“Yes! This isn’t fair. This isn’t right! She’s mine. She belongs to me. She’s everything to me. I’ll take care of her myself if I have to. I don’t want to give her up. I don’t. She’s my everything, Cammy…” My voice trails off into moans, a type of guttural sound that has never come from my throat before. “Please don’t take away my daughter,” I beg. “That’s my baby. She’s part of me. You can’t take away a part of a person like that. You can’t.” I sound insane. I sound wild and crazy, and Cammy is hysterical, watching me.
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s too late,” the adopting woman says. “You would have needed to sign papers disagreeing with the adoption, but we were told the father was unknown.”
I look at Cammy, unable to understand how she could go through with something like this and not tell me. “Cammy, tell them I’m the father. I didn’t sign papers because I didn’t know we were giving her up for adoption until four hours ago,” I shout.
“He’s the father,” she cries through a whisper just quietly enough that I can hear, but we both know it doesn’t matter now. The woman said the paperwork was done. Cammy doesn’t respond. She just weeps. Her eyes are swollen and her cheeks are red, covered with big, thick tears. The couple—they’re holding my daughter tightly in a protective stance as if I were going to attack my own child. They’re protecting her from me. “AJ, you have to know that she’s my everything too, but—”
“They’re taking our daughter, Cammy! It can’t be this way!” I hardly have a chance to finish my sentence when hands wrap around my arms from behind, and I’m pulled out of the room, backwards nonetheless—just another form of punishment to give me one last look at this scene that will forever be burned into my mind.
While my world moves in slow motion around me, I keep my gaze set on our daughter, as a tiny pink hat is fitted snugly over her dark hair, and then I see her eyes—they’re large and looking everywhere, wondering what is happening in her world that was just created less than ten minutes ago.
The very last thing I hear before I’m out of the corridor is her cry—the sweetest noise I will never hear again.
CHAPTER TWO
Today is her birthday—my daughter. She’s twelve years old. I don’t know what state she lives in. I don’t know if her parents are good to her. I don’t know if she got exactly what she wanted for her birthday and I wish I could send her a gift—a card and tell her that today is the 4,380th day I have woken up, praying for her happiness and wishing I could see her again.
“AJ, GAVIN IS crying again,” Tori grumbles as she tears the thick, warm blankets off my body. “It’s your turn to feed him.”
They warned me about this. The sleepless nights, the crabby wife, the sleepless nights. When is it going to end? I feel like I have the flu, except I don’t have the flu. I have a four-month-old who won't sleep through the night. I haven’t slept more than five hours in four months. Or is it four hours in five months? How old is our son? I can’t even remember, I’m so delirious right now.
With my feet hanging from the bed, I clumsily slide the rest of my body off and hang on to the wall for support. Every night I lose sleep, my eyes take a little longer to adjust to the opaqueness of this house at three in the morning. I don’t bother trying to open my eyes anymore. Instead, I feel my way around through the house until I make it down into the kitchen. I reach for the fridge, remove the bottle, carry the bottle to the bottle heater, click the switch, and rest my head on the cool counter until the damn thing beeeeeeeeeeeeps. Some nights, I think Gavin just wants to hear the beep, because by the time I get into his room to feed him, he’s stopped crying and he’s back asleep. And I’m awake, walking down the hallway like a zombie trying to find my bed again.
I don’t think that’s the case tonight since his screams have only increased in volume since I got up. Removing the bottle from the warmer, I hold it over the sink and let the drops of breast milk, yup, that’s my life now, fall onto my wrist so I can make sure the liquid my hot wife pumped from her breast six hours ago is not too hot. Yup. Breast milk, not too hot. It’s perfect. For Gavin.
With the bottle in hand, I grab a burp cloth from the pile of laundry stacked up on the living room couch and head upstairs to Gavin’s room where the piercing noise begins puncturing tiny holes in my ear drum.
I scoop up my little guy and carry him over to the rocking chair Hunter was nice enough to lend me. What are brothers for? Other than to lend each other rocking chairs. Who am I right now? How did Hunter and I reach a point in our lives when we lend each other rocking chairs?