Yo! I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Thanks for your reviews! I loved the constructive criticism; it helped a lot on the editing of this chapter.
Gift From the Sea
Chapter Four
Wufei finished his shower and went into the bedroom to find Lian was still sleeping peacefully on the bed. He lay down next to her promising himself he was just going to close his eyes for five minutes.
The next thing he knew, the phone rang and woke both of them up. Lian whimpered, but didn't cry. He reached over her and answered the phone.
"Wufei! Are you ever going to bring Lian here for her shots?" Sally's angry voice demanded. "You can't get a birth certificate unless you get her shots!"
"What time is it?" he asked groggily.
"Almost eleven a.m."
"Eleven?!"
"What have you been doing all day?"
"We took a nap. You woke us up."
"God, Wufei! Just bring her down here," Sally said and hung up.
"Hey! You're here!" Sally greeted as Wufei walked in the clinic holding the baby bundled in a blanket. The patients in the waiting room looked up to see who it was.
"Here," she said and handed him a clipboard with lots of papers and a pen. "Fill these out and give them to the receptionist when you're done, ok?" she smiled and peeked at Lian then left the waiting room with a patient to examine.
Wufei went and sat down on an empty couch and lay Lian beside him before he started to fill out the forms.
Halfway done, a woman came in and sat in an arm chair across from him. He didn't pay her any attention until she started talking to him.
"She's adorable," the woman said, referring to Lian. "How old is she?"
"Two days," he answered not looking up.
"Aw! She's so cute! What's her name and where is her mother?"
He looked up at the woman with cold eyes. "I don't think that is any of your concern, is it?" he said in a very cold voice. The woman looked shocked but didn't say anything more to him.
'Thank God,' Wufei thought as he took the paperwork to the front desk.
As soon as he was back at the couch Sally's voice rang through the room. "Hey Wufei, you can come on back."
He didn't answer and picked up Lian and followed Sally down the hall.
"So?" Sally asked leading them. Her back turned to them, but her smile evident in her voice. "How was your first night of being a daddy?" she teased.
"Considering I'll probably have a ringing in my ears for the rest of my life and I'll probably go deaf within two weeks and I had a total of 2 hours of sleep last night, not including our nap this morning, and I burned my arm on the stove this morning while making a bottle while I was half asleep, I'd have to say my first night was pretty good. And how was yours?" he said in a sweet yet very sarcastic voice.
She laughed a little and led him into an open examination room. She took Lian from him and unwrapped her and lay her on a scale. She was still asleep. "Well," Sally started to answer his question. "I had a great night excluding that some strange man called me around two this morning wondering how to get a baby to stop crying." She flashed him a teasing smile. He scowled at her.
"She weighs..." Sally said mostly to herself as she weighed the baby. "....5 pounds, 8 ounces.....She's gained weight since yesterday," she smiled. "It's not much, but it's a start. Good job Wufei."
"Is she underweight or something?" he asked taking the blanket off the counter and folding it.
"5 pounds is underweight, you dolt. I told you, I think that the mother starved herself while she was pregnant, trying to kill Lian. But at the rate you're going, she'll be fine."
Sally measured her, then took a blood sample from her foot. At the prick of the pin, Lian's eyes flew open and she started to scream. Wufei winced at the volume, but Sally seemed to not notice and bandaged her foot.
She then left to take the sample to the lab, leaving him alone with the screaming baby. "It doesn't hurt that bad. Stop it," he said over her. Lian kept screaming.
Finally he couldn't stand it anymore and picked her up, trying to make her stop. After a few moments, Lian's screams faded to moderate whimpers.
Sally came back then. "I'm sorry to say that you just wasted your time calming her down." she said and opened a drawer and pulled out a needle. "I'm not done yet."
"You're not?" Wufei asked in dread. She shook her head. He sighed and put the baby back on the table.
"Ok, now for the worst part of her day," Sally said and syringed some medicine in the needle. "It's a vitamin K injection. A newborn's liver often can't produce vitamin K, so we have to give it to them."
"She's going to scream again isn't she," he said in dread.
She nodded. "Yeah, it will, but she'll be fine," she said and proceeded to give the baby the shot.
Lian started to scream again. Soon Sally took out the needle and put a bandage on Lian's arm. "There. We're done," she said smiling.
Wufei picked up the screaming baby and wrapped the blanket around her. "I pay now or what?" he asked, having to half yell to be heard.
She shook her head. "I'll come by your place later. Pay me then," she said. "Oh yeah! Come with me to my office. I bought something for you."
"What is it?" he asked following Sally and trying to quiet the baby at the same time. He finally dug in his pocket and pulled out a pacifier. He stuck it in his mouth first to get all the dirt and stuff off then stuck it in Lian's mouth. She ignored it and let it fall from her mouth and onto the blanket.
When they reached her office, Sally took a box and put it on top of her desk. She took a knife and opened it and pulled out some weird thing Wufei's only seen a few times. He knew it had something to do with babies. She smiled at his confused look. "It's a baby carrier," she explained.
She took Lian, now calming, from him, uncovered her, and placed her in the carrier. "You put her in here like that and strap her in like this." She showed him how to do it. Then she took the blanket and covered her up and tucked her in gently.
Lian stopped crying all together and blinked up at the two people looking down at her. She looked as if she didn't know what to think about this new thing.
"You don't leave her in here all the time," Sally said. "Only put her in here if you're taking her somewhere outside home, like the grocery store or something. But just taking her to the beach, you don't need this," she said and then smiled. "It also doubles as a carseat. You'll eventually get in trouble if you keep letting her ride in the front seat-"
"Why?" Wufei asked.
Sally stared at him and sighed loudly in annoyance. "Honestly, Wufei! I thought you were smarter than that!"
"Just what the hell do you mean by that?!" he demanded angrilly.
She shook her head at him. "Everyone is supposed to know that it's against the law to have children too small to use a real seat in the front seat. They have to sit in the back and use a car seat." She looked at him in disbelief. "Didn't you learn this at some point in your life?"
He glared at her. "Just shut up!"
"Drop it," she said. "Come on out to your car and I'll show you how to work the carseat."
"Fine," he said starting for the door, but she stopped him.
"I have something else for you too," she said.
"What?"
Sally pulled out a big black bag and handed it to him. He looked inside and found it empty. "It's a baby bag," she said. "When you go out, you need this to take her bottle, pacifiers, diapers, wipes, extra clothes, blankets and anything else that you might think necessary."
"It looks like a huge purse," Wufei said frowning in disapproval.
"I guess so," she shrugged. "You'll probably think you look stupid carrying this thing around for a while, but you'll just have to deal with it....Oh! Here, this will help alot too," she said pulling out a box from her desk. It was a pair of baby monitors. "So you don't have to have Lian with you all the time while you're at home. It will also wake you up when she cries from another room." She handed him the box and he looked it over.
"Thank you, Sally." he said. "You're a huge help."
R&R please! Any suggestions for upcoming chapters are most welcome, as is constructive criticism.
For TrigunChic, he meets up with the others in later chapters. Wufei moved to China after the war ended. The boys just kind of split up.
