Hot Laps (42 page)

“We have a problem.”

Dad groaned. “Why am I not surprised by that?”

“Shut up. Tommy took like six muscle relaxers.”

Another groan. “I told you not to let him have the bottle.”

“I didn’t.” I defended swerving around a slower car in the fast lane. Another minute
and we were pulling up to the emergency room doors and Tommy opened the door before
I stopped.

“Fuck, I gotta go, Dad,” tossing the phone to the side I ran around the other side
of the car and helped Tommy up. “Are you okay, man?”

“Watch him.” I pointed at Willie who was looking pretty scared. Much like me.

“No way,” he shook his head violently. “It’s not my turn.”

“Fuck you. You’re worthless.”

He got out and stood against the side of the car. “You don’t have to be so rude.”

Hayden got out on the other side and walked over to us, holding her stomach in obvious
pain and looking like she was going to murder me any second.

I was helping Tommy up and then leaned him against the side of the car beside Willie.
Then I got Hayden a wheelchair and set her in it beside the car.

Holding my hands up, I said, “Don’t go anywhere.”

She flipped me off.

When I turned back around, Tommy was gone. “Where did he go,
Willie
?”

Willie shrugged, “He was here a second ago.”

We scrambled in opposite directions around the parking lot looking for Tommy when
we heard a loud crash in the corner followed by him saying, “I’m okay.”

When we found him, Tommy was standing there with his pants down around his ankles,
peeing on a Jeep.

That’s when I noticed that Tommy really should probably see a doctor. His face was
pure white making his orange hair stand out. “We gotta get him some help.”

Hayden, who’d been wheeled over by Willie, smacked me. In the fucking ear. “Dipshit,
I’m in labor. Fuck Tommy! What about me?”

Just as she said that, Tommy turned, swung his dick around to piss on her. Yeah, that
just happened.

You couldn’t have planned this shit show if you tried.

Hayden gave him a death glare. “You motherfucker.”

Tommy giggled, actually fucking giggled. “Careful there, my dick’s like a fire hose.
Once it gets to swinging you never know where it’s going.”

I had to hold Hayden back at that point.

I managed, with the help of my mom and dad who showed up, to get both Tommy and Hayden
into the hospital.

“Tommy, sign this,” I handed him a form the doctor asked him for.

He did and handed it back to me.

“What is that?” I squinted my eyes trying to decipher what it was he did.

“My signature.”

Not shitting you, it was his full signature just one millimeter big. You couldn’t
have done that if you tried. No idea how he managed that.

A doctor came and got him and I felt relieved that I didn’t have to deal with him
anymore and went to find Hayden, who was with my mom now, continuing the conversation
with my mom about her vagina size again.

“Are you okay?”

“No! Do I look like I’m okay?” she screamed at me, shocking my mom and then causing
her to start laughing. “Nothing about this is fucking okay.
Not fucking okay
.”

“Fuck.” I sighed, running my hands through my hair.

“Fucking right.” Hayden nodded. “Now go find that useless fucking doctor and get me
some fucking drugs. RIGHT NOW!”

I’m always calm. I’m the rock. The one who just takes life the way it is. I’m the
independent suspension. Right now, I was none of that. It’s kind of like the snake
in the car. I lost all sense of stability.

“It can go from tiny to two inches wide.” Tommy looked down at his crotch. “That doesn’t
seem accurate at all. I’m wider than two inches. I’m sure of it.”

“Tommy is full of all sort of facts about vaginas,” I told Hayden, who wouldn’t look
at me.

“I’m sure,” Hayden mumbled, staring at the door as she waited for the doctor to come
back in and my mom who said she’d be right back.

“No really, he is.”

Tommy looked at his phone and went onto say, “A girl’s vagina can expand two hundred
percent while giving birth.”

Hayden looked at me. “Get. Him. Out.”

“What do you call it?” Tommy asked Hayden, ignoring her demand that he leave. He was
in a wheel chair hooked up to an IV. He wasn’t going anywhere until someone pushed
him out. My dad, as a joke, wheeled him in here and then took off running down the
hall. “It says here there are over a thousand names for it.” He laughed, crossing
his legs as if he was some sort of professor musing on life’s mysteries. “I once fucked
this girl who called it her pink pearl. I thought it was cute.”

Hayden glared at him, then me sitting beside her. “If you don’t get him out of here,
I might kill both of you.”

Was she serious?

By the look on her face, she was.

Taking a deep breath, I wheeled Tommy into the hall, left them out there with his
phone and vagina facts and returned to Hayden, doubled over and glaring at me.

“Do you think Tommy is stupid?” I asked her, wondering if those muscle relaxers might
have done some damage to Tommy.

“Well, are we talking dumb like Paris Hilton dumb or like Kim Kardashian?” she asked
in between her contractions.

“Um, neither of those two.”

“I would say that I don’t think he’s smart.” She looked at me. “How about that?”

“I’m kind of concerned.” I took her hand in mine.

“You’re concerned about Tommy right now?”

I gave her a tentative smile. “No. I’m concerned about you. Are you going to kill
me? You seem … upset.”

She just gave me this look of total resentment.

Oh how quickly my night had turned on me. I went from the Chili Bowl to this.

“I gotta tell you something.” Hayden said, drawing in a deep breath.

“Yeah?” I swallowed and I’ll admit, my voice was a little uneven. “What?”

I was starting to sweat. What the fuck did she need to tell me at a time like this?

“I was so nervous about a doctor being down there, I bleached my asshole so it all
looked nice and clean?”

Wasn’t expecting that at all. Nope. But fuck, why was that hot to me?

“I don’t understand,” I was moments away from laughing at her. “You’re having a baby
not a colonoscopy. What would make you think the doctor would even be looking at your
asshole?”

“Can we stop talking about this?”

“No. You brought it up.” And then I smiled at her. “Can I see?”

“No. Stay out of down there. If you ever want to see my track layout again, well,
then maybe you can check it out after this and see if there was any structural damage
done.”

I had no response for that one.

Connector – A device used for connecting cables.

Casten’s behavior in the birthing room was another matter altogether. I have sympathy
for women giving birth. I do not have it for men.

Having a baby is hard fucking work. And so painful.

I broke my arm when I was nine. Fell off a swing set and the bone was sticking out
of my arm. I thought for sure after experiencing that this labor shit would be no
problem.

Of course it was easy to say it was no big deal, but could I actually do this? Could
I have a baby?

My body was telling me no. The pain was telling me no.

I was moments away from having the baby, or at least I felt like I was. In all actuality
it was more than likely hours but I couldn’t fucking wait for them to give me that
magic shot.

Willie and Casten were engaged in a heated conversation near the window of my room
about who knows what when Casten grabbed the plastic knife from the table and stabbed
him in the leg with it. It broke but did puncture the skin slightly. Enough to draw
blood.

It was like the lifestyles of the rich and dysfunctional with this group. If they
weren’t overdosing on muscle relaxers they were talking about vagina facts and stabbing
people with plastic utensils.

When the doctor came in to give me the epidural, Casten had another panic attack similar
to the snake incident when I made him hold my hand.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked when I saw his fists close and his eyes squeezed
shut.

“I don’t like this,” he shook his head unable to look at me.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. What’s the problem now?”

“I don’t like needles. Stop talking.”

“Not a problem,” I rolled my eyes hearing the anesthesiologist laugh as he was poking
me with a needle.

Casten walked out after that. He made some excuse that he needed coffee. He doesn’t
drink coffee so who the fuck knows where he went.

“So it’s not going well?” Sway asked, watching me closely. I was so happy to see that
she was here because I needed a mom. I needed another woman who’d been through this
and was going to tell me everything was completely fine.

“Casten’s nervous.”

“What the fuck do you mean
he’s
nervous?
You’re
the one having the baby. Not him.” Sway had this look on her face of total disgust.
“I’m not impressed with my son.” And then she tipped her head. “You know, he does
this. When he had his appendix taken out two years ago he had a total panic attack
right before surgery.”

“He hates needles and has anxiety about the baby. He just now realized that my vagina
may never look the same,” I whispered. “Like vomiting and curling into the fetal position
type of nerves.”

“He realized that your vagina may never be the same, or
you
did?” Sway knew me too well.

“Okay, he’s just nervous. The needle freaked him out.”

“Where is he now?”

“Crying in the hall?”

Sway shrugged, shaking her head, holding back laughter. “You two are a hot mess. A
hot fucking mess.”

Casten returned, smiling and handed me a cup of ice chips.

“You’re doing great,” he said when he noticed I was on the verge of tears.

I wanted to tell him I thought it was cute that he was so nervous but I would be lying.
I was trying my hardest to get the negative thoughts away but I couldn’t.

When the doctor came in and told me I had to start pushing and the epidural hadn’t
completely kicked in yet, I freaked out and kicked everyone out but Casten.

Casten looked at me with a shocked expression. “What?”

“Get down there and tell me if everything is still there?”

“No,” he said sternly. “I’m not. You get a mirror and look. I’ll turn my head.”

Neither one of us got that mirror.

What he did start with was trying to compare child birth to rebuilding an engine.
I wasn’t going for that today.

“I’m going to kill you if you don’t stop that.”