Baby Talk by Mike Wells Read Free Book Online Page B

important in life,
Neal.” Annie started to say something else, then gave a long sigh.
“I refuse to argue about this anymore—there’s no point in it. But
you
never
should have shoved me, Neal. Never. There’s no
excuse for it. You could have killed our child.”
    “Our child is alive and well, in case you
hadn’t noticed. You ‘could’ have burned the whole apartment
building down today with your cooking accident, but that didn’t
happen, did it? A million terrible things ‘could’ happen every day,
but they don’t.” Neal over looked at the crib. “Not usually,
anyway.”
    Annie glanced at the crib, then shook her
head as if she could no longer deal with him. “You’re losing it,
Neal, if you think Natasha could actually climb out of her crib and
put that trophy on the floor.”
    “That baby is responsible,” Neal said
firmly, though now he was beginning to question his grasp of
reality. He groped for some sort of proof. “Look, how do you
explain that blood on her forehead? You saw it. You wiped it
away.”
    Annie motioned to the wall. “There’s blood
all over everything. Your foot slung it all over the room.” She
sadly shook her head again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this
conversation. I think after we take you to a regular hospital, we
should take you to another kind of hosp—”
    “Screw you,” Neal spat. He looked away.
    Neither Neal or Annie spoke for a couple of
minutes.
    Annie finally broke the silence. “You have
to wash out your foot.”
    Neal didn’t respond. He stared at the
makeshift bandage—the towel made his foot look like it had swollen
up as big as a cantaloupe.
    “You could get an infection,” Annie went on.
“That trophy’s not clean, and—”
    “Shut up, Annie,” Neal said flatly.
    Annie was quiet only for a few seconds. “I’m
sorry your hurt yourself, Neal, but I don’t see why you’re acting
like such a baby about it.”
    “I’m not acting like a baby.”
    Natasha started to cry.
    Annie gave another weary sigh and went over
to the crib. She picked up Natasha and patted her on the back,
rocking her from side to side. “There, there thweetie. Go back to
sleep.”
    Neal glared at both of them. Natasha
continued to cry, her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t a hungry
cry—even Neal had learned to recognize that particular sound. It
was a cry of irritation, of disturbance. At that moment, Neal
realized how much a baby—all babies—could affect what went on
around them. Their crying almost always caused some kind of
reaction in the environment, even if their mothers weren’t
around.
    As Natasha started to quiet down, Annie
said, “Neal, you
have
to wash out your foot. Then I’ll take
you to the emergency room.”
    Neal watched her for a moment, then pushed
himself up off the floor and limped into the bathroom.
     
    * * *
    “Well, Mr. Becker, I have some good news. No
foreign matter appears to be left in the wound.”
    The young doctor was holding some x-rays in
his hand. He had just come back into the curtained-off section of
the emergency room where Neal had been sitting the past two hours,
mostly alone. The nurses had made Annie and the baby stay in the
waiting room, which was just fine with Neal.
    “Let’s have another look at it,” the doctor
said. He gingerly took hold of Neal’s ankle and raised it,
inspecting the hole again. The man was no more than thirty years
old, probably an intern. But he seemed to know what he was
doing.
    “All things considered,” the doctor said,
after a moment of peering and gentle squeezing, “it’s a pretty
clean wound. No need for any stitches—you’ll just have to keep it
bandaged up for a while.” He let Neal’s foot back down. “What do
you do? Work or go to school?”
    Neal hesitated. “I’m in the flower
business.”
    “Uh-huh. But what do you do, exactly?”
    “Well...I’m the delivery manager. I schedule
all the, you know, deliveries that have to be made.”
    “Uh-huh,” the doctor