that sink in,” I tell him.
“Shit,” he says, drawing out the vowel. “Yeah, I guess you are the grandparent. I meant, though, that Audrey or whatever her name is, she has parents, right?”
