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probssomethingorother · 30 days

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Next of Kin: A TLOU fanfic

This is really long and hopefully kinda sad. Don't look too close cause I got tired of editing and didn't get a beta.

Pre-Tlou, Sarah's birth story, big sad, canon compliant-ish

Sarah, Joel, Claire (OC)

Rating: Teen

“This is on you, boy. So you march back in there, you take the reins, and you do right by that child. You hear?” He only manages to nod his head, but Mr. Johnson finds it’s enough, and he is released with a final shove. In the silence that follows, a lifetime passes. He stops being a kid, walks back in, and tends to his child. ------- The day Joel becomes a dad and how he deals. Slight canon divergence where his wife dies instead of leaving.

ONE SHOT - Words: 15,929

Live laugh love, comment subscribe reblog - that's how it goes right??

Read on AO3 here or down below ⤵️

He becomes a dad on one of the worst days of his life.

July 20, 1989.

*** ʚїɞ ***

It’s a slow morning until it isn’t.

Soft light pours into their tiny bedroom through sheer polyester pom-pom studded blue curtains, relentlessly shining onto his face until finally, Joel cracks open his eyes. He inhales deeply, sucking in air against his pillow as he withdraws his arms from underneath and stretches until he takes up the entirety of the bed. It’s just a full - it’s not hard to fill the space, but usually, there is someone else keeping both his arms from hitting the sides.

Claire.

Head popping up as he blinks away the fuzziness of sleep, he catches the time on their bedside clock, and then promptly flops back down.

8:47 AM, Thursday - class.

She is halfway through some advanced design course right now, stuck in an architecture studio with a bunch of kids who don’t know how to hold a hammer.

“You’re voluntarily going to summer school?” he had teased, a mock frown puckering his forehead.

“You’re not going to be able to build ‘em, if I can’t design ‘em, buddy,” she shot back with a grin.

They don’t have many concrete plans, but they do have a little dream to start up their own building company - her designs with his construction, in-house everything from start to finish.

Several months ago, it looked like that dream was gone. He came home to her sobbing on the floor of his bathroom, clutching three positive pregnancy tests, blubbering about how it wasn’t supposed to happen, how her parents would be so upset, how her life was over, and how she didn’t think she could be a mom.

After the shock abated—the overwhelming drumming in his ears subsiding to a disconcerting tapping and his heart slowing to a crawl—he descended to the bathroom floor to be beside her. With a deep breath, he slid down the putrid yellow wall, intertwined his hand in hers, and exhaled every ounce of air in his lungs. Then, with a sweet peck to the top of her hand, breathlessly he told her, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout kids….but I do know… if one’s gettin’ you for a mom - they’re goin’ to be pretty amazin’.”

Much to his chagrin, his words only brought on a fresh wave of tears and sobs. He didn’t know what part of what he just said was wrong, but he couldn’t handle seeing her cry. As he frantically scurried on the tile floor to sit in front of her, he missed the subtle shift in the way her shoulders shook, angst turning to something lighter.

Tenderly, he nestled her head in his hands, and hastily sputtered:

“No no no, please don’t - I didn’t mean - we can do this is all. Ain’t the end of the world. You’ll be a good mom - and I think maybe... I’ll be a good dad - teach him all sorts of stuff about buildin’, and football, and my abuela’s tamales...And he’ll... and I know we don’t got much right now, but that’s just right now - we can have ‘em -“

And then Claire let out a snot-soaked chuckle, mouth twitching up at the sides as she wiped her wet face against his arm, leaving a shiny residue.

“Him? What makes you so sure were havin’ a boy?”

With a sigh of relief, he sat back as her tears came to a trickle; and with a curt nod and a smile, he dropped his hands away from her face.

“Well yeah,” he drawled, “Miller’s only have boys - me, Tommy, all the primos- not a girl in the bunch.”

Two days later Claire met with her counselor, rearranged her course schedule, and made a plan to enroll in the summer semester, freeing up her fall for the arrival of the baby. At the start of term, she crossed her fingers and prayed to God that the little nugget would stay inside long enough for her to make it through to finals.

It’s her last week. So far the plan has worked.

Normally, he’s navigating the morning rush to drop her off at UT Austin before he heads to the relentless buzz of the construction site, but this morning he’s on the late crew. He has nowhere to be til noon, and the extra hours of sleep are nice, but he also would rather be working.

He had asked for more shifts to make extra money before the baby comes, but Asshole Andy didn’t take too kindly to the request and did the exact opposite - slashed his hours by six each week, snarkily advising him he could “probably use more time at home prepping from the arrival of the rugrat.”

He had brooded over the whole ordeal for a couple of weeks, but now it irks him less, especially since Claire has given him a laundry list of things to complete before the little man comes home - assembling the crib, buying a bottle warmer, installing his car seat, cleaning the kitchen, and the bathroom, and the floors, and the couch, and pretty much every surface in their dinky 700 square foot apartment.

The list starts its relentless nag on his mind right as the last dredges of sleep scurry away, and the morning light, now too bright for any more excuses, floods their matchbox of a bedroom. It leaves Joel with no choice but to begrudgingly abandon the comforts of their bed, and rolling to its edge, with a small groan he begins his day.

Shuffling out of their room, his feet catch and peel away from the warped parquet floor with a faint, sticky noise that echoes in the quiet morning. It's one of the many quirks of their aging apartment that they've come to accept- its "charm," as Claire loves to say. Their living space is a hodgepodge of second-hand furniture, DIY fixes, and cheap decor. They have tried to make it look better, but even with all of Claire’s design knowledge only so much can be done to distract from the place's age and size.

He flicks on the TV - an old set, the screen slightly too blue- and flips to Sport’s Center to catch the Astros’ game highlights.

Taking a few moments to himself, he plops down at the tiny table wedged in the corner of their kitchenette with a hefty bowl of frosted flakes before the day's duties demand his attention.

His spoon pauses mid-air, startled, as the front door swings open and bounces against the wall. He’s halfway through breakfast, but wasn’t keeping track of the time.

Claire comes barreling through, her presence like a sudden storm, backpack haphazardly dropping with a thud as she crosses the threshold. She’s always been a bit of a tornado, bouncy brown curls trailing her like a dust cloud as she whips up small messes in her wake.

“Need to pee!” She announces as she hurries past Joel, her movement more of a rapid wattle, one hand cradling her swollen belly. She’s three weeks out from her due date and feeling and looking like “Veruca J, Veruca!” - as she likes to lament to him at least once a week.

Despite the urgency, she tosses him a small smile as she slips inside the bathroom and shuts the door. With a small smile of his own, he gives his head a little shake and returns to his cereal.

“You eat?” He calls with a full mouth, attention on the screen in the far opposite corner, a little too enthralled watching the Astros get smashed by the Mets. The question is thrown casually over his shoulder, a formality really because he knows the answer. She never eats before class, opting to take the extra few minutes of sleep over fixing up something, but still, he has to go through the routine: he asks, she grumbles, he says the baby needs food, and then there is a slight pause before she crosses her arms and says he’s right.

But when its usual pattern unfolds with no reply, he lobs another question towards the bathroom, “Wan’me to pour you a bowl of this?”

And that’s when everything speeds up.

She emerges from the bathroom with stark panic etched across her face, its complexion losing color by the second. Her deep brown eyes, wide and unblinking, lock onto Joel's like a silent scream.

Her shorts are off, her underwear is red, and blood spreads down the tops of her inner thighs.

He’s on his feet in a fraction of a second. As he darts up, the table jostles violently, sending his breakfast airborne in a chaotic slew of cereal and milk, and the bowl slips off, splintering against the tile of the kitchen floor. The high-pitched clatter of it all is nothing compared to the sudden ringing now filling his head.

Tears begin to pucker her waterline as he rushes to Claire, his footsteps quick, his hands hovering before they gently, firmly, grasp her shoulders.

A thousand words are interchanged between them, but none break from either of their lips.

With a shared nod, they split—Joel to the chaos of their bedroom for clothes, Claire to the phone.

“Mom?… Momma? Can you n’Pop meet us at the hospital?” Her voice is shallow and cracky, but Joel can hear it as clear as day as he rushes to throw on a t-shirt and wriggle into a pair of jeans.

“No St. David’s ..” she chokes out, as he stumbles over his own feet as they enter his pant legs, leaving him to careen into the closet door. As he pops back up, he catches her trembling voice ending the call: “Okay, love you, see you soon.”

The phone crashes to the laminate countertop with a sharp clatter, clearly not rehooked, as he snatches his wallet from the dresser and scrambles to find his keys.

If he wasn’t fighting to suppress the panic quickly growing inside him, frustration over the search for the pesky things would have been all-consuming. He rummaged through three pairs of pants, and checked under the bed, in the couch cushion, in the kitchen, the bathroom, and pretty much every other inch of their apartment, before finally lifting Claire’s backpack strewn in the entry to see the car keys discarded beneath.

Within seconds of his eyes landing on them, they are out the door, and the worst and best day of Joel’s life begins.

*** ʚїɞ ***

“Joel?”

“Right here, baby, right here.”

“I - I- please, don’t let - we need to - now-”

“I know, I gotcha.”

Her fragmented pleas, broken by sharp intakes of breath and muffled by cascades of tears, repeat incessantly in his head—louder and more urgent with each echo. Joel can’t get it to stop - much like his leg moving in an equally incessant rhythm, bouncing up and down as he sits in the rigid chair. The compulsive movement is matched by his hand - right anxiously twisting his watch band back and forth, rubbing it deeper and deeper into the rawing skin of his left.

“There’s so much blood.”

“Just focus on breathe’n now, we’ll be there soon, alright?”

Dried remnants of it cling stubbornly to the crevices of his knuckles and dirty the spaces in between his fingers, staining them a brownish crimson. He could clean it off, but it’s a piece of her - and if he can’t see her, at least he can still look at this bit, no matter how gruesome.

Almost an hour has passed since he’s last seen her.

By the time they reached the ER, she was too dizzy to walk. She’s not much smaller than him, but Joel had scooped her up with urgency anyway and charged through the sliding doors. The muted blue walls of the hospital corridor blurred in his periphery as he zeroed in on the signs leading them there. As he burst through the doors, they rebounded off the walls with a loud slap, and the collective gaze of the waiting room pivoted toward them.

His arms burned from her weight, but he dug his grip in more, fingertips pushing into her thigh hard enough to bruise.

"Something’s wrong with her," he blurted out to the quiet room, his blown-wide eyes locking onto the woman’s at the admittance desk.

It took no time for the nurses to descend on them, ushering Joel out of the waiting room and back toward a bed he could finally let her down on.

Claire was barely coherent, face ashy, breathing labored.

“What’s her name, son?” A sweet older woman with box-dyed red hair asked, gently moving him aside to better attend to Claire.

“Claire,” She took his name officially a few months back, but he’s known her longer as - “Claire Johnson,” - it just flows right.

“Okay Claire, we’re going to take good care of you. How many weeks are you, hun?”

When her head lolled to the side, lips moving but no words coming out, he felt like someone was squeezing the air out of his lungs while simultaneously filling his head with cement.

He couldn’t think straight, couldn’t focus. His eyes bounced from her to the monitors, from the nurses to doctors, from the needle being pushed into her arm to the cross on the wall, from the strap being secured around her belly to her beautiful curls getting crunched beneath the oxygen mask, and then finally, to a calendar hanging crookedly above the corner sink -

His gaze had lingered there for a long moment.

Claire had put a magnet on the fridge to track the weeks, a little pink and blue calendar. He thought watching the time tick by was a little silly at first, but this week, when she flipped it to “3 weeks from baby!” he got a little flutter of something in his chest.

“37,” he muttered, brain distantly doing the mental math as a nurse dispensed a healthy glob of ultrasound jelly onto Claire, bottle squelching with the brute force of the squeeze.

Only 37 seconds later, a decision was made: she needed surgery immediately. Her bed rails snapped up, she was disconnected from the machines that beeped and blinked with a detached urgency, and wheeled away swiftly. Someone tried to explain something about the placenta and an “abruption” and that she was losing more blood than her body could handle, but all Joel could focus on was keeping pace with the gurney so her hand wouldn’t slip from his.

But eventually, it did - had to.

She was pushed behind a set of doors he was not allowed to go, held back by a physician’s firm hand. “Take a seat, someone will come talk to you,” they said.

That was 37 minutes ago, and nobody has come to talk to him.

The flickering of the fluorescent light overhead is now the only thing keeping him sane. It mixes with some sun strips crossing the blue tile floor, and when everything hits right, it looks like beams of light dancing at the bottom of a swimming pool. He finds himself fixating on it, forcing himself to take a breath every time a glowy strip appears. Everything else around him just fades into the background, the ring of the hustle and bustle of the hospital becoming muted as if caught beneath the waterline.

Claire once told him blue is used to evoke calm, but surrounded by the hospital’s blue walls and blue floors, it only makes him feel more and more like he’s drowning underwater.

Claire loves the water.

She’s lived in a landlocked city her entire life, but give the girl a chance and she will talk about the ocean. She’s only been a handful of times to the coast- just Padre Island, yet, you would think she’s dipped her toe in each of the seven seas. Sand and sunshine, blue skies and blue sea - she could never get enough.

They had almost escaped there for the Fourth.

“Come on, J, one last hurrah,” she had pleaded, her eyes alight with the prospect, her voice threaded with excitement as she bounced around their small living room. “It’s called a babymoon - everyone’s doing it now,” she had tried to explain, doing her best to convince him to sit in the sand and watch fireworks explode in dazzling arrays over the Gulf.

But he had to say no. There was no time, no money, and his old car, which creaked and groaned even on short drives, would probably not survive a four-hour trek in the boiling Texas heat.

It’s a little silly - especially now - but all he can think about is her and him, and how they really should have just taken the goddam trip.

*** ʚїɞ ***

There is little to say to her parents when they arrive and find him waiting, his hands slick with sweat as they approach. He gulps hard and clears his throat, scrambling for words that refuse to form. But before he can try to speak, Mrs. Johnson pulls him in for a hug.

Her hand gently brushes the back of his head, and the precipice of any words dissolves into a shaky exhale into the crook of her neck. She smells like a blend of lavender and vanilla—just like his mom used to. When she breathes, "Oh honey," her voice cracks with maternal warmth, and for a moment, Claire’s mom is his mom, and he doesn’t want to let go. Arms, heavy and trembling, slowly rise around her, his body deflates, and for a flash of a second, he doesn’t feel like he’s stuck underwater.

But he only gets in one breath before he slips back under.

Claire’s father, a big burly man - an old-fashioned Texas rancher- interrupts the moment, hand going firmly to his wife’s shoulder. He tugs her back, guiding her to a nearby chair with a look of the eye and a twitch of the head.

Mrs. Johnson’s eyes, already weary and tinted red, spare Joel one final sympathetic look before taking her seat and turning to the ground.

Mr. Johnson takes his wife’s spot, leaning in close. His breath is hot and has the stench of musky cigars as it puffs into his face. “Nurse at the front told us what’s goin’ on,” he gruffs with a dagger-like glare, a look that Joel has only seen once before when he caught them one late night junior year fooling around in the back of his Tio’s truck.

If it hadn’t been for Claire coming between them—literally—Joel’s pretty sure Mr. Johnson would have killed him on the spot.

Unfortunately, he’s lacking her protection now.

On shaky knees, he sinks back down in his seat as Mr. Johnson takes his own next to his wife, who has already brought out her Rosary and begun the Litany.

For a long while, he watches her fingers glide across the beads. Her umber tone makes the milky cream of the tiny glass orbs and the gold-plated cross shine in her grip. Head bowed, her voice is hushed, a whispered prayer—delicate, but intentional.

He’s never taken much to religion, but it was important to his mother, so he never missed a Sunday. It was just a hollow obligation then, but in this moment, he can see why people are drawn to it.

There is a comfort in knowing what to do, what to pray, who to ask for help.

He follows along in his own head, punctuating her efforts with his own hard “Amens”. He pushes his anxiety into each prayer, hoping the Mary up there will take pity on them, see herself in Claire, and protect their son.

They only make it three decades deep.

Perhaps if they had finished it, things would be different.

He barely registers the doctor’s approach. When he slowly looks up, he can’t miss the hollow defeat that hangs heavily in the woman’s eyes as she comes into focus behind the Johnsons.

Time stops.

He goes rigid, fidgety anxiousness leaving his body as dread pushes in.

Seeing the change in Joel's expression, the Johnsons twist to face the doctor, their bodies stiffening as they stand. He tries to rise, but his legs betray him, and he remains half-seated, peering through the narrow gap between their shoulders. The doctor, flanked by the nurse from before with the coppery hair - “Judy” he remembers off a name tag - looks exhausted, face drawn tight, almost like a different person then who she was in the ER.

"I'm sorry," the physician offers, each word measured but heavy, carrying a weight that squeezes out all the little remaining air from the waiting area. "We did everything we could, but..."

The words that follow blend into the sterile air. Something about complications, a clot to the brain, a loss too great, a life gone as a new one gasped its first breath.

His knees buckle and he’s back in the uncomfortable seat once more. His fingers find the sides and wrap around, knuckles going white as he holds onto the plastic like it’s a preserver in rough waters. Every hair on his body stands to attention as a wave of goosebumps runs from his head to his toes. Saliva pools in his mouth and his throat constricts tight and his lungs feel like they are vacuumed sealed shut.

They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. What they don’t tell you is that it happens just the same when they die.

Claire.

She’s eleven years old, escorted into their church camp room, and placed in a seat next to him. He was dared by Freddy Bower to yank her ponytail so he gave the new girl a gentle tug. In return, she picked her nose and wiped it on his arm. Everyone teased him the rest of summer that she had given him her cooties.

She’s in his homeroom when school starts in the fall and the rivalry is instantaneous, competition whittling down to their days of birth - and of course, she’s three days ahead.

And then she’s thirteen and leaning across the circle, the tip of the soda bottle pointing towards him. Even though she unabashedly wiped him off her lips, he didn’t mind the way her strawberry chapstick lingered on his. He wanted to remember his first kiss with a girl, even if it was with her. At the same party the following year, they are stuffed in a closet for seven minutes in heaven, but they stay several inches apart - “Miller if you think I’m goi-” - “Oh, like I would even want you to.”

And then they are freshmen, and she’s not in any of his classes or clubs and he kind of misses her, but convinces himself it's just the competition that he craves, and has nothing to do with how she’s bubbly, and witty, and pretty, and fun.

And then it’s the summer and they are stuck in the back of a hardware store together, wearing neon green vests, racing to stock shelves, tallying who knows the most paint codes, and the competition is back and now he doesn’t want to let it go. So he doesn’t.

He makes her start to hate him less, and they get paired together in home-ec, and when they both get dragged to church by their parents they go to the pew in the back and fold all the hymnal pages into geometric patterns. They get close enough for his mom to start packing her a tamale in his lunch, teasing “para su amiga,” with a wiggle of her brow, and for Claire’s older brother to start snagging him packs of Marlboro Reds from the corner store on Park before away games, because “since you she fights with our Pops less.”

And even though she laughs in his face when he asks her to Junior year homecoming, it’s official - they are together - and they stay together.

She cries with him when his mom dies and he holds her tight when her brother meets the same fate five months later. She gets accepted to NYU, but decides to stay in Austin for school - “I’m not doing this for you - me and Tommy are buds now, can’t leave him.”

And although she lives in the dorms freshman year and he takes the couch at his Tio’s, they still make it work. When he saves enough to rent a place of his own, one night a week becomes several, and then she’s with him full-time. And she decorates the place with seashells and butterflies and they laugh and dance in the living room, and burn things on the stove, and watch marathons of shitty movies, and flood the bathroom trying to fix the sink. And he pops the question one silly night under the sheets, and puts a peach ring on her finger, and he’s in love, and they are making plans, and having dreams, and having a -

"Hun?" The gentle intrusion startles him as it slices through his life with her. Judy’s auburn hair flashes infront of his eyes before her kind gaze takes its place. He nods mechanically.

“Why don’t you go see your baby girl?” She chirps soft and smooth, as one of her wrinkly hands comes to his elbow while the other wiggles her fingers under his and unlocks his grip from the edge of the seat.

With another shaky nod, he forces himself to his feet, each step hesitant as he follows the Johnsons out of the waiting area.

Only once he’s at their backs do her words hit his brain, but by then he’s not sure he’s hearing anything right - hoping he’s not hearing anything right.

*** ʚїɞ ***

Things go a little hazy for a while, like wandering through a dream that both makes absolute sense and none at all.

Despite being behind the doctor, her parents set the pace- a quick stride, nipping at the physician’s heels, pushing her to lead them down the winding corridor at a speed Joel finds wholly unmanageable. He can’t quite put his finger on the feeling, but his brain is telling him that it’s strange to be rushing - inappropriate- to be speeding this along.

With every five tiles, he falls a step behind, his pace slowing incrementally until the echoes of their footsteps fade and he’s alone with nothing but the empty stretch of corridor to navigate.

Distance.

Minutes ago, he had wanted the space between them to disappear; now, he wishes the hallway would stretch a little longer, the doorway be a bit further - hell, if he could move her room to the other end of the hospital, that would be best.

Space is time, and he needs time before this moment finally catches up with the next. The next that’s tainted by a cruel reality waiting on the other side of that door.

When he finally steps in and sees her, color already gone from her face, he feels small, like a little kid - he is a kid - and she was a kid - and now they have -

He doesn’t remember walking over to the clear plastic bassinet, but then he is there looking down at the thing that took his first love from him.

Her tiny fists wave in the air - clearly a fighter from her first breath- and then her teeny nose wrinkles up as she lets out a piercing cry.

The shriek, is timed perfectly with a deep wail from Claire’s mother.

The sounds are like the gun at the start of a race, his feet moving before he thinks.

He has no control over his body as he rushes back into the hallway, his heart pounding, breaths shallow and quick. His chest feels like it’s on fire as he slides his body down the wall, sinking into the floor, much like he did several months back when Claire broke the news - although this is light years more jarring.

“Why don’t you go see your baby girl?” Plays back in his head like a cruel joke.

It’s a girl.

He should be happy that at least one of them made it out, but all is brain can grab a hold of is the fact that the one that did, is not his girl - not Claire.

The commingled cries leak under the door and waft into the hallway, giving him no reprieve. His hands slide over his ears as he tucks his knees into his chest and digs his forehead into the denim of his jeans.

He thought he knew what grief felt like. When his mom died, years ago now, it was like someone rearranged his insides and forgot to put his heart back into the right place, stuck somewhere near his stomach, perpetually sunk. And back then, he knew it was coming - a monster in the closet that would eventually come so he left the door ajar. He slowly grieved the loss of her for months and months before the cancer finally took her, and it hurt, but not like this.

This was different.

He wasn’t prepared for a monster to come and take everything, and certainly not on today of all days.

He thought they would rush to the hospital and get settled in a room and figured the worst thing that could go wrong was Claire squeezing his hand maybe a bit too hard - maybe even enough to break it, he had heard that could happen - and then after a few grueling hours, they would leave with arms cradling a boy, a strong little fella with Claire's bright eyes and his big’ole nose.

They would go home as three.

He knows there’s two of them now, but he feels like he’s just one.

He can’t do this.

With a clack on the tile, feet halt in front of him. Raising his head slightly off his knees, dark brown cowboy boots come to fill his view as they grind into the ground. With a firm hand - an angry clench that squeezes his bicep- Claire’s father hoists him up roughly, feet slipping on the smooth tile as he’s forced to stand and face him.

His eyes are all fire when they meet Joel’s and his grip intensifies as they bear into him. He’s heard stories about Mr. Johnson’s anger - never would touch a woman, but Claire’s told him about how he wouldn’t hold back on her brother Mike. For a moment, he’s sure he’s about to experience what he can do, but instead, he’s slammed against the wall.

“Stand up. Act like a damn man,” he growls, his voice a strident whisper.

It’s harsh, but expected. Her dad never liked him, thought he was derailing his daughter's future, and that was before getting her pregnant. Five years of pent-up anger and disdain are channeled into the vice grip on his arm. He winces, but he also knows he's fortunate it's only his arm taking the brunt of it.

“This is on you, boy. So you march back in there, you take the reins, and you do right by that child. You hear?”

He only manages to nod his head, but Mr. Johnson finds it’s enough, and he is released with a final shove.

In the silence that follows, a lifetime passes.

He stops being a kid, walks back in, and tends to his child.

His child: Sarah.

That’s the name they had picked after thumbing through a far too large book rented from the college library. Claire had wanted something with meaning, “classic, but strong,” and landed on Alexander and Sarah - a warrior and a princess.

He didn’t think they would be needing the girl's name - “Miller’s make men” he had begun to chime every time Claire’s eyes veered toward something pink or purple for the baby. But perhaps it was mother’s intuition because here she is.

Sarah

She was supposed to be their princess. Now, she’s just his, and that fact weighs his body down like an anchor, planting his feet next to her bassinet, forcing him to stare into her big brown eyes that go as deep as the ocean.

Claire would have loved her baby’s eyes.

A warm hand settles between his shoulder blades, and he pushes his gaze away from her, blinks rapidly to clear away the tears pooling in his waterline, and turns toward the source. A nurse with a yellow scrub cap that matches a tweedy bird pin clipped on her pink scrubs offers him a quaint but sullen smile and drops her hand away.

“You picked a name out for her yet, sugar?” She asks bending over the bassinet clipped to retrieve the name placard at the top of the small crib.

The powder pink card boasts “It’s a Girl!” in a cursive font with flowers and a cheery teddy bear with a bow. Beneath it, are all the important things, like “Mother: Johnson”, “Weight: 6lb 1oz,” “Length: 17 ⅛. In.” and “Time: 10:27am.”

The spot for the name is glaringly empty.

Joel nods with a sniffle.

“And what’s the winner then?” The clipboard in her grip swings around to her front, and she balances it in a crevice of her stomach as she uncaps a black felt tip marker with her teeth.

Mouth dry, he swallows hard. The last time his throat pushed out words was when he whispered “you’ll be okay” into Claire’s ear as she was pushed away from him through those doors off the ER bay. He hates that his last words to her were a lie, but that’s neither here nor there now.

“Sarah,” he says slowly, listening how it floats through the air.

“Middle?”

He knows what Claire wanted - what they had planned - but his eyes flick across the room and find her blanched face obscured by a tube and surrounded by monitors, and he just can’t go with it.

“I think it should-,” he pauses, pondering it again for a fraction of a second, “-Claire.” He nods, “Sarah. Claire. Miller.”

He hopes she doesn’t mind.

*** ʚїɞ ***

The hours begin to bleed together.

The mechanical whispers of the hospital - the soft beeps, the muted shuffles of footsteps, the low voices of doctors, and nurses, and administrators weaving in and out the dimly lit room - it all becomes one giant mush after a while.

Someone had offered to wheel Sarah away, and put her in the nursery with all the other newborns - “are you sure? fathers ain’t normally the ones watchin’ them like this” - but despite being utterly terrified, he shook his head at the offer. He planted himself in the corner of the room on a small maroon plastic couch, rolled her bassinet firmly in front of him, and kept her small form at his eye level.

People come in to evaluate Claire, but when nobody veers toward their own little space to check on them, he wonders if it’s the wrong decision. She seems perfectly fine, but his leg bounces nervously with the possibility that she isn’t - silently slipping away because he doesn’t know anything about babies.

His gaze rarely leaves her even as conversations swell around them, constant low-murmured discussions about what comes next.

They frame their words carefully, tiptoeing around the inevitable, trying to present things as if there are options to be made, but there aren’t options - there is just one option :

When to let her go.

She’s already gone in all the ways that matter. Her body is there, but her brain is not. She’s never going to wake up. She’s not going to go home and dance in their apartment, or wiggle her toes in the sand, or blow bubbles in her drink, or call him “Joel Michael Miller” when he tickles her too much.

And she is not going to hold her baby, or hear her giggle, or see her take her first steps cause Claire is not going to be stepping out of this hospital.

He knows it, but the Johnsons haven’t quite gotten there yet. So he just watches from the corner of the room as her parents ask all the same questions over and over again, yet hope for different answers.

Earlier, someone had tried to explain what happened was rare. That when the placenta detached her body kicked into overdrive, blood clotting excessively. As little Sarah was being pulled into the land of the living, Claire slipped the opposite way, a clot traveling up to her brain and cutting off blood supply for too long.

A one in a million chance.

“Exceedingly rare,” they had said repeatedly, and, “no way to know this would happen,” as though those two things could somehow soften the blow.

Soft enough to knead it into something it isn’t.

For her parents, “rare” became synonymous with special, and “no way to know” mutated into defying the odds, and both together turned into a false hope of an impossible reality.

“She just need’s some time - we’ll wait- our Claire - she’s a strong one - patience is a virtue.” her mother told the room, aiming the words at nobody in particular.

And waiting is what they have been doing. They hover by her bedside, chairs drawn close, bodies hunched over and slipping out, practically on their knees as they tightly grasp Claire’s hands and pray.

Their words to God fill the space between beeps and breaths, and he doesn’t really believe in Him like how they do, but part of him also want’s to get down on his knees and ask Him why.

When the hours tick by, they start to beg for a miracle.

And Joel doesn’t believe in that sort of stuff either, but the longer he spends with Sarah the more he thinks that God has already delivered. He could have taken them both, but he left one behind.

Wrapped snuggly in a hospital blanket, she stirs slightly, her tiny hands balling into fists against the underside of the blue and pink striped fabric. He holds his breath until she settles.

He’s been doing that a lot.

The door groans softly on its hinges, inching open just wide enough for someone to slide through. The Johnsons pivot toward the sound, and they nod in recognition, gesture returned politely by the nurse slipping through. She then shifts focus, surprisingly shuffling back toward Joel tucked away in the corner.

It’s Judy again - that nurse from the ER who seems to be trailing them throughout the hospital. She pauses beside him, her gaze softening as she looks down at Sarah, and then back to him.

“May I?” Her voice is a hushed whisper as she gestures to the cramped couch that has become his home for the last several hours.

Anxiously his hands had been wedged beneath his thighs, but he slides them out, and scoots an inch to the right, making room for Judy to settle in beside him.

“I know I’m not one of the gals in pink, but I thought I would come and check on ya’ll.” She adjusts her sea foam green scrub top, smoothing out some wrinkles, and untangling her hanging ID badge that’s gotten caught in the chain of her glasses draped around her neck.

She’s so nonchalant about it all, it's a little strange, but also a little comforting hearing someone talk to him like normal.

"How are we holdin’ up?" she asks her voice a gentle coo. Joel pauses, caught off-guard, unsure if her words are meant for him or the baby nestled in front of them. He goes with the former, but manages only a shrug, expression a bit hollow.

“Well, that’s expected,” she murmurs back.

“I don’t know what to do,” he confesses, his whisper barely audible as he brushes his palms back and forth against his thighs.

He’s been thinking it for hours, hasn’t dared to utter it outloud, but something about Judy has him spilling his secrets.

“Do?” She angles toward him, her brow bunched together in a soft frown.

“With her. I don’t know what I am supposed to be doin’.”

A reassuring touch lands on his knee. “Oh hun, nobody really does at first. But you’ll get there,” she encourages. With a hopeful tilt of her head she suggests, “Why don’t you start by holding her?”

Joel balks, his voice stuttering. “No I don’t - I don’t -,”

He’s thought about it, but she’s a tiny little thing - swears he’s seen potatoes at the county fair bigger - and he’s petrified of someone how smushing her. He’s fairly certain his hands will cause more harm than good the second he reaches for her.

He hasn’t, so he won’t.

“ - I can’t,” he begins, but Judy halts his efforts with a raised hand.

“Nonsense,” she dismisses as she stands, couch squawking with the change in pressure. Her hands are cool as they touch his arms, sending goosebumps up his skin the moment she bends and positions them. The reaction has nothing to do with the iciness of her touch though; his heart bounces into his throat before settling back into his chest and hammering against his ribs.

“Yep there ya’go,” she softly assures as they become a cradle. Silently, he shakes his head - every part of his body telling him he shouldn’t do it, but Judy pays no mind.

"It’ll feel more natural than you think.”

Staying petrifyingly still, his eyes acutely track her as she turns towards the bassinet and slips her hands under Sarah’s small form. “Hand under her head now, like where mine’s at,” she instructs, catching Joel’s nervous eyes and waiting for him to return a nod before proceeding.

He’s not ready, but he doesn’t think Judy would let him stop even if he asked; he suspects her bright red hair matches her personality in that regard.

He bites down on the inside of his cheek and gives her a curt confirmation.

He’s going to have to be ready.

Sarah's tiny head fits into the crook of his elbow, and for a moment, he's too afraid to breathe. Her weight settles against his chest, and although a rush of warmth floods through his heart, physically he can’t seem to meet the feeling halfway, body clenched up tight.

Filled with apprehension his eyes flick up to Judy. She’s giving him a hearty smile, the crow's feet at the corner of her eyes turning into deep valleys as they crinkle up.

When Sarah begins to squirm and fuss, it has his heart starting to beat nervously fast. He didn’t realize he could be any more tense, but his body constricts even more, shoulders darting to his ears, spine curling, feet pushing hard into the ground; it's all in a futile hope that if he stops moving, she will too.

He holds his breath.

“Relax, she’s a baby, not a brick,” Judy whispers, careful not to aggravate Sarah anymore as she bends in close. “She feels what you’re feelin’ honey just -” Her hand settles on his upper arm and brushes down it.

He forces himself to take a breath, urging his body to comply with Judy’s coaching. Slowly, his shoulders come away from his ears and his chest sinks back against Sarah, and he lets out a shaky, but unburdening breath.

Sarah settles too.

When he looks up to show Judy, he discovers she has retreated several feet, busying herself with something on the back countertop. His heart catapults into his throat again as he realizes he’s holding her alone. His eyes widen with concern as they snap down to Sarah. He gulps hard, adam’s apple pushing down to the bottom of his neck and then climbing back up. His muscles are threatening to constrict again, but he tries to keep all that at bay.

Relax, relax, relax

The anxious flutter only settles when he sees Judy returning.

“Chart says she’s fit as a fiddle, and due for another feed soon. Did the nurse show you how to give her a bottle?” she inquires, peering at him over her purple glasses.

Joel shakes his head.

“They show you anything?” she presses, her tone gentle as she moves her readers and sticks them into her bushy hair.

Again, he shakes his head, and then at the same time both their attention moves toward the Johnsons, still ensconced in their silent prayer at Claire’s bedside. A mutual understanding passes between them then, both knowing that other things have taken precedence in this room besides teaching a new dad how to be just that.

“Well, I ain’t no labor and delivery nurse, but I’ve had five of my own. Reckon I can get you sorted,” she declares, settling back onto the couch. With practiced ease, she adjusts Joel’s hold on Sarah, her hands confident and caring. Unprompted, she continues, “You remind me of my youngest - and I’m not going to ask you where your mama’s at - but if my little one was havin’ his own little one, and I wasn’t there for some reason, I’d hope that somebody would have some mercy on that clueless kid and step’n for me.”

It’s true, he is a clueless kid.

He doesn’t know how to hold her, or feed her, or change a diaper, and he’s not sure what cry is fine and what sound should have him racing to find a nurse.

Not to mention any of the parts about her being a girl and what to do with that. He might have been able to push through if life with this child was going to be mud and dinosaurs and football and little boy things, but he has no idea about pink and princesses and dance class and being a girl.

And part of him knows he still wouldn’t know any of this stuff if Claire was sitting next to him, but at least she’s made for this.

Was made for this.

He’s not.

Yet, as if reading his mind, Judy offers: “You’ll figure it out.”

Sarah’s small lips pucker and then croak out the faintest yawn, before flattening into a little smile.

“See, she like’s when you hold’er,” Judy chimes while playfully bumping her shoulder into his.

Goosebumps cascade down his body again, but this time they are warm—soft and bright, like Sarah's smile. The fear still lingers, rattling in his chest, but he can’t help but mirror her expression. His mouth twitches, the corners lifting into a smile of his own.

The longer he looks, the more he realizes he’s seen that grin before.

Lost in the moment, he looks up to show Claire.

*** ʚїɞ ***

“No reason to keep her here, you’re all set to leave,” the pediatrician tells him as he unhooks his stethoscope from his ears and gently places Sarah’s blanket back in place.

His tone is light and optimistic, but his volume is hushed, matching the somber ambiance of the room. Everyone’s been quite cognizant to keep quiet with the Johnsons holding vigil at the other end.

“Leave? To another room?” Joel whispers, swaying on the balls of his feet, hands crossed tightly over his chest.

With a small snort and shake of his head, the doctor tries again, “No no, your baby is being discharged, you can go home.” There is a beat of silence and then he adds, “get out of ..here.. for a bit, get a break from this, son.”

Joel’s eyes drift over to Claire’s parents, and a weight that’s been looming in the background suddenly settles on his shoulders. He rakes his hands down his face and they settle in front of his mouth, palms touching like prayer hands.

He knew this would come, but he hadn’t let himself consider how it would play out. A shiver slips down his spine and he drags in a long breath.

He’s not sure he can do this part, but then again, he didn’t think he could do any other parts of the day either.

“Talk with ‘em, but I think it’d be best if she goes home tonight,” the physician encourages as he departs, giving his shoulder a small squeeze before smiling back at Sarah and taking his exit.

The talk is a mess.

It’s a charged volley of raised voices and differing views.

They can’t believe he is considering leaving, but the doctor is right, there is no reason to stay lingering by and waiting in a place seeped in gloom and dread when Sarah’s life should start with something much brighter.

They tell him a mother and child aren’t supposed to be separated.

They aren’t wrong, but they aren’t right. He holds his tongue to what he could say, and the conversation pivots, anyway.

He asks them to revisit what the doctors said, that she will not be waking up. Gently, he tries to convince them that Claire wouldn’t want to live as a shell hooked to monitors and breathing by way of an air tank -that this isn’t what she would want - that this isn’t her.

But they don’t get it. They tell him God can work in mysterious ways, that He will choose if she goes.

He tells them that God made his choice, and now it’s their choice - his choice, he corrects. He has let them take charge this entire time, but their ceremony at the courthouse in March makes this his responsibility.

It was just a little thing with a borrowed suit and a white dress from the thrift store, and a Clerk named Alvin as their witness, but he wants to uphold the vows he swore to her that day.

With a scoff, they tell him that it wasn’t before God, that it wasn’t in a church, that it might have well have been two kids playing dress up.

They say she’s still their responsibility. And he knows “responsibility” for them is really “she’s our baby,” - and he now has a glimpse of what that means - but still, he can face what they can’t.

He tells them they are making her suffer.

They tell him he’s going to hell.

He doesn’t necessarily disagree with them.

*** ʚїɞ ***

When he shakily thumbs through some paperwork - meaningless words on a page that don’t stick in his brain - and then signs his name at the bottom, he somehow feels too young and too old at the same time.

His signature is a janky mess that anyone would be hard-pressed to decipher if it came from the trembling hand of an eighty-year-old or a fourth-grader learning cursive for the first time.

Her dad had told him to be a man.

It hurts, but that’s what he’s trying to do.

*** ʚїɞ ***

When the nighttime air hits his face, he takes a breath, dragging it in slowly through his nose and holding it until his lungs beg for mercy. He thought a few moments away would feel good, but it just seems to have highlighted a new type of anxiety that’s prodding at his insides.

A tiny voice in the back of his mind tells him he’s forgotten something, but he knows it isn’t true.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, it whispers.

He tries to picture exactly where she is, tucked safely in the hospital minded by nurses, but the nagging feeling stubbornly remains.

Anxiously, he twirls a pair of borrowed scissors in his fingers as he walks across the parking lot toward his car. Every step further elicits one more repetition of her name, louder and louder.

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.

He pauses halfway across the parking lot, the urge to go back stopping his stride. As he drums the blade of the scissors against his palm, he considers it for a moment. He wants to have her where he can see her, but shaking his head, he dismisses the idea and continues on.

It’s strange how they’ve only been together for a few hours, and already he can’t seem to let her go—not even when he tries. He hopes that’s normal.

His keys twist into the back lock and the trunk pops open with a loud click, catapulting open and up as soon as it's unlatched. Having seen far better days, the ‘78 Wagoneer is chronically temperamental. He’s normally fluent in its weird behaviors, but he’s not on the ball today.

A second too slow at catching it, the edge nails him in the face as it comes up. It doesn’t hurt all that much, but it’s embarrassing, and he quickly turns his head around the parking lot to check if anyone’s noticed. But the only thing staring back at him is the washed-out face of a smiling baby plastering the side of the car seat box in his trunk.

It was bought over the weekend from Walmart, but hasn’t been touched since. Getting it sorted before the baby was born was supposed to be on the list of things for him to do.

Obviously that didn’t happen.

With a hefty sigh, he drags it closer and flicks open the scissors to slice at the packaging tape. Every inch of the orange handles and silver blades are heavily plastered in sharpie with “Nurse Stat. 7” to an absurd degree.

Asking for them wasn’t easy.

His request was simple at first: “Ma’am, do y’all have a pair of scissors or somethin’ I could borrow?” The woman at the large, curved desk glanced up, giving him her full attention. He probably didn’t need to say more, but her direct gaze made him nervous, and he found himself rambling.

And that’s when things got hard.

“We just had - I just had -” he stuttered before stopping in his tracks, trying to find the words that felt right to explain what had happened that day.

They did just have a baby, but they weren’t a “we” anymore, yet saying “I” felt dishonest—he hadn’t done anything. She had done everything. Gave everything.

And he knew the other half of his “we” was gone. He knew it, but verbalizing that reality outside the confines of her hospital room felt like he was spreading a lie, leaving a bitter, acidic taste in his mouth. So he decided to omit it—“if you have nothin’ nice to say, don’t say nothin’ at all,” he reminded himself, as though he was a kid back on the schoolyard, stopping a pesky rumor from spreading.

He wished it was just that.

With his hands buried in his pockets to hide their shaking, he instead managed, “My baby came a bit early and were gettin’ ready to go, but they say she needs a car seat, and her’s is still packed up in the back of my trunk.” The words came out awkward and uneven, voice cracking as if he was just a kid.

She was light on the sympathy when she handed the scissors over, slapping them into his palm with clear directions not to run off with them as if she’d heard his story several times before.

Maybe she has.

He dumps the pieces out haphazardly and arranges the array of lightweight muted grey awkwardly shaped plastic parts across the flatbed. The only bits he can definitively identify are a curved handle, a lightly padded fabric liner in blue, and two thin woven nylon straps for her seatbelt. Frustration comes on quickly as he fails to snap together two parts that look like they should fit, finds nothing that seems to anchor another, and every time he looks at the pieces scattered about, it feels like the pile has doubled in size. The minutes start to tick by quickly, and he’s no further in the process than when he started.

The little voice in his head is getting louder and louder screaming Sarah, Sarah Sarah!

He’s not really an impatient person but he can’t take it.

With an exasperated breath, an unlucky piece flies from his hand, arcs through the air, and crashes against the interior of the trunk, ultimately landing back among the sea of discarded parts.

Leaning heavily against the back bumper, his clenched fists dig into the rusty metal, knuckles going white. His chin hits his chest, defeated. Of all the things to make him unravel today, he can’t believe the goddamn car seat is somehow a fighting contender.

He thought he would be good at this - capable of building something - it’s what he does day in and day out, but this is a puzzle, not a construction project. He can build a house, but he has no idea what fits where in a seat that doesn’t even look like it would hold a toy doll, much less a living breathing child.

His gaze lifts reluctantly to the box, and with a deep sigh, he straightens. Dragging one hand through his hair the other plunges back into the box and retrieves a small white instruction booklet that mocks his competence. He slams the trunk shut with a dissatisfied breath.

Coming around front, the window slips down a healthy inch as he forces his car door open with the usual two hearty tugs. The leather of the seats are cracked and chipped, and whenever he slides into the driver’s side, his jeans always snag as he gets settled. Today is no different.

The car smells like her - sweet and floral with a hint of salt from that spray she likes to put in her hair. Claire always said it was to help with her curls but knowing her, Joel thinks it was just to smell a little like her favorite place.

He leaves the door open, allowing the nighttime air to cycle through the cabin and chisel away at one of the last remnants of her.

Lingering in any memory of her for longer than a heartbeat hurts far too much.

He cranes and contorts his body to catch a sliver of light, but it helps little. Even the big bold letters on the front - “Joy Ride Infant Seat Manual” - fade into the darkness and when he flips to the first page, squinting does nothing to help decipher the instructions.

With a sigh, he tosses the booklet into the passenger seat and moves his keys from the cup holder to the ignition. The clunker sputters to life, and Joel slams his door shut, the window pane sneaking down another half inch as the metal frame rocks with force. He drives it up two spaces, putting it under the white light of the parking lot pole lamp, and then gets out, and tries again.

The instructions do wonders for making progress.

The seat begins to take shape, but its frame is lighter and more fragile than he wants it to be. Each piece snaps and clicks into place with an unsettling ease that doesn't inspire confidence in the slightest. His hands grow clammy as he flips back and forth through the instruction booklet, doubting each step.

"Right?” he asks with skepticism to the air, picturing how it should look, glancing at the flimsy thing, and then back to the box and booklet. Truthfully, he had been worried about the quality even before putting it together:

“It’ll be fine, we didn’t even have them when we were kids, and look - we made it through,” she had tried to assuage his fears as they waited in line with it by the register on Saturday. Doubt about their choice started settling in when he picked up the suspiciously light box and it rattled with the sounds of several small pieces.

Several pieces that are now somehow a car seat.

“Right,” he mutters reluctantly, shaking his head at the final product. It hardly looks like it will keep her safe, but he’s pretty sure that is the result of choosing the cheaper option - of being two kids on a shoestring budget - and not his poor assembly skills.

He was always the worrier, Claire was always the one to talk him down.

“Go with the motion of the ocean, dude” she would always kid, dropping her voice low and slow, pretending to be some surfer boy Kyle from San Diego.

He wonders if she would stay as cool about 'the motion of the ocean' if she saw the seat's concerning sway, despite being securely fastened into the backseat during the short drive through the hospital parking lot. His ears can’t help but to zero in on the sound of its rocking as he maneuvers the Wagoneer from the dimly lit lot to the harsh fluorescent light under the hospital’s awning.

Coming to a stop, the engine idles with a rhythmic purr that mixes with the steady blink of his hazards, and for a moment, it feels nice - just him alone.

But it doesn’t last long. Alone makes him feel guilty.

Sarah! The voice in his head screams again.

As he reaches to turn off the car, his fingers brush against his keychain, causing the baubles to jingle. He pauses, the sound drawing his attention to the beaded orange and black monarch and a tiny bleached conch that knocks softly against the other keys.

Claire had "spruced them up" one afternoon, hoping to get a funny rise out of his coworkers at the construction site. After the teasing, he took off most of the other girly keychains and pink ribbon, but he kept around the butterfly and small sea shell.

He wishes he kept all of it now.

With a deep breath, he retrieves the scissors from the dash and goes to collect his daughter.

She is fussy and more squirmy than he thought a baby should be when he eases her down into it. Her tiny limbs flail against the stiff plastic sides and each time he tries to snug her in, she wriggles, face scrunching in displeasure. The straps are working against him too, twisting up as he fumbles with the buckles.

His hands tremble as he attempts to adjust the plastic chest piece, sliding it up, then down, never quite finding the right spot. He knows he’s doing something wrong, but he’s not exactly sure what - other than maybe being too gentle, but he’s not sure how to change that either because he’s determined to keep his touch feather light with her; keep it all soft and gentle so he doesn’t scare her more than she already looks to be.

He glances back at the assembly booklet, but the part about actually putting your child inside is light on details - just one page out of a hundred.

Sarah’s cries escalate, echoing in the backseat and slipping out to fill the air in the hospital entry.

His heart races as he imagines the eyes of every passerby on them, judging his clumsy attempts. A car honks loudly, startling him, and he pops his head up just in time to catch the driver shaking their head in disapproval as he swerves past.

“Work with me Sarah, come’on baby girl.”

He holds his breath as he hears the sound of the sliding doors behind him, and his hands still as he bears down and waits for someone to yell at him to get a move on.

He steals a quick glance over his shoulder, catches the eye of the woman coming through, gives her a pleasant but curt nod and then turns back toward Sarah in the car. He hopes the gesture will stave off the inevitable complaint heading his way.

“Excuse me.”

He sucks in a breath but doesn’t reply, unsure of what to say. He knows he’s been at this too long, he doesn’t need a stranger reminding him of it too.

A gentle hand lands on his shoulder.

"Need some help with that?" she asks.

His face must convey his answer, cause she doesn’t wait for his reply, pushing in next to him. Part of him wants to resist the help, too proud to need it, but the better part of him lets his hands back away and hers take his place.

“First time’s always hard with these things,” she tells him as her hands untangle and unclip the twisted straps. Her nails are painted purple like Claire’s before - like Sarah’s mom’s that morning - and that’s all his brain can seem to focus on as she moves things around. He almost misses her undoing the straps completely and resetting them- apparently he anchored those upside down when he put the thing together.

With a final click of a buckle, she’s gone as quickly as she came, giving him a pat on the back before climbing into the car that honked at him just moments ago.

He didn’t get the chance to say thank you.

*** ʚїɞ ***

It’s a short drive home, but it's a spotty blur of lights in the dark - some greens and reds, but mostly whites - bright headlights that burn into his retinas from the rearview as he takes far too many long and hard glances toward Sarah in the back seat.

With every mile, his grip on the wheel tightens and his arms stiffen, and by the time he’s pulling into the apartment complex he might as well be a statue in the front seat. And even though it prolongs the stiffness even more, he takes the curve into the apartment complex at a crawl and keeps the speedometer unreadable as he glides gently into his parking space.

His foot moves slowly as it eases off the break, car bobbing back ever so slightly. His hands release the steering wheel, knuckles aching as they straighten and flood back to color. His right-hand drifts stiffly down, fingers curling around the ignition key. With a deep breath, he pauses, gaze going to the top of Sarah’s car seat just visible in the corner rearview, and then with a decisive twist, the rickety engine that had been her lullaby shudders to a halt.

Mercifully, she doesn’t wake.

He exhales a long breath as the car settles into the stillness - quiet, yet far from peaceful.

Drawing another breath in feels like inhaling sludge, oxygen to thick to gulp. Suddenly his body is feeling again, bringing out every worry and fear that he pushed down in their drive home. They are trying to crawl out of his stomach, digging into the sides of his throat as they climb their way up and out.

He can’t breathe.

The car is totally stopped, but he feels like any move he makes now will somehow send them into a tailspin, he won’t be able to steer them out of it, and they will crash, and Sarah will end up in the same place as Claire.

She’s home safe and sound - “home safe”, he repeats over and over in his head - but he can’t get his brain and body to sync up.

He knows it's all irrational, but he feels lightyears away from safe.

His fingers grip the top of his thighs, pressing down hard and deep as his breaths come in choppy and labored through his nose, jaw clenched up tight.

He knows what’s happening, but it makes little difference in stopping it. His mother used to call it "emociones fuertes" when he was a child, but he hasn’t had a true one in years - really not since living with Claire.

“Stop it Miller, Stop it.” He grates, trying to find something to focus on to push away the feelings of overwhelm. His eyes land on the only thing in view, the parking sign at the head of his spot, and he traces the number 12 over and over again with his eyes.

Down, around, across, over. Down, around, across, over.

Failing to find relief, he takes a long breath in and collapses forward, forehead pushing into the top of the wheel as he closes his eyes hoping the sparkly specks and blurry colors behind them will be a better distraction. Instead, his mom’s voice comes drifting through his head, a brief vision of her flashing behind his eyelids: "Mira, mira, mijo, mira a mí. Inspira - uno, dos. Suelta - uno, dos."

He does what she says.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

He repeats over and over again.

When he peels himself up and away after an undeterminable amount of minutes, his eyes first go to his rearview mirror and catch Sarah’s car seat, and then go to his dashboard and land on the green numbers of the clock. It reads 10:27, just like the placard on her bassinet at the hospital - a strange coincidence that has his anxiety twitching, threatening to come back in full for no apparent reason.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

He cracks open his car door, but almost slams it shut - a roaring sound of buzzing cicadas wafting into the car. He holds his breath and pauses, hand not even off the door handle. He waits and waits for her to start fussing and crying -bugs should make babies cry right?- but Sarah stays quiet, blissfully asleep.

And she remains that way by some small miracle as he detaches her car seat and locks the car with a loud resonant chirp.

The flight of stairs up to the apartment is taken at a sloth's pace, anchoring both of his feet into each concrete step and pausing before moving on to the next, all while holding the car seat fiercely level with two hands as if the slightest dip will have her slipping out.

When he reaches his front door, he does everything in his power to minimize the sway of her seat as he shifts to hold her with one hand and muffle the jingle of the keys as he unlocks it, petrified of waking her.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

With a creak, it falls open and an unexpected, staticky voice from a distance halts him on the threshold. His eyes track the sound to a very faint blue glow in the far corner and the realization hits harder than it should - TV’s still on, left unattended in the rush this morning.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

Shaking his head, Joel sighs heavily and steps inside. His gaze flits to the light switch but then back to his hands glued firmly to the car seat, and decides not to engage with it, forgoing the juggle it would take to get them turned on. The door closes with a push of his heel, and the apartment entry plunges into darkness.

A jolt of panic rips up through him as he stumbles, feet tripping up on something on the floor. He catches himself in a rush of awkward steps, and looks back to see the culprit. Squinting against the dark the outline of Claire’s backpack comes into view.

Swallowing hard, he tears his gaze away, focusing on getting Sarah settled.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

Embarrassingly, his arms are already aching, and that makes his heart pound with worry, fearing somehow they will just give out without his permission. It’s maybe only ten steps, but it feels like he is crossing the entire length of the small apartment as he rushes to put her down.

But then she’s on the coffee table and he finally lets out a real breath.

Fumbling in the dark, he attempts to flip down the car seat handle, hands blindly feeling out the button, but he can’t get it to budge. “Okay, baby girl, okay,” he coos in a whisper as Sarah begins to let out the tiniest mewls as her resting place is disturbed. Promptly, he removes his hands holding them up until she settles.

He steps back, pauses, then scrambles to find the remote control and flips off the TV, pushing the space into stark silence.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

With a deep sigh, he sinks into the couch in front of her. A sliver from a street light outside slips through a small opening in a window curtain, hitting her car seat at just the right angle. The orange hue brightens up the darkness just enough for Joel to see her small little face as she settles back into sleep.

It should make him feel better, being able to see her, but the more he stares, the more anxiety fills his body.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

He isn’t supposed to be doing this alone.

Twisting his watch band back and forth, his mind races with all the things he doesn’t know, all the things he’s going to have to learn, and everything he has to do. He grates his molars together as the list grows and grows.

He’s going to fail at this.

He is going to fail her.

His chest is feeling tight again, and his breaths are coming in choppy no matter how many times he tries to coach himself into breathing. Desperate for relief, his hand leaves his watch and goes to rub it against his sternum. It’s an unseasonably cool day by Austin standards for July, but the apartment is starting to feel unbearably hot and all too small. His shirt is growing wet, sweat making it uncomfortably cling to his body, and he wants to just rip off the constricting material and get out of this too-small space, and run away.

But that idea hurts his heart more than helps. An image of her alone in the dark stabs at his insides and aggravates all the dread swirling inside him.

He stands abruptly and crosses to the window, bats at the curtain to push it aside, and cracks it open to let in some of the night's cooler air.

The sounds of the city at night drift in - a car alarm in the distance, the low hum of traffic, and of course, the buzz of the summertime cicadas. He leans against the wall next to the window, allowing the slight breeze to cool his face as he listens.

He didn’t realize how suffocating the silence was until his heart rate slowed and his lungs grew lighter as he basked in the distant rumble of Austin. Back in the hospital, there had always been a constant backdrop of sounds—machines beeping, footsteps, conversations - all a distraction for his brain to digest instead. When it’s too quiet there is nothing to keep his anxious thoughts at bay.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

He could stay standing in the spot all night long- fall asleep upright - but his heart is tugging him in a different direction after just a couple of minutes. Feeling more steady, he pushes off the wall and goes back over to Sarah, already worried he’s done something wrong by taking his eyes off her for just a few moments.

When he settles in next to her this time, it's on the floor beside the coffee table, wanting to be as close as possible. He leans his head on the wood table top as he gently reaches inside her car seat and lays his hand atop her stomach.

Feeling every one of her tiny inhales and exhales calms some of his nerves, but doesn’t wash away all his fears. He pushes himself to match her breathing.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

*** ʚїɞ ***

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. And he certainly doesn’t remember moving off the scratchy rug on the floor to the old green tweed couch, but he has.

His eyes snap open as the sound of her wails jolt him awake, body jerking and almost tumbling off the side, back to the floor where he thought he had been.

Still dark, his eyes take a long moment to adjust, only seeing the outline of her car seat and her squirmy body, while his brain also races to catch up with his sudden awakening.

But then her small little body emerges from the dark, pushing against the confines of her seat, and he’s dropping to his knees infront of the coffee table in an instant. His hands make quick work of unclipping her buckles, but come to a slow as they reach inside for her - making sure his big clumsy hands are delicate and careful with her as they slip under her tiny arms and around her back, pointer fingers nestling at the base of her head as Judy had aptly shown him.

The moment she is free, her body curls into a tight ball, knees drawn to her chest. Her face mirrors, scrunched tightly as she cries, eyes squeezed shut and mouth wide open, her tiny chin trembling with each wail.

"Shh, baby girl, I got ya," he murmurs, his voice thick with sleep and laden with worry. Carefully, he draws her close against his chest, rocking gently as he kneels on the floor. His hand sweeps down her back in a soft caress, followed by a tender pat, repeating the process in a rhythmic lull. But it does nothing to soothe her.

Her cries continue to pierce through the silence of the apartment, and each sob compounding the worry and anxiousness filling up his gut.

One of them is shaking - he’s really not sure which one - but as her cries persist and stab into his ears, he thinks it might be him more than her.

“C’mon, Sarah, tell me what’s wrong,” he pleads softly as he slowly rises to stand with her.

Pacing the room, he rocks her gently, his lips pressed to her forehead in a silent plea for calm. "Shhh, it's alright, nothing to cry about," he murmurs, the words meant as much for himself as for her.

It’s a little startling how easily her tears have triggered his own. They slip down his face in one hot wet line, and he feels horrible for allowing them to drip onto the crown of her head, but he can’t move his hands away from holding her to brush them out of his eyes and off his face.

“Please stop cryin’.”

The cries only swell.

The ring and echo in his ears, muddling his thoughts into a desperate slurry of “please stop.” He hates himself for it, but he places her back in the car seat, digs the heels of his hands against his eyes the moment they are unburdened, and groans hard in frustration.

“Wet, hungry, tired. That’s all you got to figure out, capiche?” Judy had told him.

He repeats it now, despite his doubts about the simplicity: “Wet, hungry, tired.”

Gritting his teeth, he wipes the back of his hand to his eyes, clearing away the tears, and carries her to the kitchen - not exactly sure why, it just feels right.

The tiles are cool under his bare feet and the overhead sconce flickers before coming alive and bathing the space in a soft yellow light.

He pauses with her in the carrier, looking at the mess of spilled breakfast still on the table, and the minuscule space of countertop that barely can fit a pan on a good day. He taps his hand against his thigh as he thinks about his options, but her cries are like a timer pushing him to make a decision.

They hadn’t gotten around to setting up her crib yet or a changing station of some sort, and the space seems the only feasible option for them right now.

So the floor it is.

He drops to the ground with her, tugging down two dish towels looped over the oven handle as he descends. A faint odor of rancid milk and soggy cereal wafts up from the tiles, leading his gaze to the shards of a broken bowl scattered beneath the table, remnants of this morning's chaos. He contemplates moving, but her cries are growing louder. Wincing, he pushes the stench to the back of his mind, and then with an exacerbated exhale that puffs out his cheeks, he wipes his forearm across the floor, checking for bits of bowl. When he feels none, he lays out the two towels atop each other like a little mat, hoping to provide her some comfort.

“Please stop cryin’, please Sarah I'm tryin’,” he whispers as he finds the snaps on her onesie - a powder pink and thin cotton thing given from the hospital, plain as can be. “Please baby girl I'm tryin’,” he begs softly against her hard cries that echo and bounce off the tiny kitchen, growing in strength each time they ricochet into his ears.

But his quick work is all for nothing, cause he straightens up on his knees and realizes he has forgotten the most crucial bit - a diaper.

His heart sinks and he lets out a dejected rumble at the realization of where it’s at. The hospital had handed him a 'goody bag for dad,' as one nurse had cheerfully put it, filled with enough supplies to last until he could make a proper store run. Grateful, he had nonetheless tossed it onto the floor of the passenger seat, his mind too preoccupied with other things to pay it any attention, until now.

Sitting back on his haunches, he contemplates a quick dash to retrieve it, but the thought of leaving her alone, even for a minute, claws at him.

With a resigned sigh, he bundles her back into the car seat - forgoing her onesie - it’s warm, it will just be a minute. Cursing under his breath, he heads to the car with her in tow.

The journey downstairs and back is torturous, each step deliberate, trying not to jostle her too much and worsen her cries. The thud of his heart pounds in his ears, synchronizing with each of her sobs.

He’s not sure if it's just the contrast of sounds, but it seems quieter out than before, and he wonders how late into the night or how early into the morning it actually is. He bites his lip with a grimace as they pass the neighbor’s door, Sarah of course letting out a particularly loud wail right in front, certainly disturbing their sleep. If he wasn’t already feeling guilty, that surely sealed it. He makes a mental note to send them an apology, as he come back inside to the apartment and drop the bag onto the kitchen floor.

With a deep breath, he resets, and begins the process again.

It’s his second time ever changing a diaper and it’s no better than the first horrid attempt at the hospital. Somehow the sticky side wings bunch up together and pulling them apart ruins the whole thing, tearing at the materials and making it wholly unusable. He shakes his head and rolls his eyes at the mistake, chucking the collateral damage of his inexperience far across the kitchen as she continues to cry and cry.

Things bode better with the second diaper, satisfaction flicking across Joel’s face as he fastens up the last snap of her onesie and her cries recede.

But the quiet is short-lived, gone before he can even sigh in relief. She starts to whimper and then they escalate into another bout of full-on cries, face scrunching up in discomfort.

She really does have a set of lungs on her.

"Alright, not wet, then. Hungry, huh?" He asks scooping her up into his arms as he debates what to do. He eyes the carrier and then settles Sarah back into it, standing with her in the middle of the kitchen for a long moment. It seems like the only safe place to have her when he’s up and moving.

“Hungry, we can fix that, just we gotta -,” he narrates as he takes a long stride forward to the counter. He attempts to place her on it, but the top of her carrier hits the underside and cabinet, preventing him from doing so.

Shit.

He fumbles momentarily, trying to figure out where to put her, to finally deciding on the sink. The stainless steel double bowled sink was something they used to make fun of, size out of place in the rest of the tiny apartment, but he’s never been more thankful for it now. Her carrier balances perfectly on one of the sides, resting atop like a colander would.

He lets his hands go from it hesitantly, murmuring, “Okay, just stay there,” as he slowly backs away to retrieve the brown bag of supplies from the floor.

“We’ll get you a bottle then,” he tells her, throwing the words over his shoulder as if she can understand. Her reply is only more piercing sobs.

His hands are shaky as he pulls out the formula and a bottle and he can’t help but stare at them with wide eyes as they linger in the palms of his hands. The transfixion breaks at the sound of a particularly rattled shriek that claws up from her throat.

He carries the supplies back to the counter and instinctively reaches into his pocket. Relief washes over him as he finds the small piece of paper he stashed there hours ago still safe. Carefully, he pulls it out and smooths the crinkled paper against the countertop edge.

“Can I write this down?”

“Sure thing, let’s um - here,” Judy offered, ripping out a blank form from a chart, flipping it over to a blank white back, and passing it to him with a click of a pen.

It’s his writing, but it’s barely recognizable chicken scratch.

Reading the instructions aloud to himself, his voice is hesitant and shaky, but he tries to ground himself in the steps, eyes casting over to Sarah every other second.

Her face is red and glistens, soaked in tears.

He can’t help but tell her, “workin’ as fast as I can baby,” as he lowers his head down to the bottle and makes sure he is pouring the exact amount of water into the measuring line. The formula tin opens with a scratchy metallic sound as he tears away the top. His fingers dig inside for the scoop - he made a note that Judy said it likes to hide - and when they find reach it he quickly uses the plastic shovel to ladle the powder into the tiny bottle.

It’s not a particularly clean process - rushing, excess powder spills onto the counter every time he taps the scoop to the lid of the bottle to get the formula in. He probably should be more careful with it, but Sarah’s screaming for him to hurry.

He slides infront of her as he shakes the bottle, using his free hand to wipe away the tears drenching her cheeks.

“Almost there, almost there,” he coos half to Sarah, half to himself, as he clings to small talk as if the words could bridge the gap between panic and calm while gently rocking her seat.

Raising the bottle toward the ceiling, he uses the light to check the formula is all dispersed and seeing it is, he turns quickly to offer it to her, and the nipple grazes her mouth her pulls it back quickly.

He forgot to warm it.

Quickly, he flips the faucet handle up and over, hot as it can go, and holds the bottle under the stream. The heat begins to sting his hand, but he holds it steady and waits for the warmth to seep into the milk.

Sarah’s cries lull to a sputter, and her tense expression eases into a prolonged frown.

There is only one thing that’s changed:

“You like the water huh?” he asks glancing back and forth between the tap and her face.

As he holds it under, the redness in her face fades begins to fade, and a tentative smile begins to form on Joel's lips. "You know, your momma loved the water," he distantly murmurs, watching her visibly relax.

With the rush of the faucet filling her ears, Sarah stops crying abates, and he slips the bottle out from under it.

“You get that from her.”

It’s a melancholy whisper that he knows she can’t understand, but he hopes it somehow it roots in her heart like his. Catching a glimpse of Claire in her - getting a reminder that she still is her daughter too, and not just his, has a certain type of flutter kicking in his heart.

He tests the temperature on his wrist like Judy showed and, then hesitantly takes a sip himself just to double check—it’s lukewarm at best, but it will have to do. He keeps the soothing rush of the tap on for her as he gently slips the bottle into her mouth. When she takes it without protest, his shoulders droop, relief washing over him. He watches her drink, the soft rhythmic sounds of her sucking mixing in with the white noise of the water beside her.

"There you go, baby girl. That’s it," he murmurs, a smile blooming full into his cheeks.

He’s not sure what does, but suddenly he’s feeling like nothing can go wrong.

As she takes the bottle at a chug, her plump cheeks rise and fall, appearing even fuller and irresistibly adorable. Her long eyelashes, mirroring the rich brown mop of hair atop her head, flutter gently as she settles more comfortably. And even after crying her little head off, remnants of her screams and tears still clearly on her face, he can’t help but think that she is one of the most beautiful babies out there.

Which isn’t a surprise cause she looks like Claire and she was one of the most beautiful people out there.

"We can do this," he whispers.

*** ʚїɞ ***

“3 weeks from baby!”

The small little calendar magnet stares him down. His eyes are glassy and bloodshot from a night gone without sleep, but he holds its gaze harshly. Gently swaying, Sarah rest against his chest, her tiny form curled securely in his grasp.

He’s not sure what to do with it.

Never once has he changed it - it was Claire’s thing - and it still feels like her thing- but the morning light peaking through the crusty blinds in the kitchen is hitting it perfectly, spotlighting it in a warm glow, and it just feels like the world is telling him to fix it.

He stops his sway, coming to a slow as he heaves a sigh. With one hand, he carefully removes the magnet, flips it to the last page, jostles it in the air as the thin pages catch on the cheap spiral binding, and slaps it back onto the fridge.

“Baby is here!”

It’s up for all of three seconds before it flies across the kitchen.

It clangs against the metal sink, sliding down with a scrape, and settling ominously at the bottom drain.

Fixed somehow feels infinitely worse than wrong.

Sarah stirs, a soft whimper breaking through as she senses his tension. He exhales slowly, relaxing his clenched jaw, and resumes his gentle sway, hoping to soothe both her and himself.

Now, the black fridge door hosts only a lone neon butterfly magnet, its wings pinning a small card beneath them - a phone number, an address, and an army insignia.

His heart moves from somewhere beneath Sarah to the floor.

Tommy.

He had been gone most of the summer at basic training, and at the start of his ten weeks, Claire had put up the address to make sure she knew where to send his letters. They were two kindred spirits, the same type of recklessness and bubble - her little brother just as much as his.

He never asked what was in the letters she sent, but he’s certain Claire was keeping Tommy up to date with her pregnancy, especially because in his own letters from Tommy, he would be nagged about not buying Claire enough chocolate-covered pretzels and salt n’ vinegar chips- her two favorite snack cravings.

He deserves to know.

Plucking the card from the fridge, Joel shuffles over to the wall-mounted phone, the cord stretching and coiling like a reluctant snake. He sinks into a kitchen chair, cradling Sarah more snugly as he dials the number, each press of the button sharper than necessary. Calling during training isn’t really a thing - “only write me” Tommy had explained once, but this isn’t something that could wait. After an agonizing series of redirects and brief conversations with faceless operators, his brother’s familiar voice finally crackles through the speaker.

“Joel? Everythin’ alright?” He asks immediately.

His eyes are on Sarah, balanced in his arm supported up by a bent leg in a figure four. His foot is wiggling anxiously, but she seems to like the motion as it vibrates up his leg. “She’s here” is what is at the tip of his tongue, fighting to come out, but that’s barely half the truth.

The feeling like he is about to spread a lie is back, guilt settling heavily in his chest. He can’t find the words to say Claire is gone.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

“Joel? You there brother?” Tommy presses again.

His eyes drift up to the butterfly on the fridge and suddenly the truth is tumbling out in a hurried stream, details of the past day pouring out so quickly he barely catches his breath. He’s not even sure he says it all in the right order, and he knows the sprinkles of things the doctor said, and mentions of Claire’s parents, as well as his laments about not having anything ready, probably don’t help with clarity either. By the time he finishes, the phone is pressed hard against his ear, digging into the cartilage to an uncomfortable extent and the acidic taste from yesterday is peaking into his mouth from the top of his throat.

For a long moment there is only the echo of Joel’s winded breath.

In - one, two. Out - one, two.

“Hermano,” Tommy sighs, breathy air pushing into the phone and transmitting as a loud crackle in Joel’s ear. The static subsides back into silence, and both are unsure of what to say.

“Brother I’m s -,” he begins, only to stop to shush some ruckus in the background of his line, “I’m goin’ to request some leave - come home, be there by day after next.”

“That ain’t -“ Joel begins to protest, but Tommy cuts him off.

“-don’t start with that, I’m comin’, this is family.”

His eyes wander down to the bundle in his arms, and immediately they well up with tears. He sniffs them away - no time for that, he chastises himself - and nods his head before letting it fall back, gaze turning up toward the blotchy ceiling, letting gravity take care of the rest of the water pooling in his eyes.

“Joel?” Tommy asks against the prolonged quiet, voice tugging him back from the brink of tears. He comes back to attention, clearing away the tightness growing in his throat with a closed-mouth cough.

“Yeah sorry.. I’ll see ya’ day after tomorrow then.”

“Day after tomorrow,” Tommy parrots, almost absently, trailing off with another despondent sigh. “Howaw is he?”

“He?” Joel pauses, confusion wrinkling his brow.

“Your son.”

“Oh,” Joel says with a small snort, a hint of a smile forming. He wedges the phone into the space between his ear and shoulder, and holds it firm in place as he readjusts Sarah. She’s starting to wake, lips twitching up and little eyes fluttering. He gently brushes his pinky down her soft cheek.

“Well you ain’t goin’ to believe this, but he’s a she.”

“A girl?”

“Yeah, a girl…Sarah.”

Sarah who looks like Claire with beautiful brown eyes and thick hair, and loves the water like her mama. Sarah who has a sweet little gurgle but cries like a coyote cause she’s strong and knows what she wants. Sarah who has been with him topside less then a day, but has already made his heart grow two sizes bigger.

“Well I’ll be dammed..baby girl Miller...ain’t that somethin’.”

She is. She really is.