So he's elevated. Full of cracks and holes and about to boil over like a pot, is that it? Before today he was normal, better than fine. A little stressed maybe. He'd had a cold last week, which he'd given to Cece but this was nothing in the long run. This whole thing was nothing they couldn't handle.

Okay, so he admits. He stresses easily. He has always been the worrier in the family, even when he still young enough to have his mom take care of his laundry. He worried about making grades in school. He worried about his brothers hiding under his bed and jumping out just as he fell asleep (to be fair, they did do that once). With Pam came a whole new set of worries: the need to provide, take care, to not just buy a house for them but to make it a home, and then to pay the mortgage, and to have enough money to just live, and then Cece came along and now every little cough and sneeze and every sharp corner and every object small enough for her to shove down her throat and big enough to block her windpipe is a Worry. He worries needlessly, he knows. He has to catch himself and try to turn off the switch.

It's a constant refrain from Pam, when she comes into the kitchen to find him leaning over a pile of bills. Babe, stop worrying. We're gonna be fine. I thought we agreed you'd let me do those. And he'd feel her arms slip around his shoulders, and he'd say, “Just taking stock.” The water bill was $30 more this month.

Yet now here he is, on Web MD in the kitchen, with Cece serving up plastic food on the tiled floor at his feet. He's only thirty-five. He's supposed to be in the prime of life, not worrying his nine-months-pregnant wife or watching his sodium intake or whatever. The websites all say the same thing: high blood pressure, often caused by genetics, increased by stress. So he'll run more. He'll meditate or do whatever people do to stay sane. He won't eat salt. This is not going to rock their world, right?

Weak light from the kitchen window skims the floor and falls into Cece's hair. He closes the laptop and watches her, this gorgeous daughter of his completely absorbed in herself, who is banging on a fake hamburger bun with a plastic spoon, chewing on both in equal measure and babbling nonsense syllables in a high-pitched hum. When did she get so big? Her curls the color of darkened straw spiraling almost to her shoulders, like a miniature 'fro, looking more and more like Pam's every day. Her chubby red-toned cheeks losing a little more baby fat every day. He's going to miss the perfect way she fits into the space between his chest and shoulder.

“Cee,” he says, and she looks up from her hamburger, spoon in her mouth. “Come here, cutie. Wanna help Daddy make dinner?”

She gives him the most tiny, perfect grin and wiggles herself around on the floor and he feels such a surge of unalloyed love. Jim stands and scoops her up. The girl's got snot from both nostrils all the way to her lips.

“Cece, you're a faucet. Let's clean you up, shall we?”

He sets her on the kitchen counter and wipes her nose while she blows raspberries with her mouth. Her eyes look heavy, a bit glazed. She was home from daycare yesterday with a fever and a cough that kept the dehumidifier humming last night. Jim feels her forehead and she grabs onto his arm and sniffles.

“Mama?”

She's only one and a half and their kid is already a genius, spewing out words.

“Mommy's asleep. Let's just have a little party, you and me. How about mac and cheese tonight?”

Jim goes to the fridge with the weight of his daughter slung on one hip. He pulls out a tupperware container of leftovers and feels Cece's chest cave as she coughs heavily against him.

“Mama,” she says again, in a voice he can tell is getting hoarse.

He runs a hand through her hair. “I know, honey. Mommy will be up soon.”

They'd come home from work and Pam was on the phone with the doctor while he tried not to roll his eyes. He wanted her to relax. She cradled the phone for fifteen minutes, wrote all sorts of scribbles on a piece of paper, ate two chocolate Pudding Snacks and then promptly passed out. Her due date is only three weeks away.

Jim thinks about waking her up but it's already six. Instead he puts pears in a bowl for Cece and divides the macaroni between them, eating lukewarm pasta and peas with a squirmy toddler fighting against the cough he's worried about. Another damn Worry.

The sun drags itself below the world and the November cold has him closing all the windows. Dishes done and dripping in the rack, laundry started, he slips on an old college sweatshirt and steers clear of the den, where he knows she's still napping. Cece is getting antsy and begins to whine.

“Daddeeeeee,” she squeals. “I want Mama!”

“Shh, baby. How about a bath?”

“No bath. Mommmmyyyyy!”

If he didn't have hypertension before, this kid is going to give it to him. He carries her squealing out of the kitchen, where four sneezes in succession interrupt the tantrum.

“Cece,” he says, folding her to him as they reach the stairs. “We need to be quiet, please.”

“It's okay, I'm up.”

He turns to see her yawning on the couch, one arm curved around the tub of her belly. Cece holds her arms out as they cross the carpet to Pam.

“Hi, my beautiful girl,” she says.

“You want her?”

“Yeah, I do. Remember, Cece, you have to be careful if you sit on Mommy's lap, right? You remember what's coming?”

“Baby,” Cee says on cue. She picked up the word but they suspect she has no idea what it means.

“What time is it? You should have woken me up.”

“Like seven thirty. I figured you needed the sleep. We were just about to go up for a bath.”

“Nooooooo,” Cece says, shutting her eyes so her long lashes stick out straight. “No bath, Daddy!”

“How is she?” Pam slips a hand across her forehead.

“Still sick. I say we load her with codine and all get a full night's sleep.”

“Thinking about it. Not all of us had a nap.”

“And not all of us are nine months pregnant.”

Cece folds in half with another string of coughs and Pam makes an attempt to pull her closer, but Mr. Bear is spotted near the TV and their toddler scrambles off to her beloved stuffed animal.

“My poor girl. You should be a-s-l-e-e-p.” She turns to him, cheek etched with sleep creases and pats his back. “I think we all should. Did you eat?”

“Leftovers.”

“Well, I am completely starving. What do you say we put this monkey in her cage and have a cereal party?”

“I'm down.” He loves his wife all the time, even when she's jealous, even when she drags him on completely insane drugstore missions, but especially in dim light when she's loopy with half-sleep and so pregnant she glows through every pore. He doesn't care how big she gets, how much she complains about the stretchmarks on her ankles. Knocked-up Pam is one of his favorite Pams of all time. Especially when the kid inside her is his.

So he takes their daughter up to the tub, where they make bubble mountains and hum nonsense with strawberry scented sting-free shampoo. He puts her in footie pajamas and tries to show her again how to blow her nose; she thinks its a game, laughing until the horrible cough racks her tiny body and he feels guilty all over again. They read Goodnight Moon and she's out much faster than usual. He switches on the dehumidifier, leaves a locked bottle of cough syrup on the night stand and half-closes the door to the pink glow of nightlight and the jungle of stuffed animals obstructing the crib.

Pam's at the table with Cheerios and Lucky Charms. He kisses the top of her head and sits across from her, sighing.

“Yeah, I'll call tomorrow. So...I've been thinking. Sorry I was crazy today.”

“You weren't crazy.”

“Jim. I'm pregnant, not stupid. You don't have to lie just because I have heightened emotions.”

“Ah. You might have been...overreacting...a tiny bit.”

“She IS hot though.”

He sighs and arches an eyebrow at his wife, whose mouth is full of rainbows and red balloons in marshmallow form. Yes, okay, yes, he wants to say. She is hot. There are plenty of hot women in the world. Hell, he admitted to liking Helen Mirren. But he could care less about them all, because there is no one better than his wife with her full mouth and quirky smile when she knows he's annoyed and messy bed hair and that damn beautiful overflowing belly.

“Bees. She might be hot, but you are one hundred million times hotter. Can we please just drop it?”

“Enjoying our second kid? Pam,” he stops and smiles. “Your feelings are completely okay. But I promise, there's nothing to worry about. I mean...”

She takes a bite of cereal. “I know. I'm being ridiculous. Oof.”

He watches her stand to arch her back like a cat, go to the cupboard for the multivitamins. She's in the swelling stage, the achey stage, the part where he's supposed to offer massages and hot baths and three-fourths of the bed.

“Anyway,” she says. “It doesn't matter. I just want you to be fine. I'm worried.”

“About this whole hypertension thing?”

She sets down the multivitamin bottle with more force than necessary. “Jim. It's not just some 'thing.' I'm not kidding, it's something you really need to watch.”

“Okay, so we'll make two appointments and I'll figure out what to do. Isn't that why you were on the phone when we got home? I mean, Pam, it's good that I'm aware of it but I just don't want it to uproot our lives so much, you know? I'm still the same. It's not like I'm going to just drop dead at any moment.”

Damn. He knows he's said the wrong thing to the pregnant woman as soon as it's out of it his mouth. Immediately her eyes are swelling with tears.

“Y-y-yeah...but you c-could,” she says and her face begins to crumple.

“Pam, I shouldn't have said that,” he says. “It's fine. Really. Hey.”

He takes her hand across the table. “I'll be around until we both can't hear each other. Right? I promise.”

“Damn it, Jim, you know I'm pregnant,” she says and begins to laugh. “It's just something I'm going to have to adjust to. If it were me, you'd be worried out of your mind.”

“True. I do have a disease caused by stress.”

She wipes her eyes. “Oh, no, I think we're out of Cheerios. What are we going to do until tomorrow when we can go to the grocery store?!”

He gives her a Look.

“You're way too tense,” she says, and comes to stand behind his shoulders. He can feel her blouse-covered belly brushing against his arm. “Want me to help you relax?”

He looks up at her with a jolt. “Do you actually want to?”

“Not, sex, Jim, obviously,” she snorts. “How about a bath?”

“This is only because you want one.”

“Possibly. Carrying your child is a little rough on the joints.”

Before they make it to the bathroom, there's a coughing child and a stubbed toe in the dark and no bubble bath left in the house. As he carries his daughter back to her bed, he knows there's always going to be a thousand things to worry about. Life will never go according to plan. Your wife could be overly jealous. The shower might need to be run to loosen your daughter's throat. He'll try to cut back.

But at least, he thinks, as he enters the bedroom and finds Pam in her reading glasses and satin nightgown, he has people worth worrying about.