OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

seventy-four.

JUNE 1st, 1992, SEATTLE WA

        "HOLY FUCKING SHIT," Chris shouted, clamping her hands over both of her ears. "Can you please turn that thing down?"

"I'm sorry, it's not my fault!" Reagan cried. She was bouncing a screaming Gracie in her arms, her hair sticking up around her face and her eyes wild with desperation. "I don't know what else to do!"

"Dial down the volume knob," Chris hollered. She kept her hands firmly in place over her ears. "Stick her in the icebox or something!"

"Maybe she's right," Robbie said anxiously from his spot on the living room floor of Reagan and Dave's new house. "The cold might calm her down or something. Shock her, you know?" He'd been twirling a pair of Dave's drumsticks between his fingers, practicing the trick that Dave had recently taught him. The practice had been abandoned once Gracie had started screaming.

"I'm not sticking her in the freezer!" Reagan yelled, bouncing Gracie more rapidly now. She knew the real reason as to why her baby was wailing so loudly. Gracie's colic had been acting up, pestering her with gas painful enough to make her face scrunch into a mask of bright red wrinkles.

"Can't you feed her or something?" Chris demanded.

"I already did," Reagan said, exasperated. She'd just finished nursing Gracie an hour earlier. That was before the screaming had started. "I just don't know what else I can do for her."

As much as it was tormenting them both to be there, Reagan was glad that Chris and Robbie were with her. If it weren't for their presence, she would have been going mad with anxiety, wondering if Gracie's screams were indicative of problems that went deeper than just colic. Dave was away that afternoon with Kurt and Krist, tying up loose ends for the European leg of their tour that was slated to start in little less than three weeks.

"I bet it's the new house," Chris said, her voice still leveling at a shout. "The acoustics are too good in here for her to pass up the opportunity of trying them out."

"It's her colic, I'm telling you," Reagan said. She flipped Gracie upright and halfway over her shoulder, patting soothing circles around her lower back. "Her pediatrician warned us about it."

"Want me to hold her?" Robbie offered, getting to his feet. He'd overcome his fear of holding Gracie within recent weeks, finally confident enough (with Reagan's eventual trust) to carry her in his arms. For being so young, Reagan was impressed with how much her little brother cared for Gracie, as if he hadn't been totally wigged out by the mere idea of her existence three months earlier.

"I've got it," Reagan said miserably. She had to be the one to comfort Gracie. When her baby was screaming so bloodcurdlingly loud in her ear, she knew that only she stood a chance at mollifying Gracie's cries into the hushed little pants of a post-newborn meltdown.

It was supposed to have been a pleasant day. Chris had offered to drive into Seattle to help out with the baby while Reagan unpacked the last of her and Dave's belongings. They had just moved into their new house, a two-floored four-bedroom sanctuary that Dave had nabbed in West Seattle. Moving in had gone flawlessly, much to Reagan's surprise with having had Gracie in tow, but the business of unpacking had been hard. Gracie was rarely ever put down, especially by her mother.

Chris had been nice enough to pick up Robbie along the way, knowing how much Reagan missed him. He had had little time of his own to spend with Gracie and Reagan yearned for all the memories that she'd spent with him, just the two of them together as siblings. Kate had taken on the lead role of aunt-in-charge and Reagan didn't want Robbie to feel left out now that he cared so wholeheartedly for his niece. He'd been longing to fit back into the niche of Reagan's life, too.