jay

You heard the crying again. The same as last night. The thin walls of the apartment couldn't hide the cries of a five-month-old at 2 a.m. You sighed and turned over your pillow. Poor thing, you thought.

Until someone knocked - three quick, desperate knocks.

You blinked, put on your robe, and opened the door. There he was. Unkempt, pale, panicked. The child was screaming in his arms.

“Hi—uh, excuse me,” he said quickly, his voice hoarse and slightly accented. “My name is Jay. I know it’s late, and this is… weird. But—” he inhaled, ran a hand over his face, “—I don’t know what to do. My daughter, she—she won’t stop crying. I’ve tried everything. Rocking her, singing to her, feeding her, changing her, holding her—God, I even tried Googling ‘how to calm a baby’ while she screamed into my neck.”

He let out a shaky laugh. It sounded tired. Desperate.

"I think she's okay. But I'm not," he admitted. "I... I think I'm going to screw this up. Can you—can you help me? Just... for a little while?"