Page 12 of Wistful in Wyoming
He paced with her, bouncing and rocking, singing in his off-key voice. He begged and bargained, promised her a pony, a sports car, and custom cowgirl boots, but none of it worked.
He thought about calling her parents, but an image of Willow’s stressed and tear-stained face flashed in his mind. He couldn’t do that to them. One name popped into his head, a person he was supposed to be thinking about anyway. He’d promised Willow he’d figure it out.
Dale.
He picked up his phone again. This was not how he wanted to start a conversation with the man, begging for help with Shannon, but he was desperate. His behavior toward the man earlier shamed him, even knowing his feelings were justified, but in order to get help, he was going to suck it up.
He was dialing before he had a second to talk himself out of it. Putting the phone to his ear, he struggled to hear it ringing over his goddaughter’s ear-splitting caterwauling.
“What the fuck is that noise?” Dale barked in Jeremiah’s ear. Clearly, he’d heard the noise before he could even say hello. “Is that Shannon? What did you do to her, Jay!”
“I don’t know! She won’t stop, and I don’t know what to do!” He was freaking out now, Dale’s snappish tone breaking the calm he’d been holding onto by a thread.
“Fuck,” came the muttered response. “I’ll be right there.”
* * *
Dale threwhis truck into park and hustled into Jeremiah’s large log cabin-style house, not bothering to knock or announce himself in any way. He’d never been inside the man’s home before—only in the ranch’s barns—but he could hear Shannon from outside and was terrified something was seriously wrong with her. He’d never heard her cry that way before. She was generally a happy baby and wasn’t prone to long bouts of screaming.
“Jeremiah!” He found them in the living room—the path Jeremiah was pacing with the baby was the only clear spot on the floor. Toys, clothes, and what appeared to be dry, white snow was everywhere. Sniffing, he confirmed it was probably baby powder, the overwhelming fresh scent hanging in the air like a cloud, yet not enough to overpower the stomach-churning smell of shit. Dale gasped, gagged, and coughed a few times before asking, “What the hell is going on?”
The other man was wide-eyed and harried, looking like he was about to burst into tears himself. “I don’t know! She won’t stop. Her diaper is fresh, she won’t eat, I tried burping her, but that isn’t working either. There’s tapioca starch everywhere! I don’t want to call Nathan and Willow, but I don’t know what to do here.” Shannon lifted her face from Jeremiah’s chest, thrusting her whole body backward in a bow, arching her spine. Her face was bright red and streaked with tears and snot.
What the fuck is tapioca starch? Isn’t that pudding?
Dale glanced around the room at the mess, not exactly sure what he could do to help. He knew Nathan and Willow had gone to dinner and drive-in movie—their first night out since the baby had been born—and he didn’t want to disturb them any more than Jeremiah did. “Come on, let’s go outside. Maybe the fresh air will help.” It reeked in there, the combination of powder and baby shit was horrid and would probably be stuck in his nose for days.
Grabbing a blanket off the couch, he shook it out, sending a new cloud of powder into the air. He waved it away from the baby’s face, then laid the blanket over her shoulders and back. Jeremiah nodded as he tucked the material around Shannon’s torso, his expression more stressed than Dale had ever seen it. Worry had carved deep furrows into his brow, and sweat dotted his forehead. His red hair stood straight up, as if he’d been running his hands through it. Smiling to himself, Dale secretly thought it was adorable.
Quickly banishing that train of thought, he focused on the problem at hand. He held the front door open for Jeremiah to walk through, a screaming Shannon still thrashing in his arms.
“Hand her over, take a minute, and then tell me what happened.” Dale opened his arms, settling the baby against his chest, trying to console her.
He kissed Shannon’s forehead. She was warm, almost too warm, but it was hard to tell if it was from all the crying or if she was running a fever. He loosened the blanket but kept it around her. It was warm enough for him and Jeremiah to be outside without jackets but still too cool for a tiny baby.
In the meantime, Jeremiah was pacing the length of the porch. “I don’t know what happened. She pooped all over, out of her clothes and ... andeverywhere! I cleaned her up and changed her. Then she hit me with that powder and started crying. I got us both cleaned up,again, but she just wouldn’t stop. I tried feeding her, but she wouldn’t take the bottle. Her diaper is dry. She won’t sleep. I tried walking her, sitting with her, rocking her, everything I could think of. Is she okay?” His voice was thick with worry.
Dale pressed his cheek to hers. “She feels warm. Do you have a thermometer?”
“Maybe in her diaper bag? Let me go look.” Jeremiah jogged back into the house—his fear that something was seriously wrong with Shannon was palpable. He loved her, that much was obvious. He was such a good man, Dale thought, as he rocked Shannon side-to-side, softly shushing her. Thank God some of his teammates in the Marines had little kids back then. Reluctantly, he’d learned a lot about infants and toddlers whenever they’d been stateside and over at each other’s houses almost every weekend. Surprisingly, a lot of those lessons still came back to him at times like this.
Jeremiah hurried back out, the screen door slamming behind him. “Here, I found it.” He brandished a bright pink thermometer in his fist. “How do you do it? We don’t have to take it ... um,rectally ...do we?” Jeremiah’s already white face paled further. “I don’t think I can do that!”
Laughing, he said, “Here, you take her, I’ll do it. And no, under the arm is just fine, you just have to add a degree to the temp.”
“Oh, thank God.” Lifting her under her arm pits, Jeremiah took Shannon and settled her with her back against his chest. She threw her head back and forth, still crying, though it seemed a bit better now. The tone of her screams was softer.
Taking the device from the plastic protector, Dale pushed the on button and then pulled the sleeve of her onesie aside. He tucked the soft rubbery end in her armpit and gently held her arm down. “There, there, baby girl. Uncle Jeremiah has you. It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”
He tried to soothe her while they waited, kissing her forehead. He frowned—she really was warm. Shannon stuffed her fist into her mouth, drooling and chewing on her hand even as she kept whining.
A minute or so later, the thermometer beeped, and Dale pulled it free.100.5. “A fever but a low grade one. Maybe she’s teething.” He gestured to where she was doing her best to fit her whole hand into her mouth. “Let’s get her something cold to chew on and see if Willow packed her some baby Tylenol or something.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“The wives of my Marine buddies made sure all their single teammates learned this stuff, so we could babysit when markers were called in or bets were lost.”
Jeremiah nodded mutely and waited while Dale held the door open for them. “Where’s her bag?” he asked Jeremiah, as he glanced around the living room. It seemed like everything from the diaper bag was all over the place, but he didn’t see any bottles of pain reliever.
