Chapter 165
July 4th, 2016
Logan's circle of expats in London had gathered in St John's Wood at the home of one of his business partner's. It was a very nice place for London's standards, one that actually had a considerable back yard which was truly hard to come by in these areas. There were businessmen, athletes, diplomats and their significant others, some with children. These were the circles Logan usually hung out with around here, even if usually not with everyone at once, even if he didn't have a lot of time to spare on most days. It was like a village within a city, their connections and relationships being irreplaceable to feel connected to the States. Naturally there were a lot of Americans in London, but this group had been drawn together by appreciation of good food, an occasional party and joint friend, the same one whose house this was. But naturally, his social circles were not limited to Americans out here, and even this same group included a few people from other places around the world as well, on top of locals.
Logan was there with Odette, not at all poorly tuned because of her presence in that moment. They were doing okay, beginning to wrap their heads around actually living in the same city, in the same apartment. Logan wasn't entirely happy with the way he'd left things with Rory, but somehow he always believed that they'd at least talk it out and at the very least remain friendly. He believed time would solve it. He still felt like there was time for it to resolve itself. But at this point - it wasn't high on his mind, having been trying to convince himself that he just needed to push forward. In part this was denial. But the early summer activities were certainly keeping him busy and distracted.
"Hey, man, how was the game last night?" Logan asked, casually, shaking hands with a former professional basketball player who now coached, the man towering several inches taller than him.
"Pretty good, pretty good," the man replied, nodding, continuing their casual small-talk, which was nothing too deep but not too superficial either. Way better than what Logan was subjected to around his parents' friends for example.
The caterer was flipping fancy burgers on the barbeque outside and the waiter was serving drinks - mint juleps with American flags as cocktail stirrers. It was while he spoke to people, being able to carry an adequate conversation in his sleep, as he observed Odette out in the backyard through the open living room doors, playing with one of the kids at the party. The kid, a little girl, was probably just over 1 years old or so, just having learnt how to walk properly, still pretty eager to hold onto a hand if available. And it was Odette's hand in this case, and that look of endearment on Odette's face was evident.
For now kids hadn't been a topic they'd really gone into great depths on, it seemed just something too distant. But with the smile on her face, Logan was beginning to get a feeling that they'd need to have that conversation soon. And frankly he dreaded it, making the course of things just too concrete. He still hoped in alternative outcomes, a cosmic intervention - something.
It was a waiter that interrupted his train of thought, thankfully, and he exchanged his empty drink glass to a new one, and answered a question concerning his summer plans, shrugging the worrisome thought away.
April 28th, 2022
Logan shoved his phone into his pocket automatically, suddenly having a lot more urgent things to react to. The next moment he lifted the slim laptop bag over his head by its long strap, ensuring he had his hands free.
He recognized the voice in an split second, not all of those memories being good ones. But in this situation, with the woman holding her hand to her chest, clearly hurt, frantically trying to calm a crying baby still strapped into her stroller, the irrational crying, the manipulation from the past was not what resonated with him. There were people around Odette, someone having already called for an ambulance, a driver that had caused the incident, pacing around nervously, and some just watching with concern.
"I can hold the baby for you," some random woman offered.
"No, it's fine," Odette replied to her, defensively, tears running down her cheeks, still in shock. She tried to continue moving the compact stroller back and forth, hoping it'd calm the baby, but it didn't really help. Her sunglasses had fallen to the street, and seemed to be missing a temple.
"Excuse me," Logan moved past the crowd.
There was a moment of quiet, the two really seeing each other.
"Logan!" Odette exclaimed. There could've been a million emotions and memories gushing through her brain right then - anger, betrayal, humiliation - but all that came out of it was a sudden expression of relief.
"You okay?" Logan asked, skipping the pleasantries, as well as apologies he almsot felt like he should be starting with, under the circumstances.
"Um… I don't know. I fell…," Odette began to explain, wiping her tears away. "The car was coming at me and I pushed her out of the way," she continued, gesturing at the child in the stroller, "but I guess I tripped or something…, hit my arm against the curb," she managed, his arrival having calmed her significantly. She was still upset, shaking a little.
Logan then observed the scene in more details and saw that there had been a small rear-end collision with the two cars, which likely had pushed the first car onto the crossing where Odette had been on.
The baby continued to cry, likely having gotten a jolt - a scare, herself - even if she didn't seem to be hurt.
"Can you pick her up?" Odette said, hesitating as she did. Her arm was clearly hurting pretty bad by the way she was holding it, and Logan could imagine it not being terribly easy to hold a baby - around 8 months if he did the math right in his mind.
"Sure, of course," Logan agreed, though he was not feeling very competent either. He unhooked the harness, and made eye contact with the child. The baby girl was dressed in a light pink puffer jacket, and had a pair of gray, super soft leggings and tiny white, adorable looking, pram shoes on, which she probably didn't really need.
Logan was in shock himself - just the idea of running into Odette while he was in London had pained him. That even though he hadn't really had any real evidence that she was even in London still, but clearly she was - she was right in front of him. He'd worried about how it'd go, whether it'd be like poking the hornet's nest, or whether he'd get a drink to his face if he ran into he in some random pub. But here - it felt like the only decent thing to do, and she had asked him. Maybe she had forgiven him? That prospect felt quite unbelievable, but he knew that for someone one had been married to, had known for years and years, one stuck around when the other needed help. And this really was that kind of a situation.
Logan held the baby to his chest, and rubbed her back on instinct. Maybe he did have some paternal instinct in him? He did have some experiences by now with kids - there was Colin's kid, his sisters' and of course Em though he'd never had to actually hold Em like that.
As the baby calmed, Odette did too.
"Fuck… it's beginning to hurt now," Odette hissed, now holding her arm against her chest with her other hand, trying not to move it. The issue seemed to be her forearm.
"The shock's wearing off," Logan commented, bending his knees a little to bounce the baby. Some of the people began to scatter, which was a relief.
Thankfully the next minute, he noticed a couple of paramedics approaching them by foot, having parked the ambulance a little bit further down the road - the road being too blocked to get through properly. A police officer followed them.
Logan continued to hold the baby while the paramedics looked Odette over, pretty soon coming to the conclusion that they'd need to take her in for an x-ray. One of the medics looked over the baby as well, asking Logan who by then looked pretty comfortable with the child, "What's her name?"
"Um..," Logan hesitated. "I don't actually know," he added.
"Miss?" the medic turned to Odette with her question.
"Nélia," Odette replied.
The name didn't ring a bell to Logan, it was not something he'd heard Odette speak about but surely she'd named the kid that for a reason.
"Alright Nelia, let's check you out," the paramedic spoke, speaking to the baby as if she was any patient, and continued to check her pulse and pupils just to make sure she was fine even if she hadn't really gotten more than a scare.
By then the traffic had cleared up a bit, the officer having come in handy resolving things and the ambulance had moved closer.
"Alright, we better get you to the hospital, Miss," the second paramedic instructed, and gestured Odette into the ambulance, having set up the gurney in a sitting position for her.
Logan was just about to hand the baby over to one of the paramedics, assuming that'd be the extent of it, having already figured out how to fold the stroller with his other hand, Honor having had something similar back in the day.
"Could you come with us? I don't like leaving her with strangers," Odette asked, pleadingly. Logan felt sorry for her, it was a difficult situation.
"Um… okay," Logan hesitated, but he knew he couldn't just shrug her off either at that moment. Odette was in pain, scared, not a huge fan of needles, and with a baby in tow, the situation didn't exactly sound convenient. Besides - now that he had seen her - it felt wrong leaving without having cleared the air. Even if those topic seemed to be brushed under the carpet completely for a moment.
It was like suddenly he'd transformed back in time, almost feeling like he'd been placed back in the role of the significant other. It could've well been a situation that could've happened had they still been together, had he accepted to raise this very same baby that he was holding now together with her. Saying it felt odd, was an understatement. But thankfully, he was in action mode, and also mentally in a far better place to start off with, more resilience, and he was nowhere near unraveling if he went along this path.
He sat there silently in the side seat of the ambulance, mostly focusing on the baby in his lap, bouncing his knee occasionally. He was just now really paying attention to how different Odette looked - dressed in a pair of trendy but a lot more relaxed jeans and a pretty nondescript sweatshirt. There were no bright colors, nor the all-white look that she loved to wear during the warmer seasons. Her blonde hair was cut shorter, coming down to just her shoulders.
As they finally got to the hospital, he was just about to let the doctors do their business, when Odette handed him her phone, asking, "Call Laura Friedman, she's her nanny," looking already a little pale, as the shock was wearing off.
For a moment Logan wondered about the task - just for a second he felt like he'd just been given this task by a stranger about whose life he didn't know anything about. What had happened to that guy of hers, the father of the child he was holding? Was there really no-one else to call but the nanny? How much of this was his fault?
The phone unlocked with the same pin code that she'd always had since he'd known her - 2102 - the year when she'd gotten her PhD, backwards. Both her lock screen and background photographs were of the baby he'd been trusted to hold, who now seemed surprisingly content in his arms, observing the bustle around them as he stood out there in the hallway for a minute.
He got a hold of Laura, introducing himself as simply Logan, not wanting to create any confusion by adding the connection his last name surely added to anyone who knew Odette. They didn't need gossip at this point, though he was fairly sure Laura had a non-disclosure agreement along with her position. Unfortunately Laura was out of town, being on her day off, being able to come at the earliest in a few hours, simply because of the distance she needed to cover.
Logan remained calm, assuring her that coming as soon as possible would be good enough and that he'd let her know where Odette was. If the arm was broken, he was pretty sure she'd need a lot of help around with the baby.
Suddenly his nose picked up on a foul smell.
Without talking to the baby - he wasn't quite feeling that familiar with her yet - he sniffed her, wanting to know whether she was the emitter of that stench. She was.
In the basket of the stroller that had been left in his possesion he saw a small pouch, about the size of a toiletry bag, which he assumed was what he needed. And knowing this issue was not something that would resolve itself without his intervention and soon, he went along the hallway to look for a changing room.
He was puzzled by the oddness of this - in part foreshadowing what he might be like a year from now, in part as if he had remained stuck in an alternate universe.
Thankfully, the changing room, clearly labeled and all, wasn't hard to find, just a 100 ft away or so, behind a corner. The room was occupied, unfortunately, and he could feel a brief panic rise in himself as the baby, Nélia, was beginning to look more uncomfortable by the minute. Her face formed a grimace, but she didn't burst into a loud cry, rather a whine. He could only hope that was the extent of it.
"Yeah, I wouldn't like to be in your position either," Logan mumbled to the little girl.
The next minute the door opened, a woman in her twenties emerged, a newborn by the looks of him, in a car seat on her arm.
"Hi. Sorry, I had to change him twice," the brunette woman apologized, speaking to him like a parent would to another parent, as she moved past him.
"It's fine," Logan said, feeling humoured.
As he closed the door behind him, having struggled a little with maneuvering the stroller into the small space that doubled as a handicapped toilet. The space was ascetic, and not the cleanest even though it smelled of disinfectant and chlorine, a few trails of unused toilet paper left on the floor. Doing things one handed, like leaning down to get the toiletry bag from the stroller and opening it up to see whether it held anything to place underneath the baby, like he'd sometimes see Honor have years ago, was surprisingly difficult. He wasn't sure if what he found was quite meant for that purpose - it looked like a thin blanket - but under the circumstances it'd just have to do.
"Hold on now," he chimed, already sensing the girl getting fussier.
He had changed a diaper before, he wasn't completely inexperienced, but he couldn't really claim to have a lot of knowledge on baby girls or this particular brand of diapers. So it took him a few tries to clean her properly and change her, the girl attempting to turn herself around on the changing table several times. What was the most interesting though, was the way this little girl seemed enchanted by him, observing him closely, trusting him and not at all minding that this was the first day that they'd met. While he knew from the paternity test that the girl wasn't his, he felt surprisingly close to her. Like he knew her too. He recognize features in her that he knew - pieces of Odette, and not all of that was bad.
"Now that should be better, right?" Logan asked the little girl, not expecting a response. He chuckled at himself, realizing he was speaking to her. He'd never done that with Honor's kids.
The baby looked content, and he could swear he just saw her smile. Definitely Odette's. It was endearing - he was there face to face with what Odette had wanted the most. He was glad she'd gotten this adorable creature, despite the way she'd done it.
They headed back down the hall, in search for Odette, Logan continuing talking to the baby along te way.
"Excuse me, I'm looking for Odette Aubertin. She was admitted maybe 15-20 minutes ago?" he asked an elderly nurse at the nurse's station, seeing Odette's gurney empty through the open doorway.
"And who's asking?" the nurse inquired.
"Logan Huntzberger, but I'm probably not…," he began to say, assuming he wasn't listed as Odette's emergency contact or anything. "I'm her ex-husband. But I have her child here," he added, nodding towards the child he was holding. Nélia's hands were on his neck and well… beard, finding the rough texture interesting.
The nurse didn't reply straight away, but looked at Odette's files on her computer. Logan was almost expecting some idiotic burecrautic answer that they couldn't reveal any information to him because he wasn't one of their lists.
"Okay," the nurse said as she rose. "She'll be back in a little while, she's just waiting for her x-ray right now, and then they'll probably either put her arm either in a splint or a cast, depending how bad it is. Unless of course she needs surgery. But the doctor will be in later to give you a full overview. But you can wait for her in the waiting room until we know whether she's actually going to need a room or not," she continued, speaking in a thick Welsh accent.
Logan was a little surprised that he'd gotten this much information and it led him to believe Odette must've forgotten to change her emergency contact or just added several names to her list.
"Have you called anyone else? Who is her emergency contact?" Logan asked.
"You are," the nurse replied, smiling knowingly, almost as if knowing something he didn't know.
"Okay, thanks," he replied, frowning a little from confusion. He began to return to the waiting room that he'd passed on his way. "Sorry, one more thing - is there any way I could talk to her like now, because I honestly it's my first time looking after her child and I don't have the faintest idea about her bed times or food preferences, and without knowing how long it's going to be…," he said, trailing off into all kinds of scenarios in his mind.
"I'll try to call, but I can't make any promises. There's a vending machine down the hall if you need anything," she replied.
Logan was left standing there, for the first time feeling like his arm was actually getting tired from holding the girl. "I guess it's just you and me for a while. You okay with that?" he asked the girl. Without a response, obviously, he headed back towards the waiting room.
(TBC)
