First read Part I of “The Formula” here.
I awoke in the hospital to see my pretty wife, Ellie, standing at the end of my bed. She was holding our two babies, and she had look on her face that was a mix of concern and annoyance. “Baby, what happened? You have three broken ribs, a bruised lung and a sprained wrist.”
“Oh, wow,” I said. I was in horrendous pain, but I was more concerned about what would result if she found out that I’d committed a felony-level heist.
“Don’t get too comfy,” she said. “Our insurance only gets us this room for another twenty minutes. I thought you were going to the store for some formula.”
“Uh, yeah. I was. I just got a little sidetracked.”
“By doing somersaults across the 405 highway, with your car nowhere in sight, and nothing in your pockets but Jack’s Buzz Lightyear juice cup.”
The cup was on the table next to my hospital bed. I cracked a smile and handed it to my two-year-old son. He shook it. “It’s empty, daddy. I want juice. I want baba.”
“The kids both need their bottles, David.”
I pulled myself from bed and looked around for my shoes. “Are we all out?”
“There’s a formula can in the cabinet, but it’s filled with Coffee Mate.”
“It was free at the donut shop. I thought I could buy us a few days. What am I supposed to do? Each can of formula costs a fortune and the kids go through it in like three seconds.”
My wife smiled, but her gaze revealed her disappointment. “You’re supposed to provide for your family. That means getting real baby formula for your kids. The stuff with 48 vitamins and supplements that are essential for their mental and physical growth—that’s what they need to have, one way or another.”
She turned and went with the babies toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re going home,” she said, “for a delicious lunch of Coffee Mate. And water. We’ll see you when you’ve managed to fulfill your responsibilities as a father.”
I hobbled alone across the hospital parking lot. That lowlife backstabber, Tall Bill, cut me out my share of three tons of baby formula, and he tried to kill me on top of it. I wasn’t just going to drop him from my friends on Life of Dad. I was going to do a whole lot more than that. I‘d seen enough mafia movies to know that something serious had to be done.
A black SUV limousine with tinted windows circled through the crowded parking lot. It roared along a row of cars and stopped in front of me. The doors opened, and three enormous guys in polo shirts and sunglasses stepped out.
I knew I had a fight on my hands. “Nice shirts, fellas,” I said. “They running some kind of sale at Old Navy?”
One of the goons swung at me, and I dodged it clear. I moved back with my fists up. If these guys had been hired to kill me, they were going to have to earn their pay.