BAE BOY

3-20

No one noticed Kendall fading out but me at first.

Cause she was sitting up and Espy and the girls were rushing around trying to handle all the muck and keep an eye out for the ambulance and all that.

In fact damned near everyone was rushing around, shouting orders, yelling at people to get back, get outta the way, get this, get that. All the diapered waiters and baby bonneted queens were herding people back to their tables trying to make a safe space for me, Kendall and Gracie Ellen while we waited for the paramedics to get there.

So only I caught the slight droops at the corner of her left eye and the left corner of her lips--the lightless gaze, too. No pilot light, you know? Like doll eyes that look so real but don't actually see.

Or like...and this blew my mind when it really dawned on me...like Grace's eyes. My mother's eyes. When she left us the way she did sometimes, when life just crashed over her head like a big ocean wave, and she couldn't cope.

I called it "blue screening," because it was just like what computers do, too. That "okay, WTF" moment when they get all jammed and the death screen comes up.

I was about to thank her, actually--that's why I noticed it. I was feeling every emotion in the book, even a little sadness that she'd had to handle it herself. But mostly I was incredibly grateful and giddy until I looked up intending to say something to her, and sensed that the happiest moment of my life had just become one of the worst.

So I cupped my baby girl to my chest with one arm, raised Kendall's chin with my free hand, and said, "Babe! Yo, what's up? What's goin' on?"

And Aisha let out this scary, blood curdling wail and fell to her knees right beside me, going, "No, you don't! You wake up, girl! Wake up," and slapping Kendall's face--not hard, just these real firm little taps with her fingers.

Duke knelt down and got hold of Aisha's hand right quick though.

And he said, "Don't do nothin' 'til you know what's goin' on, darlin'. Just--"

"She breathin'?" Aisha asked him. With this quaver in her voice that sounded so scared.

I, however, could not speak. I mean there I was with a brand-new baby against my chest and the wife I loved more than anybody or anything but that baby sitting there in, like...suspended animation.

I knew she wasn't dead. Somehow, I knew that. I just didn't know where she was. Or why she'd gone wherever she'd gone.

But then instinct kicked in. And experience. When Grace had done it, I had learned to just touch her somewhere. You didn't talk to her, you laid hands on her and to keep her connected to the real world so she could find her own way back to you when the overload let up some.

So I let go of her chin and put that hand on her hand. Her hands were all messy, still, too. All bloody and gloppy from Gracie. But I didn't care. I squeezed one, the right one, which it turns out was the right one to touch, too, because the other one wouldn't have felt me do it.

They had to literally pry my fingers off to get her out of there when the paramedics came. They didn't even try to take my baby from me. They just covered us both with a blanket and somebody, I think it was Brian, grabbed me and held onto me as they were rushing us to the ambulance.