"Hello?"
The guy in front of me stares at me, raising his eyebrows over eyes that look like they haven't seen sleep in a long time.
His eyes are bloodshot and undercut by dark rings beneath them.
The screaming within the townhome somehow gets even louder and I click into action.
"That's my niece you're letting scream in there." I snap, pushing by him and into the room.
There is a set of stairs to the left and a living room to the right where there are boxes of stuff shoved against one wall and a couch with a baby laying on a big pillow.
"I'm not just letting her scream." The guy, Ben, says following behind me. "I can't get her to stop."
"Well, she obviously needs something." I say, going over to her.
I stand in front of the couch looking down at her. She's so tiny, it doesn't seem real when I look at her that we all start out so little and defenseless.
I'm much more accustomed to seeing people at the end of their long lives. Once their bodies have shriveled and greyed.
I have zero experience with someone so new to the world.
Her fat little cheeks are fire red and her toothless mouth is open in a perfect pouted circle as screams fly from within her.
She's wrapped tightly in a thin white blanket and I reach for her but stall when I realize I don't even know how I'm supposed to pick her up.
"I'm open to suggestions." Ben says, coming to stand beside me. He reaches down and cups one big hand behind her head and the other under her bottom to lift her up from the pillow, holding her to his chest. He bops in place, trying to soothe her wailing.
"Is she hungry?"
"She won't take the bottle."
"Her diaper?"
"Clean." He says, looking at me with expectation. "What do I do?"
I stand there frozen, because, hell if I know either.
"They just let people take home babies with no clue what to do with them?" I run my hand through my hair, watching him try to rock her.
"Apparently!" He throws his head back and groans. "I have no clue what I'm doing. I'm freaking the fuck out. She's been like this since we got back to the house. I've tried everything. I've googled shit, I've watched YouTube videos, nothing is working!"
"Ok, ok." I say, wracking my brain. "Hang on."
I pull out my own phone and call Ella.
She answers on the first ring.
"Hayden, we have been so worried you were supposed to call us when-."
"How do you make her stop crying?" I cut her off. "She's losing her shit and she won't eat and she's clean but she won't stop crying."
"Ok, slow down." Ella says, and I can hear the noise in the background die down as she moves to another room. "I'm texting my sister." She tells me.
Every second seems to drag on as the baby just keeps screaming no matter how much Ben shooshes and rocks her. He looks up at me with desperation.
"Try skin to skin." Ella says quickly. "Some babies like that."
"What do you mean?" I demand.
"Take off her clothes and lay her on your chest against your own skin." Ella explains. "Sometimes they like that."
"Ok, I'll call you back."
I hang up the phone and yank my jacket off.
"Get her undressed." I tell Ben and he looks at me like I'm crazy but he lays her back down on her big pillow and unswaddles her from the blanket and takes off her onesie.
She's even tinier without it all.
I sit down on the couch and yank my t-shirt over my head.
"Woah, what are you doing?" Ben says, eyes going wide before he looks away.
"Skin to skin." I say, trying to sound like I know what I'm doing. "Pass her to me."
I sit back on the couch in my bra and jeans and he passes her tiny body over to me. She screams and kicks her tiny little legs and flings her arms around wildly as I try to cling her to my chest.
"Support her head." Ben says, and I cradle her to me. "That's literally all I know."
She still screams and fights me but I hold onto her, rubbing my hand over her tiny little head, the brown peach fuzz of her hair tickling my palm.
I use my other hand to pat her butt.
It takes several minutes to the point where I'm about to give up and call Ella again, but finally, miraculously, she leans her little cheek against my chest and her screams slowly turn into tiny little gasping breaths.
"Let's try the bottle again." I whisper to Ben and he rushes into what I assume is the kitchen in the other room.
"Let me warm it up."
He comes back a minute later and passes me a small bottle half full of formula.
I have no idea what I'm doing but I angle her in my arms to where I can get the nipple of the bottle to her perfect little pink lips.
She shakes her head back and forth as it touches her mouth but then she grasps onto it, tugging it between her lips and starts sucking.
I stare down at her in amazement as she makes little slurping sounds and coos around the bottle in her mouth.
"Holy fucking shit." Ben sighs, running his hand through his hair making it fluff out the unruly curls even more. "You did it."
"I did." I whisper, staring down at this little baby in my arms. I'm angry at Alice all over again. How could she just leave this? How could she look down at this little squishy face and decide to toss her away to the first stranger she sees.
Ben moves a few pillows off of the couch and sits down gently beside me, both of us afraid to make any sudden movements that might send her back into screaming.
I can feel him watching us for a long time, but I just keep my eyes lowered to the little human I'm feeding.
After a while Ben leans his head back on the back of the couch. "I don't know how I'm going to do this." He whispers.
I glance over at him. He's staring up at the ceiling, his eyes wet. I look away, not wanting to see the vulnerability he's displaying.
"You're her father." I say. "You just figure it out."
"But I'm already failing." He wipes at his eyes. "I couldn't even get her to stop crying."
"It'll just take time." I try to sound assured, but I don't know this guy. I don't know if he's capable of stepping up and being a father to this baby like she needs. I want him to be, but all of my previous concerns are still right there at the surface of my thoughts. "Do you do drugs?" I turn to stare at him, making sure I read his expression.
He doesn't look angry the way Alice always did when we would ask her if she had started using again. He doesn't start crying or yelling excuses or calling me names for doubting him.
His eyebrows just go up and he sits up to look at me in surprise. "Huh?" He says then shakes his head. "I mean, I have smoked weed plenty but I had to quit a few years ago when I got my job. They do random drug tests." He says, then tilts his head. "Why'd you ask that?"
"You know why I asked that." I narrow my eyes at him.
"Because of your sister?" He asks and I give him a look. "I didn't know she was into any of that." He says quickly. "I met her at a bar with my buddies one night. We only hooked up the one time. She left first thing in the morning and I hadn't heard anything from her since. Not until the hospital lady called me and told me I have a kid."
I let the words sink in, trying to detect where the lies may be hiding. Addicts are good at lying. To themselves and the people around them. Alice was so good at it, she fully believed her own lies.
"You spend a lot of time in bars?" I raise a brow.
He smiles a little uncomfortably. "I mean, I wouldn't say a lot." He shrugs. "I'm a single guy, so yeah, sometimes I go out with my friends and stuff."
"Lot of beer on the porch." I point out.
"I had some buddies from college come stay with me for a couple of nights, so yeah, we had some drinks." He rubs his eyes. "I'm not an alcoholic or anything if that's what you're getting at."
"That's exactly what an alcoholic would say." I retort and he smiles.
"You don't like me, do you?"
I bobble my head from side to side. "I don't know you." I tell him. "And now you're taking care of my niece."
"My daughter." He says, then shakes his head. "God, it still doesn't feel real. Like, saying that out loud, you know? A day ago I was just chilling, living my own life, and now I've got this whole ass kid. Like, she's mine. I'm responsible for keeping her alive."
I can't stop the way my lips twitch into a smile. His thoughts echo all of the same ones I'd been having since the day I got the call.
"It's a lot." I nod. "So you said you went to college? What did you study?"
"I have a bachelors in electrical engineering." He says. "I grew up in Florida. I moved here for school, got a job and this place when I graduated. I work for the power company. I'm full time with healthcare. My Dad lives in Arizona and my Mom lives in Florida still and will be here the day after tomorrow to help me. Anything else you want to know?"
I grin at him. "What's your sign?"
He laughs. "Sagittarius."
"Oh no, that won't do." I shake my head. "I knew you were a partier."
He rolls his eyes. "I'm not." He insists. "Definitely not anymore anyway."
"Good." I nod.
"Good." He repeats. "So do I pass your test?"
"Remains to be seen."
"Right." I feel him looking at us again. "Damn, she drank the whole thing."
I look down as the bottle pops from her lips and the baby starts to squirm in my arms, her face twisting in and out of all of these tiny expressions.
Ben leans over to watch her with me and it's cute for a second until her mouth opens and she lets out another whine.
"Not again." I whisper at her. "You're ok, sweet girl, it's ok." I pull her in closer and continue patting her bottom but she keeps crying, arching her body and swinging her arms.
"I think we need to burp her." Ben says.
"Good idea." I nod, then look down at her again. "I don't know how."
"Finally, something they actually showed me." He says. "Pass her to me." He holds out his hands and we awkwardly make the transfer without jostling her around too much.
He stands with her, holding her upright against his chest and begins patting her back between her shoulder blades.
She protests against him but then let's put a gurgling burp any man would be proud of.
"That's my girl." Ben says, still patting her. "Got anything else in there?"
In response, she squinches up her body and begins farting so loudly Ben and I both start laughing.
"That's not the end I expected it to come from." I giggle, standing to see her face pressed into his chest. Her lips turn up in a smile like she's proud of herself for that one too.
"She definitely got that from her daddy, didn't you?" He shifts her in his arms to cradle her. "She's so fucking pretty, right?"
The way he is staring down at her, and her little eyes fluttering shut, makes my heart tug. "The most beautiful baby I've ever seen."
And I mean that. Not how when your friends show you pictures of the babies their family has just had and you tell them how cute they are while thinking their heads aren't shaped right or that they look a little like an alien.
This baby girl is the cutest thing I've ever encountered in my entire life.
"She needs a name." Ben says, looking over at me. "Any ideas?"
I blink back at him, looking between her and him. The weight of naming another human, giving them a name that they will have their entire lives, feels so daunting.
"What have you been thinking?" I ask, not wanting him to see how unprepared I am.
"I kind of like Elizabeth." He says, looking back down at her.
My eyes instantly fill with tears.
Ben turns to look at me questioningly as I swipe a tear from my cheek. "That was my mother's name." I whisper.
He gives me a soft smile. "It's my grandmother's name too."
"I would love that." I tell him. "Truly."
He looks down at the baby in his arms, her little chest moving up and down rapidly in her sleep. "Elizabeth." He whispers to her. "That's your name."