How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [142]
She edges closer, all limbs and bristling joy and fear and anticipation as she bends in to look at him. “Oh,” she cries. “He’s beautiful!” At the sound of her voice, his head whips around. Babies are not supposed to be able to track, but this one knows that this voice matters.
“He knows his sister is here.”
“Look at his fingernails! Oh, and look at his palm!” She touches him reverently.
“He needs to go back to his mommy right now,” Lily says, and gives us directions to the maternity ward. “Come find us when you’re done.”
“Is Oscar awake?”
“Yes. Only one at a time.”
“Okay.”
Katie looks at the door.
“You’re his blood,” I say. “His only daughter. You go.”
She swallows, smooths her hair. And opens the door.
Katie
It’s kind of dim in the hospital room, only the light from the television flickering. Katie’s heart is pounding really hard, so hard that it’s making her hands shake, and she feels like she might cry.
In the bed is a person under the blankets. There are a lot of bandages, around arms and a head. His head turns and he sees her. “Katydid!” His voice is just the same. He sounds shocked.
She stands by the door, not sure what to do exactly. It’s been more than a year since she’s seen him, anyway, since before his last deployment. “Hi, Dad.”
“How did you get here?”
“Ramona.”
He is in the shadows. Katie can’t see much, really. She feels frozen where she is. “Did you see your brother?”
“Yeah, he’s really cute.”
“He looks just like you. Except you were always more of a girly-looking thing than that. He’s a bruiser.”
He sounds exactly the same. Exactly, exactly the same. Without knowing that she would, she says, “I’m mad at you, Dad. I’m really mad that you tried to kill yourself.”
“Baby, come here.” His tone is the one you don’t disobey, and it pulls her across the room to his side. “Give me your hand.”
She raises it and he takes it in his left. His right is bandaged, and it is the right leg that’s missing beneath the blanket. His forehead is not messed up and his eyebrows are growing back in, like they were singed off. She can’t see his nose, but all of a sudden she’s not afraid anymore. It’s like Ramona said. Somebody else all burned and scarred would freak her out, but this person in this bed is looking at her with her dad’s eyes and talking to her with her dad’s voice.
“I was wrong,” he says. “I was being a coward. I’m sorry.”
And at that, Katie splits open like an overripe watermelon. “I went to see Mom, and she stole all my stuff and left me in this creepy park, and I didn’t know where to go or what to do.” She’s crying now, and her dad is holding her hand really tight. “And she’s not ever going to be well, even though I wanted her to be, and I need you to be alive, or I won’t have any parents at all.”
There are tears in her dad’s eyes. “I promise you, Katie, that I am not going anywhere. And if I look as if I’m going to, you just take my leg off and hit me with it, all right?”
She laughs and has to cover her face, because her nose is getting all snotty.
“Give me a hug, Katydid, and then I gotta get some sleep.”
She sniffs hard, then gingerly presses her cheek into his shoulder. But he lifts his left arm and grabs her tight. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Dad.”
Sofia’s Journal
JULY 15, 20—
I am a mother!!!!! That backache turned out to be labor, and by the time I got to the delivery room, I was in transition, so he was born two hours later. Big baby! They got him cleaned up and weighed and all that, got me all cleaned up and stitched (ow, it hurts to pee!!!!!!!!), and then they brought him back to me, all wrapped in a little white blanket. His poor face is smushed and his ears are all battered, but they said he’ll be fine in a day or two. I nursed him and nursed him and nursed him, and he took to it like a champ, no problem at all. But then, I would guess he had to be pretty hungry. Nearly ten pounds! Holy cow.
He’s fussing again. Gotta go.
Ramona
I spend the