“Good luck!” Ember said. “Be sure to keep us updated.”
“We will,” Daphne promised.
Shaker didn’t waste time with pleasantries or an overview like he usually did before he took off. Once we were seated and the door was closed, we were in the air.
After several minutes of silence, his voice crackled in the headset covering my ears. “Good morning, everyone. We should arrive at the hospital in about forty minutes. Daphne, I believeyou’re the only one who hasn’t flown with me before. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you,” she said.
While the rest of the group started talking, I stared out the window and tried not to throw up. It felt like I’d been waiting forever for the day Tawny went into labor to arrive, and once it had, I suddenly felt like I wasn’t ready. What was I thinking? I didn’t know anything about taking care of babies and raising children. Daphne was all in, but I couldn’t expect her to handle everything. It was too much. I’d bitten off more than I could chew, and there was nothing I could do about it. My chest tightened, and I found it hard to breathe, while my stomach rolled with nausea.
“Do you need a barf bag?” Ink asked, causing me to turn my head toward the other passengers. “Oh, fuck.”
“Dice?” Daphne asked. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s fine,” Badger said.
“He doesn’t look fine.”
“That’s the panicked look of a man who’s about to become a dad for the first time. It’s normal,” he said.
“Dice, honey,” Macy said softly. “No one feels like they’re completely ready when the baby comes. It’s normal to feel like you’re going to screw everything up because you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t have to know everything at once. You’ll learn as you go, and you have plenty of people who’ll help you along the way.”
“Can you keep talking?” I managed to ask. “I think it’s helping.”
Macy nodded with a small smile. “For the first few weeks, all you need to worry about is eating, sleeping, and changing diapers. They’ll give you something at the hospital that tells you how much and how often to feed the baby. They’ll also give you information about sleeping. And the diapers are easy. Theyhave indicator lines on the outside that change color to let you know the diaper is wet. If something else comes up or you think something’s wrong, you can call me or any of the old ladies any time and ask us anything you need to. Not a one of us will give you any grief, no matter what you ask.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I have complete faith in you, and I think you’ll do just fine,” she said, but it sounded like there was more she wanted to say.
“But?” I asked.
“It’s not really a but … it’s well,” she said and cleared her throat. “If, for some reason, you truly don’t think you can do this, Badger and I will. I assumed you knew that even though we never said it, but maybe you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know that,” I admitted.
“Well, now you do, but like I said, I have complete faith in you. You and Daphne are going to be great parents.”
Ink cleared his throat loudly. “And I’m going to be the coolest uncle ever.”
“I’m going to tell Uncle Buck you said that,” Daphne teased.
“Go right ahead. I’ll tell him he’s my role model,” Ink said and stuck out his tongue.
“Well played,” Daphne said.
“I hate to interrupt, because this has been one of my most entertaining flights, but I’m going to need y’all to be quiet so I can communicate with air traffic control to land,” Shaker said.
“We’re here?” I blurted.
“Almost,” he said. “Take some deep breaths, man. You’ll be fine.”
He lied. I was not fine. I was a pale, sweaty, shaky mess when I entered the hospital. In fact, I looked so bad that one of the staff members offered me a wheelchair.
“He’s fine,” Badger answered for me. “It’s just new dad nerves.”
I grabbed onto Ink’s arm as a wave of nausea washed over me, and a pain shot through my abdomen. “Something’s wrong,” I managed to say before I bent forward and threw up in the closest thing I could find, which happened to be a potted plant.