Healed

2:00 PM (+30 Hours)

"Please daddy just one more!" Audrie begs at the arcade.

We've already spent fifty dollars and two hours at this place, but Grace is the only one who can manage to tell Audrie no and Grace isn't here right now, Grace is shopping and probably won't come back until I ask her. I won't admit defeat, instead I'll just silently secede to the will of my three-foot tall commander.

"Alright bunny alright" I groan, handing her another twenty, "but don't tell your mother!"

Audrie gleefully skips away to the change machine and hops up and down as it spits out quarters. I laugh and open the app to check my account balance. This girl is gonna drain me.

I remember the day we found out we were having a baby. Grace and I had been dating for a year, moved into an apartment for a couple months. Truth be told we weren't planning her, but when the test came back positive, I freaked out. We are having a baby!!! I shouted and danced around the apartment like an idiot.

I was excited as I was terrified, I didn't know how to be a dad, I was still trying to conquer my disease and I wondered if I was fit to raise a baby. I asked myself what would happen to my child if I couldn't stop, if I couldn't beat my habit.

Grace and I discussed it at length, there was no question we were keeping the baby, but finances and insurance and buying a house big enough for a family was all too much for us. We were still in college and it was clear one of us would have to drop out and work full time. I offered but Grace decided that she would work at her father's real estate agency so I could get my degree and follow my dream of becoming a therapist. It's important to you she insisted.

So, it was nine months of chaos, I doubled my load of classes and in doing so I would l managed to graduate a year early. As an added consequence I was too busy with my studies to think about my problems. That was my one year clean.

In the delivery room I was panicking asking the nurses and doctors a million questions driving them and Grace up the wall. What do those numbers mean? Why is that machine beeping so fast? She's dilated to what? Is that normal?

On several occasions she shouted through gritted teeth oh my God Isaac will you shut the hell up! and I'd be quiet for about another five minutes before my anxiety broke the levies once more. After ten hours of labor, most if which was spent shouting at me, she made the final push. The first time I heard her cries I started to bawl even louder.

She was beautiful, even as a screaming mess of goo Audrie was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen. When they took her out if the room to be cleaned, I almost trailed them as if by a newfound instinct. Returning to Graces side I asked did you see her did you see her?

She called me an idiot and yelled at me to go get her something to drink. At the vending machine a thousand visions and questions barreled through my head a million miles an hour. Her first word, her first step, her favorite food and her favorite color, will she like girls or boys or both or maybe neither? I was all at once excited and afraid, excited to show her the world and teach her love and life and patience and kindness but so abject that I might not be able to keep her safe and all the terrible things that could happen to a girl might come to be.

Then the worst thought of all hit me like a train; that maybe one day she would turn out exactly like me. I saw her tiny little arms so soft and clean one day covered in red and my heart squeezed so tight I thought it might pop. I ran back to Grace and she angrily questioned about her drink, but I fell to my knees at her bed and sobbed what if I mess her up? I asked what if I make her just like me?

Grace looked away and I could tell she was thinking the same thing. After a moment of mutual silence, she took my hand and squeezed, she said you'll make her a lot of things Isaac, her grip tightened, but the best thing she might turn out to be is just like you.