BECKHAM

An unfamiliar number calls my cell after lunch on Tuesday. Something feels off today, and going two days without a peep from Eva was too good to be true.

I answer just before it goes to voicemail. “Beckham King.”

“Hi, Beckham, it’s Elizabeth from Smyth Nanny Brokerage.” She speaks with the sweet natured patience of a preschool teacher though I hardly hear her over the cackling and shrieking of a woman in the background and the shrill cries of a newborn.

My heart pounds against my chest. “What’s going on?”

“I was given strict instructions to contact you first, in the case of any non-life threatening emergencies.” An apology resides in her tone, but I wish she’d cut the niceties and get on with it. “Anyway, I think you need to come to Ms. Delgado’s apartment. Immediately if possible.”

“Eva put you up to this?”

“No, no,” she says. I can hear Eva yelling in the background, something in Spanish. “Ms. Delgado hasn’t slept in days. She’s ransacked her cupboards and torn the house upside down. She keeps asking for her pills – the blue ones. And she talks so fast I can hardly understand her. There’s this sort of feverish look in her eyes. She’s shaky. This morning I caught her having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. She kept saying ‘baby’ over and over, but she wasn’t talking about the baby.”

I knew Eva had issues with anxiety and dependencies on men, but I’ve never known her to have clinically psychotic episodes.

“I’m not a mental health professional, Mr. King,” she says, “but I’ve seen this once before with a past client. I think it may be postpartum psychosis. It happens. It’s rare, but this is what it looks like.”

My face pinches. I hate that I have to ask this question. “And you’re positive she’s not faking any of this?”

“I’m positive.” Elizabeth’s voice is louder now and so are the baby’s cries. I can imagine her scooping the baby into her arms, protecting her from a psychotic Eva. I should be there. I should be the one protecting her, even if she’s not mine. “She won’t hold the baby either, sir. She won’t nurse and she refuses to pump. If she’s not pacing in front of the window, she’s checking the peephole over and over. It’s like she’s paranoid or she’s waiting for someone.”

“I’m on my way.” I end the call and dash downstairs, hailing the first cab and booking it to Clinton Street.

* * *

I hear the baby’s cries the second I reach Eva’s floor. Taking long strides toward the end of the hall, I pound on her door. Five stiff strikes.

The door flies open. An older woman with gray hair swept back into a bun bounces the crying baby in her arms.

“Beckham?”

“Yes.” I show myself in. The place is a mess. Pillows are strewn about the living room. Scattered laundry covers the floor. The kitchen is spotless save for a few washed-and-dried baby bottles. I doubt Eva’s eaten much of anything since coming home. “Where is she?”

Elizabeth points toward Eva’s room. I take a deep breath and head back, where I find her face down in her bed, her hair knotted and tangled.

“Eva.” My presence springs her to life. She rolls to her back, her eyes adjusting as she watches me in her doorway. Her lips curl up at the corners.

She scrambles out of bed as best she can, a painful wince smeared across her face. She’s unable to get to me fast enough.

“Slow down,” I say. “You need to take it easy. You’re supposed to be resting, lying down. You had surgery, Eva. Remember?”

She smells of unwashed hair and stale clothes, and her hands frantically grasp for every inch of my body.

Eva’s lips press into my neck over and over. Between kisses she mumbles, “Mi amor, mi amor…”

I glance behind, sensing Elizabeth. Sure enough, she’s watching everything from a careful distance, the baby securely in her arms.

Eva is gone. Mentally. Her lips are moving, nonsensical gibberish filling the room. She speaks a mix of Spanish and English, none of it coherent and all of it flavored in frenzied desperation.

“Elizabeth.” I keep my voice low and calm. “I need you to look up the number for Dr. Evan Brentwood. Call his office. Tell them it’s an emergency. Give them her name. Can you do that?”

She nods, dashing down the hall with the baby in her arm and her phone in her hand.

“Eva, you need help.” I take her by the wrists and carefully lead her to the foot of her bed. She stares up at me, her dark eyes fading. I’m not sure she even sees me anymore. Her spindly body swims in her oversized clothes, preventing her from looking like someone who gave birth days ago.

For a brief moment, my heart sinks when I look at her. I wish she had a better life raft than me. Even if I wanted to be her rock, it would only set her back. She needs help, and she needs to learn to stand on her own without resorting to desperate and illegal manipulative practices.

I stare at the woman who was once dynamite in bed; the one who made me reconsider my non-fuck buddy policy and make a one-time exception.

And then I hear the baby crying again, the wails slightly muffled by the hushed sound of Elizabeth speaking into her phone. The crying stops, and the apartment is quiet for a second. Eva is still as a statue, staring ahead at her dresser and all the half-pulled drawers with clothes dripping over them.

“He’s on his way,” Elizabeth says from the doorway. There’s a tiny bottle in the baby’s mouth, and she’s sucking vigorously, crying out every so often. The nanny offers a timid shrug. “She doesn’t like the formula. She’ll get used to it though.”

“What did she name the baby?” I ask.

Elizabeth shrugs. “She refuses to tell me.”

“She refuses to tell you?”

“She claims her name is just…Baby.”

I push a burst of air through my lips. Knowing Eva, she wrote Baby on the birth certificate as a final act of defiance when the nurses told her I wouldn’t be coming back to sign anything.

Sitting with Eva until Dr. Brentwood arrives feels like an eternity, but I won’t leave her side. I don’t want her hurting herself or anyone else. She’s rocking, and I slip my arm around her to keep her from falling off the bed. I’m the only thing she has right now, or at least until I get a chance to call her friend from Baltimore again.

Thirty minutes later, her doctor shows up. I brace myself for a chiding that never comes. He rushes to her side immediately, asking questions of Elizabeth and finally myself.

“We have to commit her,” he says. “An emergency commitment requires no judicial hearings. I can call the mobile crisis team and have them here within the next hour. She’ll go back to New York General, and we can do a full evaluation there.”

Eva turns to me slowly, her eyes pleading as if she’s grasping what’s going on. She shakes her head, softly at first and then forcefully.

“I don’t want to be away from you. I can’t be away from you, mi amor. They’re going to take me away. Stay with me. I need you. I can’t live without you…” Eva grabs my shirt collar and cries into my chest, her body shuddering with each sob. “Don’t let them take me.”

Elizabeth and Dr. Brentwood exchange looks, but my concern falls with the baby. It’s as if Eva has forgotten all about her. My gut tells me all along, Baby was some kind of gimmick or tool or prop, something Eva could use to get what she wanted, which was ultimately me.

I rise, leaving Eva’s side, and take the baby from Elizabeth, tucking her in my arm like a swaddled football. There’s not a fatherly bone in my body, but out of the four of us here, I’m the best chance she’s got.

Baby is warm, and she nuzzles her face against my chest as if my arms are the most comfortable place in her new little world.

“Where’s she going to go?” I ask Dr. Brentwood. “If Eva is committed, who takes the baby?”

He draws in a sip of a breath, his hands resting calmly in his lap. “Well, Beckham, Child Services will take her into custody if there’s no other legal guardian. Did you sign the birth certificate?”

“Of course not.”

“So she’ll be temporarily placed in a foster home until Eva is able to care for her.”

“How long will that be?”

“We have no way to know that.” He pushes his glasses up, his shoulders falling slightly. He’s annoyed with me for being involved, but I don’t give a fuck.

“Where will she be? Are there foster homes in the city?”

“You won’t know where she’s placed,” he says. “Unless you’re a legal guardian. And even then, you’d have to get special permission to visit.”

I glance down at the tiny little girl sleeping peacefully in my arms. For a second, I see a part of me in her. My heart squeezes. The idea of handing her over physically pains me.

“I’ll take her.” I clear my throat, standing tall. “She can live with me. Eva listed me on the birth certificate. I’m the assumed father.”

“Beckham.” Dr. Brentwood tilts his head, placing his hand in the air to protest.

“I know you’re going to say it’s a bad idea,” I speak before he has a chance. “But I can’t ship her off like some puppy nobody wanted.”

There’s a knock at the door. Elizabeth jumps and scurries down the hall.

“You’ll need to contact a family law attorney,” Dr. Brentwood says. “They’ll have to arrange an emergency custody hearing, and you’ll have to explain to the judge why she’s better off in your care than in foster care.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever I have to do.”

Elizabeth returns with a small team of Crisis Team workers wearing matching white polo shirts with blue hospital logos on them.

“Eva, my name is Monique.” One of the workers takes the spot next to Eva where I sat earlier. “You’re going to come with us, and we’re going to help you get better so you can take care of that little one, all right?”

Monique smiles. Eva’s mouth twists into a panicked frown. She scans the room for me, and the second she stands, Monique and Dr. Brentwood take her by the arms and lead her out the door.

The incessant wailing that ensues wakes sleeping Baby and Elizabeth rushes to my side to assist.

“It’s okay.” I bounce her gently, shushing to try and drown out her mother’s shrieks. “I’ve got you now.”

Baby quiets after a few minutes, and Eva’s screaming has disappeared. I’d look out the window, but I don’t need the image of her being strapped into a stretcher burned into my memory.

“Mr. King?” A woman in a khaki trench coat with bags under her sleepless eyes steps into the room. She wears the grayed look of a woman with a thankless job. “I’m with Child and Family Services.”

The way I see it, I have two options.

Dive headfirst.

Or run.