Chapter 6

This chapter is dedicated to Jinako-Chan :) Same disclaimer as always.

"I have a...a daughter?"

Jake was literally breathless.

Today was not a good day for him. Not like any day lately was good for him, anyway.

He woke up that morning in a fog. The doctors kept prodding him, looking him over as if he were some sort of lab animal. They all stood around him, shaking their heads and writing things down on clipboards. Then they took him in for brain surgery, to try and restore the sight in his eye.

It probably didn't work. Nothing does. At least, not for me.

He looked down on himself. His legs, now thinner from disuse. The tubes and IV's coming out from his body....

"I'm sorry to say this, but you're paralyzed from the waist down Jacob. You'll never walk again."

That voice kept running around in his head, haunting him. At first, he didn't want to believe it was true. he tried to get up, he tried to morph out of it. He tried morphing Homer, his old dog, because that was, in fact, his first morph ever. The doctors hoped his injuries would go away.

But they didn't. Morph after morph, surgery after surgery, he still couldn't feel his legs. No one knew why.

And now this...a kid?

"Yes Jake, we have a daughter. We didn't use protection, remember?" Cassie's soft voice returned him to the present.

"But.....we only did it one time..." he said weakly.
"It only TAKES one time,"

Jake adjusted the bed to get a better look at Cassie. She looked like she was about to cry. Her eyes had lines around them and were puffy. She was holding back a well of emotion.

"Jake, do you know? Do you know how much you put me through? How much pain?  When I first found out I was pregnant...I wanted to kill you, I wanted to..." She adjusted Rae's position on her lap." I thought about abortion, but I just couldn't do it."

She paused for a moment, her voice cracking.

"I thought I was no better than a whore. I was so depressed. And the pregnancy was so rough Jake. I was sick all the time. Gestational diabetes. I had to move in with my parents. I wanted to give her up. My parents thought it would be better for me to give her to an adoption agency, but when she was born...Jake, it was like magic. I looked into her eyes, and suddenly, everything was OK."

She stroked Rae's hair.

"I mean, I couldn't deny your parents their only grandchild. She's all they had left...Our little Princess. I can't even imagine living without her."

Rae looked up at Jake and smiled. She reached out one of her little hands to Jake's IV's.

"No no no Rae," Cassie scolded, "We don't play with your Daddy's tubes."

"It's all right." Jake said. "She can't do any more damage to me. Go ahead. Put her on the bed."

Cassie put Rae on Jake's  bed. Jake adjusted the bed a bit more.

Rae smiled again and reached out a hand to Jake. Her other hand was sticky with the cinnamon bun.

"What do you have there?" Jake asked.

Rae reached her other hand out and tried to give Jake part of the cinnamon bun. Cassie tenderly helped Rae put the cinnamon bun in Jake's mouth.

"Da-ddy." Rae said.

He looked at his daughter again. He couldn't help but notice how much she looked like the both of them. It was as if someone had mixed Cassie and him in a blender. Rae's light brown skin, his eyes, and his hair color. Was that his nose too? Everything about Rae was so new, so innocent, so pure.

I hope she never has to experience any of the pain that Cassie or I went through.

He reached out and touched his daughter for the first time.

"Yes, I'm your Daddy," he said before he burst into tears.