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Ambrose

“ N o, no,” I insisted, waving the nurse away and attempting to sit up. “I have to be there to see the birth.”

The room spun around me as I clutched my head.

Across the room, Astrid was deep in the throes of labor, and I was doing my best to keep up. It was very important to me that I was there for my. . . new half-brother.

My stomach roiled with nausea and I turned over, heaving into the trash can.

I wasn’t going to be a father at all. At the age of 45, I was finally going to be a big brother.

The nurse was a stern, no nonsense woman, and she looked at me like I was the most useless kind of person in existence, and I could not really blame her.

So you are the kind of high maintenance baby daddy who demands all this attention during labor , her glare said clearly, even though I desperately did not want to be.

“I have to be there,” I insisted, attempting to get up from the chair.

Perhaps if I did not look directly at Astrid and stayed up by her head, reminding her of various birth mantras.

After all, it seemed awfully wrong that this baby was going to come into the world with no one there to care for him but me.

Astrid had made it very clear she did not want her son.

Maybe she would change her mind once she saw him?

But otherwise she had made it very clear that I was going to be doing 100% of the care.

I stumbled toward the bed and Astrid let out a full-body scream when she saw me.

“Get him out of here!” Astrid shrieked. “He’s in love with his ex-wife!”

They all looked at me as if I was even more of a worm.

“We're going to break your water now,” the doctor said, and I found myself fainting dead away again, and as I floated dreamlike, I remembered.

I remembered the day it had happened.

“Monogamy is such an unnatural construct,” Astrid said, her breast brushing past my arm as we worked through a stack of recently-acquired documents together in the library.

Since she specialized in anthropology and I specialized in archeology, our departments worked very closely together.

I should have cut it off then and there.

She’d been flirting with me for months. But women often flirted with me and I never thought much of it.

But the problem this time was I didn’t stop it.

I didn't remind her that I was happily married, that I loved my wife more than anything. That I wasn’t the type to cheat.

The type to cheat was a sleazebag, some grungy kind of fellow with a golden chain and a name like ‘Vinny.’

Not a man like me. And so I teased her back and didn’t think I was in danger.

Of making the stupidest and most sleazebag mistake of my life.

“The high status men in old Germanic tribes had multiple women,” Astrid said.

I knew she was attempting to seduce me, but at the moment, I didn’t care. I didn’t think I was at risk.

She was a beautiful, intelligent woman and it was a flattering distraction that she was so interested in me.

Now, naturally, I still loved Indi, but everything with her had been so tense and stressful lately.

She was due to take a pregnancy test again, and I felt like I couldn't take another failed test.

I couldn't shake the feeling that somehow I was doing something wrong. I could not fathom what it could be. I had read all of the books. I was a supreme physical specimen. My sperm count was exemplary. I ate healthy, I exercised. I was planning to run a marathon.

But somehow, month after month, failure.

It was like a test I kept failing and I didn’t know why.

And I wanted, so badly, to not think about tests, vitamins, Indi’s face pinched with worry, my craven gut-deep fear that I wasn’t doing something right. . .

My body shook as I dreamed, as if I could prevent what had happened, stop myself from going over to Astrid’s after work, knowing full well that if I went over there just for a drink that I was feeling so desperate for distraction that I’d linger, that I wouldn’t move away when she stepped up to me, that I wouldn’t stop her when she kissed me. . .

When I came to again, I was sprawled on a couch in the waiting room covered in a tissue paper like blanket, and my ex-wife was looking down at me, tapping her toe impatiently.

“Is there something I can help you with, Ambrose?” Indi asked.

God, she looked beautiful, that big belly bump popping out in front of her, the lovely auburn curls spilling down her back. I wanted to sit up and watch her waddle up and down the hallway and just worship her.

“What do you mean help me?” I asked weakly. Being found limp on a hospital couch was hardly the way I had dreamed of spending time with Indi.

“The hospital called me. You still have me listed as your emergency contact. Why haven't you updated that?”

My throat felt sandpapery, but I knew perhaps it was time to come clean about my insecurities, even though it was a deeply humiliating process.

“Denial,” I said, “Ever since we got divorced I’ve been in denial it was real. I guess I hoped. I hoped that somehow, if I didn't change that, it would make it not real, and we could still get back together.”

She stared at me and then asked, “What did they call me in here for? What's wrong?”

“I kept fainting,” I said, jealously thinking that Finn would never have fainted, probably grew up birthing calves and lambs out in the Irish countryside and would be shoving the doctor aside to deliver Indi’s baby himself.

“You fainted?” Indi asked.

“I fainted.”

Without another word, she left the room. I sat up, attempting to wipe the drool from my mouth, contemplating my miserable life decisions.

When she came back, she was holding out a can of ginger ale.

“Drink this,” she said, “It always helps you when you're feeling nauseated or dizzy.”

I stared at the can. Indi was so sweet. She was the sweetest woman in the world. Why hadn't I thought of that?

“Thank you,” I said inadequately.

“Goodbye, Ambrose,” she said. “Just sit down with your head between your legs if you feel faint again.”

When I made my way back to the delivery room, my new brother was in a bassinet beside Astrid and she was crossing her arms and ordering room service.

“There you are,” she said. “Well, it’s your turn now.”

“Do you--feel any differently?” I asked, walking carefully up to where the tiny baby was swaddled in a colorful blanket, a knit yellow cap on his head. “He’s pretty cute. We could still co-parent.”

“Nope,” Astrid said. “I don’t want anything to do with any member of your family and I still plan to sue the sperm bank for loading me up with your father’s sperm. Masterful CEO type, indeed!”

I sat down beside the bassinet and watched him sleep.

The hours, maybe even days, blurred together as the nurses came in frequently to check on him and prepare bottles of milk.

Then, as I napped fitfully in the chair, I woke up with a jolt to a paper cut on my throat.

When I jerked upright in surprise, my fingers closed over a crisp piece of paper.

Well, it was official.

Astrid had signed over all parental rights to me and was nowhere to be found.

There was a tiny cry from the bassinet, and I saw the baby’s mouth open wide, his tiny fists suddenly flailing about and his whole face turning red.

Hurrying over, I started to sweat realizing I had never held a baby in my life, but I carefully picked up the burrito-shaped child and held him in my arms.

To my surprise, he seemed to like getting bounced gently up and down, and he liked even more the bottle of milk a nurse prepped for him.

I held the bottle with terrified fingers and I watched him drink.

My throat closed up as I remembered how Indi and I had looked forward to doing this together. But now she was having a baby with the world’s most hypnotic Irishman and I was here holding my half-brother.

All my friends and coworkers would tell me to put him up for adoption. My mother had said she wanted no part of it.

They would say

Not your baby

Not your responsibility

Hell no

But I looked at my baby brother, the way his eyes were so blue, the way his fist was incredibly tiny.

I was a complete fuck-up, I had done so many fucked-up things.

I had lost the love of my life by being a pompous windbag convinced I could do no wrong.

But by god I was going to do better.

This baby was my responsibility and that’s all there was to it.

But as I got him ready to go, I faced the unpleasant truth that I no longer had a vehicle here.

I called my mother.

“Can you come to the hospital and pick us up? Astrid’s taken the car somewhere and it had the carseat in it.”

“Who is us ?” she asked. “You and your degenerate father?”

“No,” I said, “Me and the baby.”

“The baby ? The one your own father sired? Why’s it still around?”

“Mother, it’s not the baby’s fault,” I said sharply. “And I will expect you not to ever say anything to make him think he is less than wanted and loved. It’s not his fault all this shit happened. He’s just a baby who needs us.”

“Who is this us?” she asked. “Count me out of this ‘us.’ You may not bring that thing over to visit me. Now give it to someone who can waste time raising it and come visit your Mother.”

I was stunned by the evidence of her cruelty and in the moment I couldn’t speak she hung up the phone.

How could she be so wrong about this? It was like getting a rug pulled out from under me.

And then something was wrong with my card so I couldn’t even call an Uber.

I had to beg a ride from my ex-wife.

“Of course you came,” I said, feeling fucking shredded and frazzled as fuck and I’d only been this child’s official guardian for a few hours. “You’re an angel, Indi. I never deserved you.”

I thought she might rub it in my face, but instead she said, “I have two carseats so you can have the extra for now.”

Then we arranged my brother in the backseat and I climbed in after him to make sure he was ok on the ride home.

I was surprised to feel Indi’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror.

“Are you going to keep him?” she asked.