A Fine Mess (17 page)

“Everything being the key word there,” she sighed, jumping to her feet and scooping the boy up. “If you want to check it out, I’ll take you. I don’t trust you as far as I can see you!”

~~~~

“Doggy!”
Sam said, bouncing in her arms as they watched Jack wolf down his breakfast. “Pay doggie!”

“You can play with Jack in a little while,” Annie said, laughing. “He’s not very patient,” she told Ian, who was leaning against the counter watching Sam’s reaction to everything.

“I hope Jack is patient. I think he’s going to need to be to survive this weekend!”

“Oh. Before I forget, I wanted to warn you. You probably did close your bedroom door last night. But if you didn’t lock it, it wouldn’t matter. Jack knows how to turn doorknobs with his nose.”

“Jack can do what?” Ian asked, as though sure he’d heard wrong.

“He can turn doorknobs with his nose.”

She watched as he mulled that information over for a moment and then a look of utter disgust crossed his face.

“Jack had his nose on my doorknob?” he demanded, clearly appalled at the thought.

“I’m afraid he did.”

Ian’s lips thinned as he continued to consider the possibility. And then he turned suddenly and started rummaging around under the sink, coming up shortly with a can of disinfectant spray. Then, ripping a couple of paper towels off the holder on the counter he said,

“I’ll be right back.”

Annie buried her face against the baby’s neck and kept her laughter quiet so that Ian wouldn’t hear.

~~~~

“That was Dad,” Annie said, hanging the phone up. “I need to run over to their house to pick something up and take it to them at the clinic.”

“The clinic?
What’s wrong?” Ian asked, lowering the spoon he held into his bowl of Annie‘s homemade chicken noodle soup.

“Nothing.
Mom goes to the clinic every Saturday for her chemo treatment. It’s just routine stuff, only they forgot something today. Dad doesn’t like to leave her alone so he called me.”

“What in the world do they need to take for that?” he wanted to know, trying to ignore the fact that his mother-in-law was getting the virtual poison that was making her waste away to nothing.

“Just a-sample,” Annie said evasively.

“A sample of what?”

“Ian, you don’t want to know,” she said pointedly.

“Why don’t I want to know?” he insisted, watching as she blushed. And then he knew. “Oh. Never mind. Do you want me to drive you?”

“No. Go ahead and finish your lunch. Doesn’t the football game start shortly anyway?”

“Yeah, but I don’t mind missing the first quarter.”

“I’ll be fine.” She looked at Sam, sitting in his high chair eating finely chopped chicken and soft vegetables. “Do you want to come for a ride, you little squirt?”

“Da-da.”

“I think the answer to that question should be, 'of course, Aunt Annie,'” she teased, ruffling his curls. “Hurry up and eat, Sam.”

“Why don’t you just leave him with me?” Ian surprised himself by making the offer

“I’ll be gone about an hour,” she told him, shaking her head. “Trust
me,
you don’t want to be chasing him that long.”

“It can’t be that hard,” he said patiently. Annie laughed. “Just go. We’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Ian-”

“Go. If you take Sam with you, you’ll have to get him out of the seat at your folk's house, then again at the clinic. You’ll save time leaving him here with me. And I promise. I won’t let him wander off or eat the curtains.” She laughed again.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Positive. Now beat it. We’ll see you in about an hour.”

Chapter 9

Considerably less than an hour later, more like about twenty minutes, Ian was eating his words. Chasing after a baby
was
a lot harder than it looked. The kid wanted to cram everything that wasn’t nailed down in his mouth.

He also discovered that Sam could crawl a whole lot faster than he could toddle and thought he’d found the answer to all of his problems.

Taking the candlesticks, bowl and doily off the coffee
table,
he put blocks and an assortment of other toys across its top and stood him there, beside where he sat on the sofa.

Now he could enjoy the game in relative peace. A quick glance at the kid every now and again showed him playing happily.

“Oh come on!” Ian muttered, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees. One of the Michigan players had missed a pass and the crowd at the stadium groaned along with him.

A couple of tense minutes later, though, they recovered the ball for a touch down and he shot to his feet and cheered.
Then glanced down at Sam to make sure he hadn’t startled him.

Only Sam wasn’t there. He quickly looked around to find that the boy wasn’t in the living room at all, and so he took off at a jog to find him. How far could he have gotten?

“Oh no,” he breathed, when he finally caught up to him. “Annie is going to kill me.”

For Sam was sitting on the kitchen floor, happily eating what was left of Jack’s dog food. Both of his fists were filled to overflowing, as were his bulging cheeks. The insane thought crossed his mind that he looked cute, kind of like a chipmunk, before he fell to his knees shouting,

“No, Sam!”

As he began emptying his hands of the ill-gotten booty, Sam’s big blue eyes filled with tears and his mouth opened in an ear splitting yell, followed immediately by even louder sobs.
At least it enabled Ian to stick a finger in his mouth to remove what hadn’t already fallen out.

Or been swallowed.

He swallowed hard at that thought and wondered if dog food could hurt a baby. Quickly picking the screaming boy up, he carried him to the pantry and, with one hand, tried to wrestle the mostly full, twenty pound bag of kibble up to the counter where he could read any warnings.

About halfway there he heard a loud rip, followed by thousands of chunks of dry food pellets hitting the floor and rolling everywhere.

In frustration he threw the bag down and raced to the counter, the food crunching beneath his feet with every step, and whipped out the phone book out of one of the drawers.

Why was it that a child screaming in his ear seemed to affect his ability to remember where the letter ’H’ might be found, he wondered, as he frantically thumbed through the yellow pages?

It was impossible to hear the many choices the automated voice was offering him over the din Sam was making, so Ian tried pressing the zero. With great relief he heard a real person identify herself as an operator and he demanded to be connected to the emergency room.

“Emergency Room,” another voice said after a brief wait.

“I need to speak to a doctor,” Ian told her.

“I’m sorry but our doctors don’t take telephone calls. If you have an emergency, you need to come in to the-”

“Look, lady! I think the baby has been poisoned! I need to speak with a doctor,” he shouted, further frightening Sam, whose cries increased in volume. Personally Ian thought he’d reached his zenith a couple of minutes ago, but he was wrong.

“Just a moment, sir.
I’ll see if we have a nurse available,”
came
the terse response.

Juggling a tantrum-throwing baby and a telephone required greater skill than Ian possessed. He wanted to throw something when the phone slipped from his grasp.
Or was ripped from his grasp when the little monster flung an arm out and caught the coiled cord.

“I dropped the phone, hang on,” he yelled, just in case someone answered as he fumbled around for the receiver.

But no one was there, just the cheery classical tune that was beginning to annoy him. These people worked in an
emergency room
. He’d think they’d treat
emergencies
with a little more concern!

“Hello? This is the nurse,” a calm voice finally came over the line. “Is this the gentleman with the possible infant poisoning?”

“Yes it is. Sam got into-”

“Sir, I’m afraid you’ll need to call poison control to find out if you need to bring the baby in. If you’ll just write down this number-”

“I don’t have a pen! You’re a nurse! You should know if dog food is poison to babies!”

“
Dog food?
”

“Yes, dog food! He got away from me and was eating the dog's food. My wife isn’t here and I don’t know what to do!”

That couldn’t be laughter he was hearing. He knew it couldn’t be. But it was.

“You first time fathers crack me up!” the nurse told him, trying to contain her mirth. In his opinion, she wasn’t succeeding. “While dog food wouldn’t be my first choice as a snack food for anyone, much less a baby, it certainly won’t hurt him. So you can rest easy. Your baby will be fine. However, if you‘d like to avoid this kind of scare in the future, I would suggest hiding your dog‘s feeding dishes when they‘re not in use.
By the dog anyway.”
With that she wished him good day, laughed all the harder and hung up.

Ian was annoyed. Of course he was relieved that Sam would be okay, but he was still left with the after effects of the disaster. A screaming
baby,
and a mess that spread from wall-to-wall. Jack, he noted, stood in the doorway, tail between his legs and looking like he’d prefer to be anywhere else.

So would Ian.
Especially when Annie got home.
Which would be, he looked at his watch, in less than fifteen minutes.
He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath.

First things first.
He couldn’t even start on the mess until he’d calmed the baby down. The quickest way to do that, he decided, was with a bottle.

~~~~

“Ian, hi, it’s me,” Annie said into her cell phone. “How is everything going?”

“Fine.
Everything is just fine,” he said quickly.

“Sam’s not giving you any trouble?”

“Not a bit. Actually, he fell asleep on the sofa. Are you still at the hospital?”

“No. That’s why I’m calling. I’m stuck between exits. It looks like a semi tipped over about half a mile up the road and I’m trapped here until they can clear a lane.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.
Just impatient.
And worried that Sam might be getting on your nerves.”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “We’re doing just fine, Annie. How long do you think you‘ll be?”

“I have no idea. Two really big wreckers cut across the median a few minutes ago, so it’ll probably be awhile.”