Chapter 9

One weekend in the middle of June, we were lounging around my apartment. We had completed school, and had taken our boards the week prior. With no homework to do, no cramming for license exams, no clinicals to prepare for or clinical reports to complete for next week, well, we had the opportunity to be lazy, and were immersing ourselves in it.

Kathy had the weekend off from her job as a Nurse-Extern. That was the sort of position wherein the hospital could assess how you’d work out as an employee. In addition, with the nursing shortage extant in those days, well, if you were already working for Hospital “A”, and knew their systems, and how things got done, well, then you would not have to re-learn all that stuff on your next job, if you accepted a staff nurse position at Hospital “A”, now, would you? Thus it also served as a recruiting tool for new nurses.

Me? I was still a medic for Da City’s fire department. I was in no hurry to job shop. In any event, the pay for new grad staff nurses was only around fifty cents an hour more than Da City was paying me to be a medic. I had a great partner, I was in a groove, and I figured one transition at a time was more than enough for me, Kathy, and my little slice of the world.

Kathy had seemed kind of on edge recently, but, when I asked her about it, she shrugged it off to Board anxiety, or waiting-on-Board-score-anxiety, or new job anxiety, etcetera. Not having any of those concerns, myself, I figured that she would settle down once she had proof of passing scores in her hand. (not that I was “that” good, simply, I had learned on The Department that worrying about things that I could not change, did not, surprisingly, change them. I had learned to give things my best, and let it ride from there.)

We were laying in my bed that morning, pleasantly relaxed, and Kathy was running her fingers idly over my chest. We had had great, loving sex the night prior, and we had awakened rested, glowing, and in love.

“So,” she asked, as if some thought had just now occurred to her, “I got you something for Father’s Day!”

“Huh? Why would you do that?”

She looked up at me, innocence written large, and falsely, upon her face. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Honey, why would you buy me something for Father’s Day? I’m not a father, right?”

She made a moue, and rose from the bed. Returning, she handed me a small envelope. “Open it, and see if you like it!”

I tore the envelope open, and gazed at the card. “Congratulations, to a Great Dad!” I tried to absorb what it said, to figure out what it had to do with me. Inside, the card company had printed, “It Takes A Man To Be A Dad!”

Beneath it, in Kathy’s precise small hand, were the words, “Happy Father’s Day! I just know you will be a Great Dad! I will always be yours, and now it’s official! Daddy!”. Her signature followed.

I looked up at her, dumb look all over my face. Kathy clarified things for me. “Remember when I went to the dentist? For that infected tooth? Remember those antibiotics I was taking? Well, it turns out, birth control pills aren’t all that effective when I’m on antibiotics. I’m pregnant, and we’re gonna have a baby!”

It took me a moment. This was nearly the last thing I had expected, and I had to process a bit, in order to reshuffle my world view. The next words that left my mouth, suggested that I should have done some more shuffling, prior to speaking.

“Now we have to get married!”

The icy look that instantly descended upon Kathy’s face, should have caused me to die, incinerated, on the spot. Her words did not improve upon the atmosphere.

“What do you mean, exactly, ‘have to get married’? You don’t ‘have’ to do anything, buster!”

I did not take the clue, babbling on as I tried to organize my thoughts. “Oh, yes I do! If we don’t get married, how am I going to get you and the baby covered by my insurance? How are we gonna convince your mother to be happy that we’re living together? How am I gonna manage, with you sleeping at your mother’s house, when I want to be there to feel the baby when she starts to kick?”

It appeared that the Patron Saint Of Quick Thinking, or of Protecting Fools (that would be my personal Patrol Saint, right there!), had decided to intervene. Kathy listened to what I had said, and processed it, herself. She fact checked what she had thought I had said.

“So, you’re NOT unhappy that we’re gonna have a baby?”

“Unhappy? How the hell can I not be happy that the woman I love is going to have my baby? I am kind of surprised, because I had not thought that we’d have our first child quite this early, but, well, stuff happens from time to time. If this is the biggest surprise I ever get, my life will be GOLDEN! So, do you want to do the courthouse thing, or the church-family-and-reception thing?”

My tangent caught her unawares. “What thing are you talking about?”

“For our wedding! We can do the courthouse, and I’m in favor of that, because it makes you my wife quicker, but if you want, we can go the entire church and family and parson and reception route, even though that might take several months to plan, but then we might decide to get married at the courthouse, and later on have a more formal wedding for your family and friends and everybody else!”

I stopped to take a breath. “Am I babbling?”

She looked at me dubiously. “Uh, yeah. You’re babbling. Excited, much?”

“Well, I guess so. Yeah, I’m excited!”

She still had her doubts. “Are you ‘Oh, Boy!’ excited, or ‘Oh, Shit!’ excited?”

It abruptly became clear to me that she was unsure of my reaction, and anxious that I’d reject her, and our child. “Kathy, I love you, right? You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah...” she dubiously responded.

“And, we have been talking about getting married, once we finished school, and got the job thing settled, right?”

Again, dubiously, “Yeahh...”

“So, we’re done with school, you have your job all hooked up, and once you finish your probationary employment, I can make my own move, right?”

She was starting to warm up to the timeline I was reviewing with her. “Yeah, right, I remember.”

“So, if we get married now, like, in the next month, you and the baby will be on my insurance, and then, once she is born, well, I can make my own move, and your insurance will cover us all until my probationary employment at my new job is over, right? Make sense?”

She was in. “Yeah, that makes sense. So, you’re OK with marrying me? And OK with our biracial baby? This is gonna get pretty real, no playing. Once she is born, no do overs. You ready for things to get all real and grown up?”

“Is any man really ready for things to get that real? I believe that I am as ready as I will get, and I am not gonna look for a do over. I want you as my wife, I want you as the mother of my children, and it looks as if I am gonna get what I wanted, simply a bit sooner than I had anticipated!”

She smiled, and cuddled in to my embrace. “Good! Silly white boy! We’ll just get married, and raise our little League of Nations. I am yours, forever, and you have claimed me like nobody ever has claimed me before!”

“Huh?” I was not as quick as her.

“Silly! Having your baby makes me yours forever! You have me in every way! And, I got you another little Father’s Day present! You not only have your little black girl forever, in every way, today you get to have me in a way you have not enjoyed before!”

She was, again, something like a full beat ahead of me. “You mean, making love to pregnant you, right?”

“Well, yeah, that too.”

“That, too? What else could there be?”

“Well, nobody has ever had my butt. You, father to be, and my husband to be, will have my butt. My pregnant by you, gonna have your baby, butt!”