Soap Opera Challenge

Baby

     "He has your nose, no doubt about that." Kristina beams, rubbing her thumb against her brand new baby boy's cheek. "And now that I look at it, your mouth and eyes too. No fair, I grew this kid in my body and he doesn't look anything like me."
     Julian runs his hand down her back as he sits on the edge of her bed, pressing his head to hers. "Maybe he'll end up looking like you. He's only a few hours old. He doesn't really look like a human all that much right now."
     "Don't you insult our son."
     "I would never. He's my precious little angel. Aren't you CJ?"
     "We are not calling him CJ." Kristina reminds him.
     "But his name is Carter Julian."
     "Exactly, Carter. I love that name too much to abbreviate it. And Julian's your name. I want our little boy to know that he's his own person." Kristina says, going back to looking at Carter's face.
     "He's truly the most perfect baby to have ever existed."
     "He'd better be after twenty-six hours of labor. Little guy gave Mommy a hard time. Didn't you, Carter?"
     There's a light knock on the door, Sonny and Alexis walking in. Alexis hugs Kristina, pressing her head to Krissy's as she looks down at her grandson. "Look at this little man. He's absolutely beautiful. Oh, Kristina, my baby."
     "What's his name?" Sonny asks, standing back with a small bouquet of flowers.
     "Carter Julian Jerome." Kristina answers, glancing at her husband before looking back to her father.
     Sonny turns his gaze to Julian. "Leave, I want some family time."
     "This is my family. She's my wife and he's my son, you'd better learn to live with that, dear father-in-law."

Three Weeks Later

     Kristina lays Carter down on the mat, leaving her hand on his stomach. "Shh, don't cry. I know, this is a new place and Daddy's not here, but Mommy is."
     The instructor sits and looks around the group of moms and their newborns. "Good morning, everyone. I see we have a new mommy and baby this week. Would you like to introduce yourselves?"
     "I'm Kristina, this is my little boy, Carter. He's about three weeks old, and he's my first baby." Kristina says, rubbing Carter's chest nervously.
     "We can tell you're a little bit uncomfortable. Is this your first time leaving the house since your son was born?"
     Kristina nods. "My husband is hurt right now, so none of us have had a reason to leave the house. And we have a housekeeper, so that's another reason to not leave."
     "This is a safe place for new moms to bond with their babies and make some new friends, as well as a support system. Would you like to talk about how your husband got hurt?"
     "So, it's kind of a long story. It started back when my husband was, well, when he was married to my mother. He talked about buying a camper and going to the west coast for a few weeks. So, for his birthday I brought him to a camper sale. We found one and we left that day. We were gonna for three months and I came back seven and a half months pregnant. We ended up in Vegas. It was amazing. Just the time with him, away from everything. My parents, they don't approve of him. Partially because he's my mom's ex-husband and him and my dad have hated each other for years. And he's fifty-eight. I'm sorry, this is just too much. I'm gonna leave." She picks up Carter and carries him into the hall, laying him back down in his stroller.
     She makes it outside before one of the other moms, carrying her baby, catches up to her. "Kristina, wait. I know they can be so judgy. I'm not gonna judge you. And you clearly wanna talk about your life. I'm a good pair of ears."
     Kristina nods and sits on the bench a few feet from them. The other mom joins her and Carter, who's back out of his stroller and in his mother's arms. "It started in Vegas. Julian and I were goofing around and he fell and hit his head on the ground. I took him to the ER but there was a wait so he asked to leave. I thought he was fine so I took him back to the camper. He started having these dizzy spells where he's would just lose all balance and everything. It got so bad at one point that he laid on the ground completely still for three hours.
     He's been getting better but too days before Carter was born he was coming down the stairs and he started having one of those dizzy spells. He fell down the stairs, every stair. He called him and said something like, 'Don't freak out, but I'm in the hospital. I fell down the stairs, but I'm okay.'
     I went to the hospital and he was not fine. He had a concussion, he'd hurt his knee, he cracked a rib, and he dislocated his shoulder. They kept him overnight, just because they didn't know how bad the damage would be once swelling went down. I was so stressed over the next day that I didn't realize I'd been in labor for a couple when my water broke. I was in labor for twenty-six hours, that we know of.
     It's just all been a lot." Kristina says, never breaking her line of sight of Carter. "He's looking more and more like his dad every day. It's not a bad thing, I love my husband more than I can describe, but he's stuck in his ways."
     "It's pretty obvious in your voice just how much you love your husband. You should go home to him."

🚘🚘🚘

     "Hey, Kris, how was Mommy and Me?" Julian asks. Kristina holds Carter against her she curls up in his arms.
     "Don't worry about that. It's not important. The only things that are is this right here. My boys."