Chapter 41

Past

A yawn tore itself from my lungs as I jabbed the up button on the elevator. No way was I wasting energy on climbing the stairs all the way to the fifth floor, not today. For the first time, I was starting to think that Steph was onto something with her energy conserving ways. Maybe I'd ask her for some tips later. I don't think I'd ever been this exhausted in my entire life and considering all the missions I'd done for the government, that was saying something. It had been two weeks since McKenzie was born and I was pretty sure I'd only managed to accumulate about thirty hours of sleep in her entire life, and most of those were before we'd brought her home from the hospital.

I'd been a light sleeper for most of my adult life out of necessity, but even my experience in the military hadn't prepared me for the kind of hyper awareness that came with being a father and needing to be sure my daughter was okay every second of the day. The smallest snuffle in the dead of night and I was on high alert, listening to the pattern of McKenzie's breathing, assessing the tones of her tiny, baby sighs.

Between the feeing and the changing and the crying, not to mention the usual day-to-day chores like, feeding ourselves, and keeping up with a bare minimum amount of laundry and housework to get us by, neither Phoebe nor myself had much energy left over to do more than simply exist in a permanently exhausted stupor. Nothing mattered except keeping our little girl alive.

But even with our new parental status, complete with the resolve to work with rather than against each other, I could sense my constant presence grating on Phoebe's bubble of maternal contentment, threatening to shatter it into a million pieces at a moment's notice. Any time I tended to McKenzie's needs, Phoebe was right there, breathing down my neck, fussing at me to 'do it the right way', eager to take over if I showed even the slightest sign of weakness. It wasn't that she thought I was incompetent it was that this was the baby she'd wanted for a long time. She didn't want to miss a moment.

My employment contract with Rangeman afforded me up to four weeks of paid paternity leave, which I had been planning on taking full advantage of, but when Phoebe had handed me the baby monitor and suggested in no uncertain terms that I might like to return to sleeping in my own bed in my own room at the other end of the hall, I knew it was time for me to get back to work. Hopefully, the added space between us would help in the whole working-as-a-team department for McKenzie's sake.

So I'd cut my leave short, organised with Ranger to cover desk duties while my sleep cycle was out of whack, and left my precious angel sleeping in her bassinet no more than six feet from her mother.

"Santos!" Hank called in greeting from behind the monitors station as I emerged from the elevator. "Did you sleepwalk all the way here?"

I mustered a mere shadow of my usual cocky grin as I replied, "That would imply that sleep was a think I was still in the habit of doing,"

"That explains the luggage under your eyes," Benny smirked from Hank's left. "You look like a zombie."

They didn't have to tell me. I was acutely aware of the fact that I looked like shit. I'd had a full forty second to examine my reflection in the shiny metal doors of the elevator on the way up. "Well, you're safe at least," I pointed out. "Zombies only eat brains." I wandered away to the tune of Hank's laughter and managed to stumble into my cubicle without first stumbling into a wall, so I was calling my morning a success so far.

I fairly melted into my lightly cushioned office chair and allowed myself a small indulgent moment to lay my head on the desk, eyes drifting closed. No sooner had I let out a contented sigh, though, than a heavy hand landed on my shoulder, shaking me roughly.

"Wakey, wakey!" Bobby's intolerably cheerful voice called as she shoved a few things aside to rest his ass on the edge of my desk. "Sleep time's over. Work time is now."

A feral growl clawed up my throat, but I refused to lift my head just yet, wasn't sure I could have even if I'd wanted to. "Sleep time ended two weeks ago," I muttered. "I just need a power nap and I'll be good to go."

"So, you don't want this double shot I brought you?" my best friend teased, waving a steaming mug of coffee under my nose.

That got my attention. Coffee had become my lifeblood. Slowly and deliberately, I dragged myself upright again, wrapping both hands around the gift Bobby held out to me. My eyes drifted closed as the first delightfully bitter mouthful slid over my tongue and down my throat.

"How's my niece?" he asked, showing absolutely zero respect for the moment I was having. "When do I get to come over and start securing my position as favourite? My uncle muscles need a workout."

Had he always been this chipper in the mornings? I let out a groan, leaning my head back against my chair. "She barely let's me holder her, Bobby," I told him automatically. "I doubt she'd let you get your grubby paws on her."

The silence that met my statement was tense and concerned, a familiar combination coming from the medic who took his job seriously both on and off the clock. I knew the expression I'd find on his face even before I rolled my head to the side to meet his gaze. "She won't let you hold your own daughter?" he asked, worry etched into every line and plane of his face.

"I said barely," I reminded him on a sigh. "Of course, she lets me hold Kenzie. She just," I shrugged, taking another sip of my coffee. "She's a new mom, you know? She's wanted a baby for a long time and raising the child with a man she doesn't love wasn't exactly part of the master plan. She's just a little possessive right now, doesn't wanna miss something big. I'm sure things will even out as her hormones readjust or whatever. It's fine. We have a system." The system just happened to be that I hand McKenzie over to Phoebe almost as soon as she enters the room. No way was I spilling that little detail though.

"Hmm," bobby hummed, nonplussed.

"Give us a couple weeks to settle into a routine and maybe figure out what sleep is again," I suggested, setting the coffee aside and piking up the first file from my in-tray. "Then we'll have you over so you can flex those uncle muscles or whatever."

He consented to my plan only after I offered up my phone so he could scroll through the hundreds of photos I'd snapped in the last fortnight and then I was dragging myself and my coffee behind him as he lead the way to the conference room for the Monday meeting. Time to test my staying power through one of Tank's long, droll speeches.

By some miracle I managed to stay awake through the first half of the day, probably due in part to the fact that men were constantly dropping by to ask after McKenzie and see any photos I was willing to share. I thought it might have been easier if I shared them to the Rangeman email chain, but then I'd probably just end up napping at my desk, so I didn't give that option another thought. Plus, it was interesting to see which men cooed over the tiny him I'd leant my DNA to.

There were the obvious ones: Bobby had always been good with kids and had a vested interest as my best friend and the self-proclaimed favourite uncle. Ella, of course, was eager to cluck at the photos and remark on how much the tiny, indistinct human features resembled my own. Woody and Brett, the resident family men of the company, reminisced about the time when their own kids were so tiny and contained, offering sage words of advice. Manny was a serial uncle with his three sisters and two sister in-laws constantly popping out babies. Steph, though she claimed to have zero maternal instinct still had enough in her to appreciate a cute baby when she saw one. Even Ranger's interest was unsurprising given his family connection and the fact that he'd had my back for as long as I could remember.

But when the men I'd thought wouldn't touch a baby photo with a ten-foot pole for fear that they'd catch feelings or vulnerability – people like the calculating Hector, analytical Ghost and super-serious Bones – had also proven susceptible to getting that gooey look on their faces, I had to wonder if my daughter held some kind of magical charisma that could bring hardened men to their knees.

I got a terrifying flash of what havoc that kind of power could wreak on my life further down the track and immediately pummelled the thoughts into a trunk in the dark and forgotten corners of my mind, choosing instead to focus on the realisation of just how big my chosen family was.

At some point the visits must have slowed, because one minute I was working on a background search, plugging in details of an armed robber who'd gone FTA and the next Bobby was standing over me, arms crossed over his chest, staring down at me with that serious-medic expression of his as I blinked awake.

"Go take a nap," he instructed.

"I'm fine," I replied on a yawn, swiping a sticking note off my cheek as I sat up and stretched.

"Your snoring is distracting the guys that are actually working," he pointed out. "Go down stairs, take an hour or two to catch up on some sleep, and then you can join the strategy meeting for the distraction job we have planned for this weekend."

"I-" I tried to protest, but he cut me off with a look.

"You need to look after yourself," he asserted, flipping the file I'd been using as a pillow (thankfully, I wasn't a drooler) closed. "The sleep will do you good, not just for work, but for being there for McKenzie and Phoebe, too." It didn't escape my notice that he'd put McKenzie first in that sentence. "I don't want you to burn out and do something you'll regret."

He was right. I didn't want to get to the end of my tether and lash out at Phoebe in my sleep deprived state and drive her away, taking McKenzie with her. We'd agreed to a truce, but I couldn't forget how volatile and unpredictable she could be if she felt like she was backed into a corner. She was capable of the kind of amoral acts that had gotten us into our current situation, there was no doubt in my mind that she would leave me in the dust at the first sign that I didn't want McKenzie in my life, no matter how false that sign would have to be. Or conversely, the first sign that I wanted to take McKenzie away from her.

"Fine," I sighed, shoving back from the desk. "But I'm getting a snack from the break room first."

"Don't forget your blankie," Bobby called after me as I pushed past him. "Should I send someone down to read you a bedtime story?" I sent him a one finger salute over my shoulder, not bothering to look back or dignify his taunts with a response. "How about some warm milk?" he added as I reached the break room door.

*o*

The two hours of quality, uninterrupted sleep I managed to get in before Bobby came to retrieve me for the strategy meeting did me a world of good. It was a small measure in the overall scheme of things but left me feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world. For the first time in two weeks I wasn't completely bone tired. I let that weightless feeling carry me through the rest of the afternoon and all the way home.

I was looking forward to checking in on McKenzie, to make sure she was still okay after spending a whole day aware from her. As the sound of the engine and the car radio disappeared, though, my ears were immediately tuned to the tiny cries of the newborn baby who had claimed control of my life and my heart. I wasted no time grabbing the cooler of meals Ella had boxed up for me before I'd left work and made my way inside, dropping the box in the kitchen to be sorted out later and following the cries to the living room. The scene I found there made me almost guilty for how relaxed and refreshed I felt.

Phoebe was stood in the middle of the room, her hair unbrushed and tangled in a rat's nest at the back of her head. She had on the same stained sweats she was wearing when she went to bed last night, there was a patch of dried spit up trailing down from her left shoulder, and she was rocking and bouncing side to side as she pleaded with the wailing infant clutched to her chest. In short, she was a mess and probably felt even worse. This was the side of motherhood people forgot to mention when you were planning to have a baby.

She looked up as I approached, tears streaked down her blotchy red cheeks, eyes beseeching. If she'd looked like that the first time I'd met her we never would have gotten to where we were today, that's for sure. "She won't stop," she sobbed. "She's been like this for hours. I changed her, I burped her, I tried to feed her, I gave her a warm bath, I even tried turning the vacuum on for white noise. I tried everything and she just won't stop crying."

If the problem wasn't anything she'd listed the solutions for just now I didn't know what else to do for my poor sweet child, but I knew that Phoebe's obvious distress wasn't heling matters. I held out my hands, waiting for her to nod before I extracted the baby from her arms and settled her against my shoulder.

"What's all this fuss for?" I asked my daughter quietly, even as her cries continued to fill my ears. "Shhh, you're okay. Daddy's got you." Something about my voice, or my presence must have broken through whatever had taken hold of McKenzie, because as I continued to gently pat her back and murmur soothing sounds to her, the crying calmed to wet snuffles and, after a few more minutes, she was sleep. "That's better, I said in that same quiet voice, not wanting to stop the movements of sounds that had soothed her lest she start up again.

I lifted my gaze to find Phoebe collapsed on the couch, a tired, barely shuttered glare directed at both me and the baby.

"You could have called," I said calmly. "I would have come home earlier."

"I had it under control," she snapped, though the way she blanched at her own words told me that she couldn't even convince herself of that statement let alone me.

I sighed, and McKenzie let out a little contented imitation of it in her sleep. "It's okay to ask for help," I reminded her. "We're in this together, remember?"

She nodded and scrubbed her hands over her face. "I know," she moaned, her voice thick with tears once more. "But I wanted to be able to handle it myself. I wanted to be okay on my own while you were at work. I wanted to prove that-

"And you will," I assured her gently before she could make any more statements about not wanting or needed me. I wasn't sure how much of it was exhaustion and hormones and how much was something more, but I didn't need her speaking things into reality and convincing herself to run away with McKenzie. "It's only been one day. And Kenzie is still getting used to the world. You'll both settle into a routine before you know it. Just give it time and try not to let yourself get worked up with things don't run so smoothly."

It was easy enough for me to offer the advice, especially since I was the one who'd had a break from the constant stress of keeping the baby alive, but I could tell it was testing the limits of kind words Phoebe was willing to accept from me right now. And the pattern that arose in the following days and weeks didn't help matters. Every day, when I arrived home from work, Kenzie was crying, and the only sure fire way to console her and calm her down was if I held her to my chest and spoke quietly to her while we rocked side to side.

On the fourth day in a row that this happened, Phoebe had stubbornly refused to pass the baby to me despite how heightened they both were, which had only lead to the alarming moment when McKenzie's crying became so intense that she'd stopped breathing. Her little face was still red and contorted with silent cries, but she didn't inhale for what felt like an eternity.

Panic had set in and Phoebe had pleaded with me once more to do something, relinquishing her to my hold. The lack of breathing wasn't new to me, I'd seen my cousin's kids do the same thing, but it didn't stop my heart from leaping to my throat as my internal clock ticked away, waiting for her to suck in a breath again. The change in arms jolted her back to her crying again, but only for a minute or so before she recognised where she was, who was holding her and she began to settle down.

Phoebe hadn't even tried to hide her contempt as she huffed out a breath and stormed from the room to go shower as was the nightly routine.

I shook my head, glancing down at the child snuffling against my shoulder as I carried her into the kitchen with me to start dinner. "You're not winning my any favours with your mom, McKenzie," I murmured, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "I know you love me, but we've gotta work on your timing and presentation."