T w e n t y S i d e d

The baby room is finished, the new washer and dryer are set up, and Lorretta can finally breath a sigh of relief. They did it, they managed in time, and with even time to spare. It’s five days till Kelly’s due date, and Michael is jumping every time his phone rings. He can’t stay with her at her dad’s house, which has seemed sillier and sillier a rule as she’s gotten more and more visibly pregnant. What’s he gonna do? Knock her up?

Four days from her due date, he gets the call in the middle of the night, and she’s headed to the hospital. Michael and Lorretta throw clothes into bags in a rush, and Lorretta calls her boss to let him know she won’t be making it to work that day. They arrive just in time to meet Kelly leaving the building. False alarm, the doctors are sending her home.

Lorretta leaves their bags right by the door when they get back to the house, so that next time they’re more prepared. They both go back to bed. Michael can’t sleep, though, he has days, or hours, or weeks until he’s a father, and he won’t know which until it’s happening, and he can’t even sleep next to the mother of his child yet. He gets out of bed just as the sky begins lightening, threatening morning, deciding to have a bowl of cereal and try to clear his head. He finds Lorretta in the hallway, painting an already-painted wall with several different paint swatches she pulled from her first test round. They should both have heavy bags under their eyes from a lack of sleep, they should both be exhausted, and they should not be starting a new project. But…he looks at the wall, then at his girlfriend’s mom. “Need a hand?”

She wasn’t entirely happy with her first color choice for the upstairs hallway, or the matching downstairs dining room. She doesn’t figure they’ll have time to fix both, but if she can’t sleep already, she might as well get one annoyance off her plate with her extra day off. She could easily just let her boss know she could come in after all, but she doesn’t want to, she’s not planning to stay at the stupid grocery store much longer anyway.

Michael had been right. Before, she’d been painting her house with prospective buyers in mind. That light green never suited her, and it was bugging her, and the antsy grandma-to-be needed something to do.

The paint takes a few coats, but they began at four in the morning, and only stop to go buy a full gallon of the paint, so it’s done within the day. Michael and Lorretta both crash through the afternoon, only to be woken by a phone call at midnight. Kelly is calling them from the hospital, rather than before going. A nurse has just told her it’s go time at reception and to call people who need to know. Lorretta and Michael once again pile into the car, but don’t make it out of the drive way before Kelly calls back. False alarm. Kelly mentions she feels silly, trusting the receptionists opinion given she’d not actually seen anyone yet. She apologizes and Michael and Lorretta go back to bed.

Both of them are back up by four in the morning, not because of a call, but because of buzzing nerves and being woken up the night before. It takes nearly no communication for them to start painting the dining room the same green, the line between the floors was stark, and they had paint left over. Why not.

Again they marathon the paint job. This time, though, they intentionally go to bed early, at five in the evening, both prepared for another middle-of-the-night call. Lorretta wakes up at midnight, and Michael is up a half an hour later, and they spend the night doing every odd job they can find around the house. Dishes are done, laundry is folded, and they prep a weeks worth of frozen casseroles. Michael stumbles out of the house in the afternoon to go to a job interview, and crashes as soon as he gets home.

Days go by, Kelly’s due date comes and goes, and the house is getting almost uncomfortably spotless.

Finally, three days after her predicted due date, Kelly calls from the passenger seat of her dad’s truck, on her way to the hospital. The sleep schedules are so bad that Lorretta groans to Michael about having to leave in the middle of the night, only to find the sun shining outside.

Baby Logan is born at 12:43 PM, weighing an entirely reasonable weight for a baby to be, and looking exactly as a newborn should. Kelly and Michael are parents.

You’ll have to forgive the fact that that is clearly not a newborn, just pretend it’s a Hollywood baby.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them