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There’s a baby in Brian’s apartment. Forgoing the how and the why, that’s all he can focus on. She’s sleeping in her bassinet after he finally got her to sleep – a break from the screaming – and he’s perched on the edge of the couch while scrubbing the day’s stubble and wondering what the hell he’s supposed to do next.
This isn’t just some fever dream. This is reality: she’s his, and the mom hadn’t been ready for motherhood… as if he’s at all ready for fatherhood. Fuck, he’s anything but. There’s a terror within him that he can only liken to the heat of running into a burning building without knowing it what awaits him.
He’s terrified. Most of his knowledge of babies extends to firehouse drop offs – which this is a little like, but he’s responsible for – and Joe and his little ones. He’s never the first to offer to hold an infant, if anything he avoids it. Yeah, he knows to hold its head but he’s always worried his arms will give way to the seven pounds or so and he’ll break it. Them. Her. This is a girl, apparently, and a girl without a name. For the time being, he’s just calling her “Baby Girl” because it’s easy and accurate.
Nearby, there’s a bag sitting on the couch with all of the so-called essentials, and it occurs to him that he’ll have to make a bottle – or, God forbid, change a diaper – when she awakens. For now, he sits in a semi-daze, wondering who he’s supposed to call. His parents? His brother? …Sal?
Sal. He’ll call Sal, or rather send a text, one that just says if he’s free to come by because they should talk about something. The second he hits send he feels shitty, because that ambiguous sort of language sets Sal off, but he’s a mess himself. He should be forgiven. Not for a lot of things, but for this.
Baby Girl starts to stir, and his brows furrow as he goes to see if she’s okay. There’s no screaming, just big doe eyes blinking back at him like he holds all of the secrets in the world (spoiler alert: he knows nothing.) Quickly, though, the blinking gives way to a scrunched up face and Brian does the only thing he knows to do so far: pick her up, and rub her back, making general cooing noises not unlike the pigeons of Staten Island.
He manages to make his way over to the bag and pull out the formula and the bottle and the directions, headed to the small kitchen in the apartment he’s lived in too long. The cats are looking on with utter contempt, and he knows he’s in for a wild night. As scared as he is to convey this situation, he can’t wait for Sal’s arrival.
Like his personal goddamn guardian angel, sure enough, Sal is soon enough letting himself into the apartment with the key he’d been given years ago, bag of snacks and beers in hand, which he almost drops when he sees what’s in front of him. Brian Michael Quinn in the flesh, holding a baby… and not in that weird way he did in season six of the show.
“…I brought beer,” is all he can manage at first. He’s not dumb, but he’s dumbfounded, trying to think of any plausible reason there would be an infant in his friend’s house. “You brought a, um, a baby?”
“Yeah, they were two for one at the market, other one’s in the bedroom,” Brian shoots back but the joke doesn’t land because Baby Girl starts wailing immediately and, oh, he needs to make the bottle. He looks over to Sal for guidance but he shrugs like he’s just as clueless, and Brian keeps bouncing the baby as he goes over to fix the formula.
Somehow, and without Sal’s help, he succeeds and they spend a few minutes figuring out how to actually get the silicon nipple in her mouth. The moment she realizes she’s getting fed, her eyes practically roll back in her head with content sleepiness. Brian sighs in relief, then turns to the other man: “Okay, so I should have been more specific in my text.”
“You think?!”
“I didn’t plan this! I mean, nobody planned this. It - she - a woman I know, knew, she called and she said she couldn’t… so I said I’d… oh, fuck,” Brian’s head is in his hands as the weight of it all sets onto him. This isn’t a TV you return to Costco. He’s made a commitment.
Sal looks like he’s forgotten all bodily functions except blinking excessively. “You’re saying you agreed to take care of a baby? Q, man, you’re - a great guy, but we don’t do babies.”
“I didn’t agree to take care of her.”
“Thank God.”
“I agreed to raise her.”
“…you agreed to raise a child,” Sal says, as much question as statement, though he’s really not sure which he intends it to be. He’s in shock, Brian has never expressed interest in children in the years of their friendship, things had felt awkward enough when Joe told them about Milana and started bringing her to set.
Still holding Baby Girl’s bottle against her mouth while she suckles, Brian shrugs. “I don’t know what the alternative was. Some random ends up with her? Foster care? Nah,” he says, and he looks down at the little girl again. He’s never thought newborns look like anyone, but he sees something in her eyes that makes his heart ache in a good way. Mostly joking, he asks: “How hard can it be?”
Sal looks absolutely lost. He adores Brian, has for years, but the thought of either of them with a baby is nonsensical. He feels faint, like he might fall down, but remains upright. “What’s its - her - name?” It seems the only right question that isn’t ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE?
“The artist currently known as Baby Girl Quinn. Mom didn’t wanna go beyond that,” Brian explains, and instinctively when the baby finishes her bottle he moves to burp her. Satisfied, she curls into her father’s embrace, sleepy-eyed all over again. “I don’t know, I was more fixated on keeping her alive. That’s the scary part. I don’t ever get to sleep again, do I?”
“Maybe microsleep,” Sal offers unhelpfully, really wanting to just give his buddy a beer but now that seems wholly inappropriate. “No, no, you’ll get a rhythm… if this is what you wanna do.”
Brian looks from Sal to Baby Girl, who looks like she’s finally found her soft landing amidst a life of chaos, and all he can say, throat tight, is: “I think it is. I know it is.”
Again, Sal looks lost, but he reaches out to put his hand on his best friend of multiple decades’ shoulder. “Well, you’re not alone. I’m… completely moronic, it’s been studied, but I can do just about anything but diapers and spit ups.”
Brian’s throat gets tighter, then, and tears sting at the corners of his eyes as Baby Girl lets out a dreamy little sigh. With the ending of his engagement, he never thought this would happen. If anything, he pushed the thought away, like it was too good for him. Like no one would ever want to be his kid. “You’d really wanna help out?”
“…with anything but bodily fluids,” Sal clarifies again with a smile. “We need to get a manual or something. Did it – she – Baby Girl Quinn come with a manual?”
“No, uh,” Brian gestures toward the bag he’d looked through earlier, filled with diapers that seem too tiny for anything, bottles, formula, clothes. Directions for formula. And a bunch of helplines. He looks down at the infant again, speaking as much to her as to Sal. “There’s always YouTube.”
Sal laughs, loud and then knowingly soft, conscious of the baby, and gestures toward the Smart TV. “Let’s pull up some tutorials,” he suggests. “You got the bottle thing down, it’s just… the rest of it.”
“You mean everything?”
“Yeah.”
Though they both nearly fall asleep in the process, coven of cats on patrol close by, they actually manage to pick up enough basics for Brian to change her diaper and get her into the ill-placed bassinet in the middle of the living room. Her eyes peep open, but at the sight of Brian, they soften and she’s out again. “I guess I’m sleeping out here, I didn’t think to move the thing…”
“We’ll take turns,” Sal clears up. “I feel full of knowledge right now, so you take first shift while I google everything under the sun.”
Brian doesn’t need to be told twice. He squeezes Baby Girl’s little leg and then curls up on the couch, murmuring almost incoherently: “Ask ChatGPT” before he passes out.
…only to be woken by shrieking what feels like a moment later. For a second, he forgets all about the baby and thinks he’s just passed out on the couch like normal, but a quick memory check informs him otherwise. Sal is rocking the baby from side to side, almost like a natural, while some strange cartoons play on the TV. Brian has to smile at that. This baby is much too young for cartoons.
“Another bottle for the little lady?” He suggests to Sal who spins around and looks guilty. He nods, and they both head into the kitchen, the baby still crying but more of a whimper now.
This time, it’s a slightly reluctant Sal that feeds her the bottle, which she seems to appreciate to no end. Both men sigh in relief, and Brian leans against Sal’s shoulder as they watch odd cartoons while she eats. It’s oddly cozy, or it would be if they weren’t both absolutely exhausted, and there’s relief yet again when they finally get the baby settled back in her bassinet. Again, she’s out like a light, and it’s now that Sal shares the information he’d looked up.
It’s a humbling experience for Brian, who has always had three best friends but never expected this level of loyalty. Over snacks – not beer – they discuss everything from the right kind of baby wipes to keeping her warm in the Staten Island chill outside. This time, a sleepy Sal leans into the other man.
“Have a microsleep,” Brian offers. “They’re delightful.”
Met with a playful glare from Sal, Brian laughs as he watches him grab a pillow and pass out faster than Baby Girl. He could sleep, too, but instead he becomes enamoured with the rise and fall of the infant’s chest, and the soft snoring of his best friend at his side.
More screaming, another feed and a couple diaper changes later and suddenly it’s dawn. Both men can hear the bustle of early morning traffic outside, and it occurs to Brian that he needs to call into work to explain. Seeing him start to panic, Sal reaches for his hand and squeezes it. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Brian repeats it like a mantra: “It’s gonna be okay, I got this.”
“We got this,” Sal corrects, and for a moment it feels like the world stops and they’re allowed to catch their breath. Together.