Chapter Text
Rose broke up with him at the end of February.
She took him to a nice restaurant after-hours, the kind with yellowy mood lighting and canned piano playing through hidden speakers. They ordered food and he didn’t eat. She touched his hand, squeezing when wetness started to gather in the corners of Shane’s eyes. At least she didn’t lie and say, It’s not you, it’s me, because they both knew it was Shane. The whole ordeal felt like being smothered with a warm pillow.
He suspected she wanted to end things earlier but held off for his sake. Shane himself had never really understood the holiday’s buzz, but if his team watched him get (gently, lovingly) dumped on Valentine’s Day, he would’ve never heard the end of it.
Rose was nice like that. Considerate. She said they should stay friends and Shane agreed to try. So far, they were keeping up with their promise. They texted even after she left for Melbourne. When he didn’t reply for two days, she threatened to call and practice her Aussie accent on him.
Before practice, Hayden asked how he was handling the break up. Shane told him and Hayden winced.
“It’s hard to be friends with exes,” he said. His expression fell somewhere between concern and pity. “Things get complicated real quick.”
Shane sat next to him on the locker room bench, focusing on tightening the laces on his skates evenly. He pulled hard enough the laces strained and stretched. He wondered how much force it would take to break them. Was that something skate lace companies tested for? Did a human have that much strength?
He didn't think about the last text he sent to Rozanov. Come over. We need to talk. The door code is 1919. Delivered, unread.
"We parted on good terms," he said.
Hayden laughed at that. He tapped Shane's arm with his water bottle, leaving a wet spot on his compression shirt. "Relax, man. You sound like you're being interviewed."
=
The playoffs started not long after. Shane tightened up his diet and adjusted his exercise routine. He would drop some weight the further into the bracket they got, he always did, but he didn’t like seeing his body thin out over the course of the playoffs. He had worked hard with his trainer and nutritionist on a plan for this year, though. If he was consistent and disciplined enough he could minimize the changes.
When JJ mentioned that Rozanov didn't fly to Nashville with his team, Shane doubled-texted Lily to ask if everything was okay. He got no response. At their next game against Boston, after the news came out about Rozanov’s father, Shane offered his condolences during warmups. A ref overheard and told him to shut up. Rozanov just nodded in Shane’s general direction, stiff, and skated away from the center line.
Montreal knocked Boston out after six games. When the final buzzer rang, his teammates rushed him. Hayden hit their helmets together, wrapping his arms around Shane. JJ shouted, “That’s it, motherfucker, that’s what I’m fucking talking about!” directly into his ear. They were moving onto the next series.
Rozanov didn’t meet his eye when they shook hands. Still, Shane thought, Now. Now, he’ll find the time to text me back.
His mom said it was Scott Hunter's year, and she was right. Up until Shane—angry at Rozanov for ignoring him and even angrier at himself for fucking things up in the first place—hit the ice with a viciousness he’d never felt before.
Every time he faced off against Hunter in a puck drop he thought about, You’re starting to sound like him, and let his adrenaline spike. Montreal only played four games against New York. Hunter and his so-called hot streak didn’t stand a chance.
Shane’s anger burned up, though.
Pittsburgh had been on a winning spree since they replaced their coach. The matches felt more like a humiliation ritual than a series. Pittsburgh played well. Montreal played badly—no, Shane played badly. His only consolation was that they lost to the Cup champions. Nashville put up a good fight. Shane let himself stew the whole flight back to Montreal, then licked his wounded pride and iced the twinge in his shoulder after landing.
He’d been powering through a quiet summer ever since.
Along with the usual brand deals and travel, Shane had his diet, workouts, and the occasional afternoon with the Pike family. His days were full. He kept busy.
Work out. Practice. Photo shoot. Focus. Run. Drink your morning smoothie. Get the weight back on. Go to a physical therapist and watch them frown when you try to lift your arm straight up. Focus. Hold your wrist in the same position for an hour and don’t rub your makeup off. Don't complain. Be a professional. Don’t check your phone for texts you haven’t gotten. Fucking focus.
In their last call, Hayden called it, “exciting stuff,” in the same tone he used to describe Ruby’s mud pies as, "delicious," so… There was that.
At the beginning of July, Shane flew to New York City for a Rolex brand event. He wore a nice suit and put on cologne and smiled so much it started to feel like wincing. He excused himself to check his face in the washroom mirror, making sure he hadn't spent the last 40 minutes grimacing at everyone. An investor's wife laughed at something he said, though he couldn't remember what, and he sipped on tasteless sparkling water like it didn't make his mouth tingle unpleasantly.
Shane flew back to Quebec with the assurance that he'd upheld his end of the partnership. Affiliation. Whatever nonsense word the Rolex marketing team had decided to label their deal as.
He recovered from the flight home by doing half-hearted yoga and sleeping for nine hours. That set him back into a normal rhythm.
The plan was to stay in Montreal long enough to pack his things and make a trip to Costco, prepping to head to the cottage for two weeks. It was going to be his first actual vacation since Pittsburgh crushed his chances at a third Cup.
Shane wanted to look at the still surface of the lake and feel like he was actually back in his body. The cottage would be so quiet, so easy to navigate. Besides the odd visit with his parents, he would be alone. Plenty of time to review tape, pack on some extra muscle, and come up with a foolproof strategy to get Rozanov back in his life once the season started. (So far, his plan looked like finally accepting that Calvin Klein deal and praying Rozanov saw it often enough he decided to text Shane back. He could improve his tactics with a little bit of vacation concentration, he was sure.)
The whole trip sounded perfect. He craved the silence—the complete silence—when he couldn’t hear cars passing in the night or neighbor's dogs barking at all hours. He wouldn’t have to worry about being photographed when he went to the drugstore for condoms or decided to walk around the block for a bit a fresh air. Isolation was maybe the technical word, but that carried something in it Shane didn’t like. He wasn’t lonely. He just needed two weeks of being alone. Then he could go back to the brand deals and the microphones shoved in front of him and the camera clicks that never seemed to end, even when he closed his eyes against the flashing lights. He could go back to being Shane Hollander.
Two weeks on his own. After that, he could be normal again.
=
All things considered, he was lucky it happened on a Tuesday.
=
A stork stood outside the back entrance of Shane’s apartment.
Shane slowed his running gait, then stopped completely. The shock of a sudden momentum change shot up his already tired legs, straining the muscles in his calves. Sweat soaked his shirt, sticking the fabric to his back. His heart pounded in an effort to catch up. He tried to shake himself out of the zone he’d been in, to kickstart his brain even though it felt like everything was stalling.
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, like that might somehow clear his vision. When his arm dropped, though, nothing about the scene had changed. This wasn’t some elaborate trick of the light.
The stork held a basket handle in its beak, head turned to the side. There was an impatience in posture, the way the it shook out its ruffled wings, shifting. Maybe nervous. Its wing feathers were starkly black, as rich and shiny as if they’d been dipped in ink. The rest of its body was white, bright and soft-looking all over.
Shane honestly didn’t know what to do. He panted, open-mouthed. He’d never seen a stork carrying a basket in person before. There was no reason to assume he ever would.
The stork lowered its head until the basket kissed the ground, gentle as anything. From halfway across the parking lot, Shane could see a butter yellow blanket peeking over the wicker rim.
Almost faster than Shane could register, a somber feeling came and went, a cold touch against his chest.
He frowned at himself. How ridiculous. There was no reason to feel cheated.
Shane took an involuntary step forward.
The stork turned its head, beak swinging wide. Its dark, beady eye met Shane’s with a withering look. Were they supposed to be protective? It made sense, in a dark way. Surely someone over the course of history had stolen a wish baby before. Or, tried to steal.
"Hey," Shane said, holding his hands out. "I know its not mine. I just want to make sure everything's okay."
He didn't know anyone else who lived in the building, but he could bring the basket to the building manager and have her figure it out. He couldn't just leave the baby outside, not in this heat. The July sun was no joke, even this far north. Whoever the basket belonged to might not come outside for hours, and even then, why would they use the back entrance? Shane liked it because no one else came in this way. There was little or no foot traffic, even during busy times of day.
You’re supposed to be smart, Shane thought, more than a little confused. Is this your first day on the job?
If the stork didn’t let him pick up the basket and bring it inside, he was going to have to call someone. Child welfare, probably. In the unusual cases where storks either went to the wrong house or delivered at a bad time, it was a scramble to get the infant to their parents. The story might make the news. Incorrect recipients were treated like local heroes, even though all they usually did was call the authorities and exercise enough humanity to not ignore a baby left on their doorstep. Shane pressed his lips together, trying not to frown. This could turn into such a hassle for both him and the baby’s parents. It would be better—safer, really—to take the basket to the building manager and let them deal with the parent hunt.
He waited a long moment before trying to take another step closer. No sudden movements.
The stork held his gaze without blinking. It shifted onto one leg, pulling the other up close to its body in a graceful balancing act. Its leg was so thin and the knee joint so pronounced it looked disproportionate to the rest of the bird.
Shane hesitated. That didn’t look like a defensive stance, but…
“If I get closer,” he asked, keeping very still, “you won’t try to attack me, will you?”
The stork stayed silent. It kept eyeing Shane, but didn't do anything crazy like fan out its wings or lunge towards him. Shane decided to take that as a good sign, and started towards the entrance again.
He walked with light movements until he stood within an arm's length of the basket. Shane kneeled on the stoop. Slowly, he reached for the rim of the basket. When the stork only watched him with a careful eye, Shane slowly slid the basket closer to himself. The wicker scraped over the concrete and he hoped he wasn't damaging the bottom.
He turned the basket towards him to find the pink, scrunched face of a newborn.
They didn’t exactly look peaceful—the baby’s mouth was pinched in what might’ve been a frown, tiny eyes squeezed shut tight against the world. The blanket swaddled the baby in a way that covered their head, wrapping around the plump curve of their cheek.
Shane felt the same mix of emotions he’d felt with Amber in his arms for the first time. The nervous weight of knowing he held something unbelievably precious and fragile, the odd lightness that filled his chest at Hayden and Jacki’s obvious happiness, the urge to hold his forefinger out so she could grasp onto it with her small, strong hands.
And, underneath it all, a strange sense of worry, because he wasn’t overwhelmed with the fuzzy warmth people always talked about when babies came up. Even his mother, who rarely called things “adorable” would break out that descriptor for kids under three. Shane hadn’t felt ambivalent towards Amber, but he had no urge to coo over her or pinch her cheek. That worried him, even then. He wasn’t sure what he was missing out on. He wasn’t sure how to fix it, if it did in fact need to be fixed.
So he told Hayden and Jacki that Amber was, “Just the cutest,” which was probably true, and that he’d be more than willing to watch her and the other kids if they wanted to go out or have a night to themselves, which was definitely true. That had saved him from spiralling into an hours-long Google hole—he wanted to take care of Amber. He wanted her to be safe and happy and healthy. He was not heartless. He just didn’t know if he had enough heart to be considered normal.
Shane registered all those emotions bubbling back up as he looked down at the baby in the basket. He realized that he didn’t want to just hand the baby over to the building manager and let them handle it. He wanted to make sure that the parents got the delivery they’d been obviously wishing so hard for.
Then, he saw it: The corner of an envelope sticking out from between the folds of the fabric. Shane realized it had to be the baby’s delivery certificate. He perked up. This way he would at least have one of the parent’s names, the who'd it been addressed to. He probably wouldn’t be able to match it to a face he’d passed in the hallway, but it was worth a shot. The building manager would be able to check their name against her records and contact them. Shane could stick around long for the parents to show up. It wouldn’t mess with his schedule that much, anyway.
He reached over and slid the envelope out. The paper felt unusually thick and smooth in his hands. He’d seen his own delivery certificate but never held it; for some reason it had never connected in his mind that the document would feel as important as it did.
When Shane turned the envelope over, the name on the front registered too quickly. Instantly. He’d seen it a thousand times. The font was simple. Professional, sterile. The letters had been printed on, not handwritten or stamped.
Shane Hollander
All the complicated baby feelings swirling in his stomach went cold as ice.
Pointlessly, Shane flipped the envelope back over, as if the other side might have a, Psych! This is for Scott Hunter, right initials, wrong hockey player, scrawled on the back. There was nothing. It was completely blank. The front, however, still had Shane’s name on it.
“Oh my god,” he said. His voice came out louder than he’d wanted. “Holy fuck.”
A scratching, scraping sound broke Shane out of his trance. He watched as the stork dragged its foot against the ground, talons catching in the small uneven bumps of the hot concrete. If that was supposed to be some kind of statement, Shane had missed the first half of it.
The stork tipped its neck down so its beak rested against the downy feathers of its chest. It fluffed its wings, then looked Shane in the eye. Like it was waiting for something.
Always remember to be polite around storks, he could hear his mom saying. He felt the weight of her hand settle on his shoulder, and wondered if he really was hallucinating. After all, they brought you to us.
Shane didn’t hear himself say, “Thank you,” but he must have because the stork lifted its head, gave a full-body shake, and stepped off the doorstep onto the pavement. Shane watched, dumbstruck, as it walked a few paces away then took off, the rapid whoosh of its wings audible in the still morning air.
Even as it moved away, he was mesmerized by the way it flew, the oily sheen of its black wing feathers in the early morning sunlight. The hunched dip of its neck, weighed down by an invisible burden.
The stork disappeared from his sight, swallowed up by buildings.
Shane’s heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out other noises. He barely heard the metal door shutting behind him, or the ding of the elevator as it opened, or the beep of the keypad as he punched in his code. The baby didn’t seem to hear them either.
Dazed, he set the basket on his kitchen counter, trying to be as gentle as he could. After a moment of hesitation, he turned the basket so he could see the baby’s face.
He reached in and took out the envelope again, eyes glued to the writing on the front. The envelope stared back, taunting him. Shane Hollander. Sheryl Howards. Santi Herrera. But—no. No, it didn’t matter how long he stared at the letters, the ink refused to rearrange itself.
Shane pressed a hand to his mouth, forcing himself to breathe through his nose. He couldn’t keep waiting. He just needed to get it over with, like submerging himself in the ice baths the team’s trainers sometimes subjected them to or taking a shot at the bar. Just fucking do it.
Shane slid his thumb under the flap and opened the envelope. The gum didn’t unstick cleanly, instead tearing halfway up the seal flap. The paper inside had weight to it, as thick and expensive-feeling as the envelope. The writing was in cursive, an elegant, flowy script that oozed importance.
This document certifies the delivery of…
The words wobbled dangerously, the letters looping over each other in a way that wouldn’t compute in his brain. It didn’t make any sense. None of this made any sense. He couldn’t read the card, and that was when Shane realized his hands were shaking.
Shane managed to set the paper down without dropping it. He gripped the counter top and leaned his weight against the tile, feeling the world dip around him as he bent his neck. His blood pounded in his skull, loud enough he couldn’t think, could barely open his mouth to suck in desperate, shallow gasps of air. The counter felt cool against his forehead; he lifted his head and dropped it down again with a dull thunk.
“Oh my god,” he heard himself say. His own voice sounded odd, like it was coming from a different room. “Fuck. Oh my god, no. No.”
When he tried to pick the slip of paper up again, it kept falling from his fingers like sand. After a few tries he just smoothed it out onto the countertop so the whole world would stop moving and shifting.
Shane read the paper, then re-read it. The words still didn’t want to stay put. His mind processed them slowly, like he was just waking up. Like he’d just been slammed head-first into the boards. The edges of his vision went watery.
This document certifies the delivery of…
Sofiya Ilyinichna Hollander-Rozanov
ON
July 18, 2017
TO
Shane Hollander & Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov
=
Shane wasn’t sure how long he sat on his kitchen floor, trying to regulate his breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four, wait for four, again. Breathing will pace you. It will keep you from lagging behind.
He gripped his knees but couldn't feel his legs. The baby slept next to him, patient, quiet, basket rim pressed up against his hip because he needed to touch the wicker or somehow it would stop registering to his brain as real.
(Not the baby. His baby. His and Ilya Rozanov’s baby.)
There was no doubt in his mind. Storks made mistakes, but they didn’t make these kinds of mistakes. All natural error flew out the window once you started working with fucking magic. Babies didn’t get the wrong names on their delivery certificates.
(His wish shouldn’t have worked. None of this should be happening. They’d been smart and taken precautions, all the basic safe sex ed he’d learned at fifteen when his mom was cautiously trying to prepare him for things the locker room had shoved in his face years earlier. What the hell happened to ‘Implants Are For Everyone?’ Had Rozanov gotten his removed and not said anything?)
(What else could they have done, never looked at each other in the showers, never met up, never dragged whatever was going on between them out until it got too unstable and snapped?)
Shane tried to push his feet into the floor, straining so hard he heard the hardwood creak.
Fucking focus.
The baby was going to wake up eventually. Soon, probably. Shane didn’t even know how close the nearest protected pond was—the stork could have flown four kilometers or forty. Either way, he knew from helping Jacki with Arthur and then Amber that newborns didn’t sleep for more than a few hours at once. How much time was left on the baby’s little internal clock before it opened its eyes and wanted to eat?
What was the next step in a situation like this? He’d seen those cute videos of partners surprising each other with the news that a stork had brought them the wish baby they’d been hoping so hard for, watched movies where an unexpected baby threw a couple’s life into a blissful, hectic flurry, and heard the story of his own delivery dozens of times.
Shane only realized now, facing down the reality of an infant who would probably wake up and start crying within the next hour, that none of those covered what happened after the stork left, besides a bunch of smiling and happy crying and It doesn’t feel real sentiments.
Stupidly, he wanted to pick her up and hold her, to feel the tiny weight of her in his arms just to be sure she was real—if he weren’t completely sure she’d wake up, he honestly might have.
Shane forced himself to count his breathing again.
He couldn’t panic. The facts of his predicament needed to become his guide. This was much bigger than himself, now. Infant and all.
The pros of his situation: Babies were simple. They wanted to eat, they wanted to be clean, and they wanted to be held. People took care of babies all the time. He could handle a baby on his own, at least until he got things sorted out. The rest of his week was nearly free and Shane Hollander was a competent, dependable adult who knew how to use Google.
The cons of his situation: Shane didn’t have anything baby-related. He didn’t even have a way to get to the store safely, and he was not going to strap the basket into the front seat and drive like that.
His conclusion: He needed to get formula, diapers, and a car seat before Sofiya woke up. That was his top priority right now. Everything else could wait until after he’d made sure the baby would be okay.
Hayden could be at Shane’s apartment in a half hour. Hayden would also demand to know what was going on and why Shane had a baby in his kitchen. Shane couldn’t tell him it was Rozanov’s baby, for a hundred awful reasons, and Hayden certainly wouldn’t take "I don’t know" for an answer. All so Shane could ask Hayden to bring him… What, baby formula they didn’t have? The extra carrier they’d gotten rid of after twins grew up? They definitely had diapers, but none for newborns. Amber was four months old already. Shane didn't know a ton about babies and even he knew multiple months of growth made a lot of difference in size.
Shane forced himself to work through his other ideas. He could walk to the store with the basket, but it would take him the better part of an hour and severely limit what he could buy since he’d have to carry it back. He could try and order what he needed to his building, even though he had no idea how that worked or how fast they could get delivered. He could call his mom and say… Say what?
He had no explanation other than the truth, which was too much to admit right now. This was bigger than himself. He’d be outing Rozanov, too. Putting both of their careers in jeopardy. Possibly endangering Rozanov, if he’d gone back to Russia for the summer.
Not that his mom would leak anything to the press, not intentionally, but… It felt safer—more manageable—to keep the number of people who knew about Sofiya to just one. This way, he had full control. And if things got out, the blame would be completely on him. No one else could mess this up for him.
Shane could figure out taking care of a baby on his own, at least until he found enough bandwidth to flesh out a more robust plan of attack.
He already had the first step on his agenda: Get baby supplies.
=
The first driver he called refused to take him because Sofiya had no car seat, which was fair but frustrating. The second driver he called was willing to look the other way for a tip. Shane didn’t have the time to consider if it was within his morals; he just handed the man a few bills and got in the back seat. He put Sofiya on his lap, still in her basket, still miraculously out like a light.
The driver chatted pleasantly about his coworker’s wish baby. A surprise, a wonderful surprise. Everyone at the office was so happy for her. Shane made noises of interest every minute or so. At least he’d found the wherewithal to throw on a baseball cap and sunglasses before leaving his apartment. The last thing he wanted was for someone to recognize him at the store and take his picture. He’d been seen in public with Hayden and Jacki’s kids often, which only sparked some mild, quickly-dispelled rumors. The tell-tale wicker basket would be a lot harder to explain away.
Rozanov had once called Shane paranoid, which pissed him off but had an undeniable truth to it. Once, while he’d been waiting for a flight with the team, a fan took a picture of his green juice and posted it on her Twitter. It went viral because she’d noticed something Shane hadn’t, a phone number and Call me xoxo scrawled onto the side of his cup. Why people cared, he had no idea. He had a much better idea of why they would care about him walking around with a newborn wish baby.
The store was blessedly quiet. Apparently, not many people shopped on Tuesday mornings. Shane set Sofiya in the cart's basket and made a beeline for the baby aisle.
Formula first. He wished he had enough time to read the labels entirely, but he just skimmed until he found the words he needed: 0-6 months, 0-12 months, pediatrician recommended. He hesitated when he saw the words “Ready-to-Use, Don’t Add Water!” on one brand. He trusted his ability to do basic math under normal circumstances, but he remembered how fog-brained Jacki and Hayden were the first month after Amber’s birth. The thought of mismeasuring formula made his stomach twist.
Shane put two tins of powder, three cans of liquid concentrate, and a case of ready-to-use formula in his cart, fitting them around the basket. Better safe than sorry. Maybe Sofiya would turn out to have a preference.
He grabbed tear-free shampoo, baby sized towels (all of which had little animal-themed hoods on them), a stuffed frog, newborn diapers, and a large box sensitive of skin baby wipes that boasted two dozen packs inside. (Did Sofiya have sensitive skin? He had no idea. Shane did, and on the low chance it was hereditary, he picked the #1 Pediatric Dermatologist Recommended brand. He’d rather not risk it.)
He spent way too long in the clothing aisle. Everything was so small Shane felt like he’d stepped into a dollhouse world. Tiny socks, tiny hats, tiny sleep sacks. He held up a onesie next to Sofiya and realized, only then, that he had no idea how big she was in comparison. The soft yellow blanket hid all but her face. Shane made his best guess and moved on.
Every item he added to his cart both calmed and stressed him. He had a baby sling now, with directions inside on how to tie it, even. But why hadn’t he thought of a bassinet? That was fucking important. She couldn’t just sleep in the basket for the rest of her life. Burp cloths, bibs, and pacifiers were taken care of. He had no idea baby-safe laundry detergent was even a thing, he could've given her a rash or something.
He got a baby monitor, too, even though it felt weirdly final. Shane wasn’t just watching Arthur for a night. Sofiya wouldn’t be getting picked up by Hayden in the morning. An infant had shown up on Shane’s doorstep and no matter how he felt about that, she was here to stay. Storks did not accept returns. All sales final.
After he finally found the right section, Shane picked the most robust-looking baby carrier, one with a base he could strap into his SUV. The seat seemed ridiculously huge for someone so small, but the description said it was for newborns, so he rearranged the cart to fit the box in.
Formula, diapers, carrier.
He had the basics. He could do this.
The cashier was an elderly woman with large, round glasses. She looked at Shane, Sofiya in her unmistakable wicker basket, and the mountain of baby supplies he’d started to pile onto the conveyor belt. She smiled widely, reaching for the first item. “An unexpected blessing, hm?”
Shane forced a return smile and said, “Yes,” because that was the correct answer. He didn’t know if it was a lie or not.
The short beeps of the scanner failed to disturb Sofiya. So did the loud, scratchy printing of the receipt. When he set her basket on the rotating bag holder to reload the cart, the cashier’s cooing and compliments didn’t phase her, either.
By the time she and Shane made it back to his apartment building, he was Googling “wish baby should sleep for how long after stork leaves” with one hand and ripping the plastic off a package of baby bottles with the other.
Wish babies will often sleep for upwards of 6 (six!) hours undisturbed after delivery. This is good! They are coming up from the deepest sleep they’ll ever have. There is no need to wake them unless they approach the 12 hour mark, at which point you can take them out of their basket and gently rock them until they open their eyes. If and only if they remain asleep for longer than 18 hours then it is appropriate to call for non-emergency medical assistance.
Enjoy this stretch of quiet because it will be more than a few weeks before you get another! (After this, your baby may sleep in blocks of anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours.) If unprepared for an infant, use this time to gather supplies and plan. Steps to take may include calling a local organization for a baby box, informing family and friends of the delivery, and requesting emergency parental leave from your employer.
The recommended articles underneath all caught his eye.
To Change or Not to Change: The Dilemma of Altering Your Baby’s Delivery Name
10 Unique Wish Baby Basket Memorabilia Decoration Ideas
Unexpected Delivery? Here Are the 5 Do’s and Don’ts of Newborn Care for Beginners!
Shane clicked on the last title and felt himself go a little sick. At least some of the tips he knew. Support the head, keep their bums dry, ask for help. Talk to them as much as you can. Others he'd never heard before. Lay them on their back to sleep, not their stomach. Don’t give them anything but formula; not juice, not water, not even diluted formula.
He read the whole article, committing it to memory. The last lines caught his eye.
Don’t let the exciting stress of this time throw you off. Make a legal documentation appointment ASAP - the next few months of your life are going to be wonderfully busy. Remember, you’re on Baby’s schedule now!
After a bit more digging around, Shane got satisfactory answers. Yes, there was paperwork he needed to fill out for Sofiya and her actual birth certificate. Another yes, an infant checkup was strongly recommended. Apparently wish babies skipped obstetricians altogether and went straight to pediatricians. Both the doctor’s appointment and the paperwork were supposed to be completed within two weeks of her delivery, which seemed like plenty of time until Shane thought about it for more than five seconds and had to lap around his kitchen counter a few times to calm down.
He felt a headache coming on and quickly drank a glass of water. He took out a pad of sticky notes and wrote down everything he could think of. On a fresh note, he took all the items and ranked them in order of importance. The logic wavered at the end, but he definitely got the big ones in their proper spots. Seeing everything laid out clearly settled his heart rate a bit.
(Fuck. He had to get this under control or his physical therapist was going to take his blood pressure and ask if he was on gear.)
Get baby settled, wash everything
Stick note on fridge with formula directions
Find pediatrician - sun card for Sofiya?
Call about birth certificate, vital records department
Newborn essentials - missed any?
Cancel dinner with Hayden Fri
Wish birth control implants lose efficacy? Timing?
Single parenting resources
Mom and dad
Rozanov?
That last point took up more space in his brain than he wanted to admit. No matter what Shane felt about Rozanov right now, there was no way to deny the fact that there were two names on Sofiya’s delivery certificate. Some way, some how, Rozanov had also asked the universe for a child. Apparently, for whatever reason, he’d asked for one with Shane.
Sofiya shouldn’t have happened for dozens of reasons, but the biggest one was that Rozanov had a wish baby implant. He’d had one from the first time they met in Shane’s hotel room. Shane had skimmed his fingers along the back of his bicep and felt the small bump sitting underneath Rozanov’s skin, which had made Rozanov grin with sharp teeth and say, What, you don’t believe me? It was the whole reason Shane hadn’t gotten one after they started hooking up.
Not that Shane had been thinking about having a child with Rozanov back then. Those ideas hadn’t snaked their way into his mind for months—years, even. But wish baby prevention was just smart. Common sense, like condoms and cough drops. The kind of thing that popped up in sex ed and any of the dozens of articles about bottom prep he’d read after buying his first (and only) dildo. Wish baby implants protected people from their illogical, fuck-dumb minds. Guardrails for the heat of the moment, when "you want things now you don’t want later."
(When Shane begged for things he usually tried to deny ever thinking about.)
That’s what implants were supposed to do, at least.
Something must have changed, though, or there wouldn’t be a newborn in his house right now. The implant had lost efficacy, or Rozanov removed it and didn’t tell him, or… Shane didn’t know. He had no fucking idea. His head spun from how fast the thoughts were flashing through his brain, barely giving him enough time to register what was going on, why he could blink really hard and still see a baby in a basket next to him, how the fuck this could have possibly worked when Shane taken the precautions he’d been told would stop any of this from happening.
Rozanov didn’t want to raise a baby with Shane. Rozanov had barely wanted to keep him around to fuck, and when that proved too much, he’d stopped bothering with even that. Now he wouldn’t respond to Shane’s texts. He hadn’t for months. Shane didn’t need to look at his phone to know what his last messages to Ilya Rozanov were, because he’d stared at them for so long the words were practically burned into the back of his eyelids.
After a game in Montreal, he’d sent:
[21:31] Jane: What's your room number?
[21:43] Jane: Come over. We need to talk. The door code is 1919.
[21:44] Jane sent a location pin📍
When Rozanov didn’t travel with his team to play Nashville, Shane texted him without thinking it through properly.
[08:02] Jane: Are you okay? Call me.
[15:19] Jane: Call me Rozanov.
Over a month had passed between the last two texts. His phone told him they’d been read. Radio silence from Boston. Moscow. Wherever the fuck Rozanov was right now.
Shane took a deep breath in. He had a plan. A list, at least. He could push everything else out of his mind and focus in on what the next task was. He could put one foot in front of the other. He was Shane fucking Hollander. He could take care of this baby.
=
He sat at the table clipping the tags off of the baby clothes, careful not to catch any loose threads with the scissors. The basket faced him, a clear reminder to not make too much noise. Shane couldn’t stop glancing at her. Every few minutes Sofiya’s face scrunched as if she were finally starting to rouse, and then relaxed again. The pinkness of her skin had calmed a bit over the past hour or so, faded into a gentle beige. Shane couldn’t tell if she looked like him or like Rozanov, or like neither of them. If she had his mouth, Rozanov’s nose. People always said that about babies. It was just one of those things he nodded along to, unwilling to ask if anyone actually believed what they were saying.
Shane carried her into the laundry room to start a load with all of her clothes and bibs and birth cloths and towels. Seeing just how much he’d brought home made the tension in his shoulders ease a bit. He had food for her. He had diapers for her. He even had a car seat, now. He and Sofiya could go anywhere they wanted—the store, the hospital, Ottawa. The cottage.
After he started the washer, Shane crossed it off the sticky note. He wrote out the formula to water ratios and stuck it on his fridge, then checked that task off, too. He opened his laptop and looked up Montreal pediatricians. Unsurprisingly, there were a lot.
He’d thought about placing the birth certificate above this just because of legality. Though, really, the pediatrician held more urgency to him. If he let himself think about all the tests and scans and blood work most babies would have already undergone by now, Shane felt his stress levels spiking. If Sofiya went through some avoidable medical emergency because Shane had put off taking her to the pediatrician, he would never forgive himself.
That thought sobered him, and he quickly decided on a doctor and scheduled a checkup. Things moved pretty fast with the receptionist once he told her they were dealing with a wish baby. She even found a spot to ‘squeeze him in’ only a few days out, which was a nice tidbit of information that Shane tucked into the back of his mind, just in case he needed to use it again.
Shane watched Sofiya breathe in her delivery basket. A wisp of her hair had fallen out from underneath her blanket. Short and straight, black like his. He wanted, very suddenly, for her to wake up and look around. Would she have brown eyes, or blue?
Shane shut that thought down as soon as it registered. He’d gotten distracted. Rozanov was last on the list for a reason. He hung his head for a count of five seconds, then got back on track. Shane had things to get done and a certain amount of time to do them. The list was his guide. He would listen to it.
He dialed the Vital Records Department to set up an appointment. The receptionist was friendly, but the moment he mentioned a stork, they quickly transferred his call. Special treatment again. Eyeing Sofiya, Shane paced down the hallway so he could talk at a normal volume and still see her basket.
A cheery voice broke the hold music. “Avian Deliveries, how may I help you?”
This was fine. This was normal. People had babies given to them by storks all the time. He just needed to breathe and say what he’d practiced.
“Hi,” he said, adjusting his voice after it came out too low. “I had a wish baby delivered and I was not expecting her. I’d like to get her set up with a birth certificate and any other necessary documents.”
“Oh, absolutely. Could I get your first and last name?”
Shane's breath hitched. His plan had failed less than thirty seconds into the call. That had to be some kind of record.
The reveal had to happen sooner or later. He supposed sooner had its upsides. If this went south and Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov's Secret Child got leaked to the press, at least he wouldn’t have to break the news to his parents; they would definitely find out before he had the chance to tell them. Moreso, even though this whole ordeal caught him completely off guard, Shane knew he had absolutely no goal to try to hide Sofiya long-term or give her up for adoption. He had made her. Wanted her. He was going to take responsibility for her, too.
“Shane Hollander,” he said, pressing his back into the wall to ground himself.
It was done, now. Out in the open and he couldn’t ever take it back. Life had forced his hand into tipping the first domino. (Was it better or worse that he didn't really have a choice?)
There was no telltale pause on the other end of the line. If the secretary knew who he was, they were doing a fantastic job of not letting it show. “And the baby’s name?”
“Sofiya Hollander,” he said, and spelled it, hoping he wasn’t screwing himself over by giving partial information.
“And the other parent’s name?”
Fuck. Shane squeezed his eyes closed. No matter how professional they were, Shane didn’t want to connect their names like that in anyone’s mind. Maybe Rozanov wouldn’t want to be publicly known as Sofiya’s other parent. Maybe he wouldn’t want to meet her at all.
He bit at the inside of his cheek, hard, and tried to line up his thoughts. “Is that required to make an appointment?”
There was a moment of silence. Then, “No, not at this stage. Just collecting the basics.”
Shane felt his chest loosen. The next breath he took came easier. “Then I’d rather not disclose that information.”
”Completely understandable. Though please know that you will need to provide the names of all parents on the Declaration of Birth, whether or not you both attend the appointment.”
“Understood.” Shane found himself nodding, small, contained bobs of his head like some dumb bird. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem, sir. It looks like I have an open spot… Oh, this Wednesday at three. We could get you in right away.”
Two days. If he wanted to get it over with and go alone, the opportunity was there. He could take Sofiya in, fill out whatever repetitive, basic, frustratingly necessary information Quebec wanted from him, and go. He could decide how to tell Rozanov after.
But even as he tried to rationalize it, Shane knew that wasn’t fair. The birth certificate would finalize her name. It would secure her Canadian citizenship. Hell, what did Shane know? There might be some obscure information he needed from Rozanov and there was no way he'd pick up one of Shane's calls, not after ignoring him for months, so they only real solution would be to have him there in person. Rozanov had wished for this baby, too—Shane didn’t know why and he was pretty fucking pissed that he still hasn’t gotten a text back—but it happened. To what extent Rozanov wanted to be in Sofiya’s life for the next eighteen years, Shane had no idea. But Rozanov deserved to have that choice.
“Do you have another time?" Shane asked.
“Let’s see… Noon, next Thursday, the 27th. Would that work?”
“Yes,” Shane said quickly. “Thank you.”
That gave him over a week. Shane could catch Rozanov up on their magically-delivered baby by then. That was plenty of time. Even if Rozanov didn’t respond to his messages, even if he was angry and felt trapped and didn’t want to take his half of the responsibilities (which Shane technically knew might happen but also, somehow, didn’t sound like Rozanov at all), Shane could do it.
He could sort out their… situation, or whatever it was, before the birth certificate appointment. He had to, and he would. He was Shane Hollander. He could do it.
Shane was six blog posts deep into what new parents actually needed to worry about when Sofiya began to stir.