The Baby Project

Chapter Four

When my eyes fluttered open, the first thing I wondered was why my pillow was so hard.

            I slowly lifted my head, blinking madly as my eyes adjusted to the light, and contemplated the possibility of Millie having snuck into my room and filled my pillowcase with rocks. However, when I propped myself up with my hands and opened my eyes properly, I realized this was not the case.

            I wasn’t in my bed at all.

            I happened to be lying on Andrew, and our faces were so close my brown hair was tickling his cheeks.

            And, just as this thought crossed my mind, his eyes opened too.

            A sort of strangled sound of surprise escaped him as he caught sight of me, and I took the opportunity to leap off him. This, however, turned out to be a much more difficult feat than I was expecting –  due to the fact we were both squashed onto the tiny couch and our legs were tangled together. My foot got caught somewhere and the only action I managed was a clumsy sideways roll that ended with me falling off the couch with a thud.

            “Uh… are you okay?”

            Above me, Andrew was peering over the edge of the sofa. His long-ish hair was falling forward, looking even more disheveled than usual. The two-seater was small for even me, but his height meant his legs were hooked awkwardly over the armrest, and a comfy position just wasn’t achievable. For a moment I just blinked up at him, wondering what had happened in the mere thirty seconds I’d been awake, before I gained enough composure to speak.

            “I’m okay,” I assured him, pulling myself into a sitting position. “Just, uh... you surprised me.”

            “You surprised me,” he said. “What time is it? Did we fall asleep on the couch or something?”

            “Yeah, I guess we must-”

            My voice trailed off just as my attention caught on something lying a few meters away from me. An empty pink baby carrier. And, like a dam had been opened somewhere inside my head, everything came flooding back to me.

            It was then that I noticed the room was eerily quiet.

            “Um, Andrew?” I said slowly.

            “Yeah?”

            I turned to look at him. “Where the hell is our kid?”

            His brown eyes widened as the realization sunk in; his horrified expression mirrored my own feelings. We’d only had the doll for a day, and it’d been misplaced. How was it even possible to lose a plastic baby with about the same capabilities for movement as a rock?

            Somehow, Andrew and I had managed it.

            “We definitely had it last night,” he said, pushing himself off the couch and running a hand through his hair. “Because we couldn’t get it to stop crying... remember? I guess we eventually fell asleep.”

            My mind flickered back to the previous night. After returning from the bathroom, things had gone downhill and never really came back up again. We exhausted all our options – feeding, changing its diaper, shaking its rattle, changing its clothes, rocking it – twice over, but its crying refused to let up. Around two a.m. we’d flopped, exhausted, onto the couch with the baby between us, feeling well and truly defeated.