Knocking on the door, he cast a wide eyed look at me when it sounded like a herd of elephants barreling towards where we were standing.
Reflexively, I took a step back, worried that the door might not withstand the sheer momentum of the tiny feet eating up the distance, but they all stopped in time.
“How many kids do they have in there?” I asked.
“They have one of their own. Plus mine. Possibly some of the other kids that live here. And the brother’s kid stays over a lot too. So there’s really no telling,” he explained, watching as the door knob turned and a messy faced little girl with dirty blonde hair stood naked in all her glory.
“Hello, Harleigh Belle. Where’s your momma?” Luke asked, apparently not surprised by the nakedness.
“She’s cleaning up the kitchen. We had homemade funnel cakes!” Harleigh Belle screeched. “And I licked the egg beaters. Momma says I was lucky that she unplugged them before I got a hold of them. Daddy’s changing his pants because…”
Her tirade was cut off by a small blonde woman with purple highlights that came up behind Harleigh, covering Harleigh’s mouth with her hand.
“Hey, Luke. You’re early,” she said before her eyes turned on me.
Then I watched in fascination as her eyes lit with sudden alertness and intrigue. “Hi, I’m Payton. Who’re you?”
Luke shook his head, but before he could answer, Katerina launched herself from around Payton and hurdled into her father.
“Daddy!” She exclaimed
Luke picked her up and wrapped his large arms around her, smiling softly as Katy wrapped her arms around her father’s neck.
Turning back to Payton, I extended my hand and said, “I’m Reese. It’s nice to meet you, Payton.”
She shook my hand quickly and stepped back, allowing us inside. “Sorry it’s such a mess. We made funnel cakes for breakfast.”
I smiled triumphantly up at Luke, then turned to survey the room.
Amazingly, it didn’t look like a duplex from the inside. It looked like a normal house.
The walls were painted a beige color, and a large deer head hung on the wall next to a family portrait of a man, woman, and tiny infant.
“Oh, wow. She’s tiny!” I exclaimed.
Payton walked over to the picture and smiled fondly. “Yeah, Harleigh was born premature. She weighed in at one pound and fourteen ounces when she was born at twenty six weeks.”
My mouth fell open in surprise. “Holy sh-er…crap. Did you get one of those pictures with her hand through your wedding ring? When I was doing clinicals during nursing school, we had a baby that was born at twenty two weeks gestation, and they took a picture with the mother’s wedding band around her ankle.”
She nodded and walked over to a collage of pictures over the fireplace, one of which contained a picture of a tiny hand clutching her father’s wedding band.
The other showed her in a Route 44 Sonic cup.
“That’s adorable,” I said. “How long was she in the NICU for?”
“Seventy seven days,” I heard said from behind me.
I turned to see a large blonde man with a scar running down the middle of his forehead standing directly behind me, standing next to Luke. He had a large German Shepherd leaning against one leg, and a little girl hanging on the other.
He was a big man, too. Nearly Luke’s size but not quite. Smaller and more compact. About two or three inches shorter than Luke’s height of six foot three.
I wonder if he ever gets called Harry Potter with that wicked looking scar down his forehead. Would he bonk me on the head with his ham hock fist if I said it?
My mouth twitched, and his eyes narrowed. Almost as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.
I pressed my lips together to keep the words from slipping out.
I seriously had no control sometimes.
“Max, this is Reese. Reese, Max,” Luke introduced us.
I walked forward and extended my hand to him. “It’s nice to meet you, Harry.”
Payton burst out laughing, and Max narrowed his eyes at me again.
My hand covered my mouth before he could return the shake. “I’m so sorry!”
Luke chuckled softly. “Reese.”
“Nurse Doherty is a nurse at my school. She shot me in the leg at school two weeks ago,” Katy said proudly.
All eyes turned to me and I blushed. “I didn’t shoot her in the leg, per se. I gave her the epinephrine out of her pen.”
Payton nodded. “I’ve never had to do that in my years as a nurse. Not once. That’s pretty impressive.”
Payton gestured to the couch that was covered in blankets and stuffed animals, and I sat.
“I wouldn’t say I wasn’t freaked out. I’d never done it either, and I’ve been a nurse for six years now,” I expounded.
She nodded. “When Harleigh was a baby they thought she was allergic to cats, but we found out that she had a mild form of asthma after further testing. Scared the crap out of us when the talk of anaphylaxis and EpiPens was brought up.”
“My daughter, Rowen, had an allergic reaction to some antibiotics when she was two. I, being a nurse and all, knew what was going on as soon as it happened. That didn’t make it any easier for me to handle, though. I just knew more of what could possibly go wrong if it got any worse than the large rash that spread all over her body. Luckily, it only gave her hives and stopped there,” I said, leaning back until my head rested against the couch.
I heard the front door close, seeing that the two men, as well as the children, were no longer in the room.
When I looked back, I saw Payton’s eyes positively gleaming with excitement. “So…tell me how y’all met. Is he good in bed?”***“Thank you for the ride,” I said softly, standing on the top step of my front porch.
He shrugged. “It’s the least I could do since you enlightened me to the error of my ways.”
I giggled. Payton and I had walked out nearly an hour after the two men had left, and got an ear full of Luke telling Max how funnel cake wasn’t an ‘adequate breakfast food.’