The next few months passed without much incident. Bath was convinced at this point that he had being a baby down to a science. After a few months, however, apparently he was doing something wrong, because Mrs. McLane, whom he learned was named Samantha, brought him to the doctor.
“Ms. Brown, hello,” Samantha said warmly as she entered the doctor’s office. Bath had realized a month or two back that he was allowed to have his eyes open, a welcome development. He looked at the office curiously as Samantha pushed him in via stroller. There were many other humans with children in the room, ranging from all ages. Ms. Brown, the receptionist, recorded Samantha’s information. After a few minutes, during which Samantha sat on a chair and Bath stared at the children playing with blocks in the corner, a person in a strange uniform came into the room and called out Samantha’s full name.
The woman led Bath and Samantha to a small room. There, the woman, whom Bath realized was a nurse, began to ask Samantha questions about him. Bath found this question and answer period to be very informative.
“What are some behavioral abnormalities you've been experiencing?” the nurse prompted after Samantha explained the reason for the visit.
Samantha sighed. “It’s hard to put into words. He’s acting more mature than he should be.”
The nurse frowned. “Explain.”
“He’s too aware,” Samantha stated. “Just look at him now, he’s following our conversation. He’s looking at our lips.” As she said so, Bath lowered his eyes to the stroller.
“And there you go,” Samantha laughed quickly. “As soon as I said that he was looking at us, he looked away. I've been careful to look at him out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I point out that he’s doing something strange, he always fixes his behavior.”
Bath was starting to get a bit nervous. Was he that obvious? Here he had thought he was good at being an infant, but Samantha clearly saw through his guise.
The nurse didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Mrs. McLane, are you sure you're well?”
Samantha flinched. “What? Of course!” she huffed. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe me,” she intoned miserably.
“Well—”
“You can ask my husband. He also agrees with me. He'd be here if he wasn’t away on a business trip. We're just worried about our son.”
“I don’t know how I can help you,” the nurse said. “I'll call in the doctor, though.”
Samantha nodded appreciatively. Bath was careful to only look at their conversation out of the corner of his eye.
The nurse left and after a while, the doctor entered.
“Dr. Green,” Samantha smiled appreciatively.
“Hello Mrs. McLane,” she replied earnestly. “I've heard from Nurse Lin that you're a bit worried about your son.”
Samantha nodded. “He’s adopted, and we don't know anything about his parents or the circumstances of his birth. We're especially worried that there’s something wrong with his development.”
Now Bath realized that he really should have researched child development before becoming a baby. He never imagined he would be scrutinized so closely. Obviously he was causing his surrogates to feel a great deal of worry.
“Nurse Lin described how your son seems to be able to understand and respond to human speech that isn’t clearly directed at him,” Doctor Green stated. “She also described how your son has missed a few developmental milestones. Correct me if I miss one,” Doctor Green said.
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Samantha nodded. Bath cringed internally. He'd clearly failed at being a baby.
“He hasn’t been trying to move around," the doctor noted, "nor has he been babbling. This is the most worrisome signal, in my book.”
Samantha looked absolutely terrified. Bath had never dealt with humans extensively before and hadn’t realized how different they treat their young compared to other animals. He had never seen an animal appear worried just because its young acted a certain way. Other animals only appeared concerned if their young appeared unfit to take care of themselves.
As Bath listened to the conversation, he began to wonder what babbling was.
“Most babies will make nonsensical sounds around the first 1-2 months of age,” the Doctor explained. “He’s 6 months now, correct?”
“Yes, or so the agency that we adopted him from estimates.”
“Well, he appears to be the right size and weight for his age,” the doctor replied as she went over to fetch Bath. Bath looked at her as she grabbed him from the stroller.
Bath was happy to know he had gotten that right. Though that was mostly because he saw other small children that Samantha introduced him to and tried to look the same as them. He thought hard on what he had seen the other children do. Had they ever done anything that seemed stupid, something he'd consciously not done?
In the wilderness, screaming and random noises were clearly detrimental to survival. Bath, in trying to be a good child, had avoided making such useless noises. Perhaps this was a glaring mistake. But how could human babies have such a dangerous natural tendency? Wouldn’t they be killed?
The doctor looked Bath in the eyes as she held him up.
“Well, he’s making eye contact with me, and seems to be studying my face,” she explained. “If I didn’t know better based on what you said about his babbling, I'd say he’s deaf, but obviously that’s not the case if he changes his behavior based on what he overhears.” She Looked Bath straight in the eyes, her face severe. Bath felt a bit of irrational fear. Then she smiled, causing Bath to frown in confusion.
This human wasn’t making any sense.
“Hmm, most babies try to imitate a smile by smiling back,” she muttered. “But he frowned!”
Bath quickly smiled, trying to ease the woman’s apparent exasperation.
“That’s exactly what I was talking about!” Samantha gasped. “He heard you talking about how he was supposed to smile. Then he smiled!”
“You're right,” Doctor Green agreed. “Bath,” she said stoically, “you're one strange little dude.” Bath had no idea how a baby was supposed to respond, so he tried to emulate the doctor’s severe expression. The doctor suddenly smiled and Bath followed suit.
Doctor Green’s head darted to Samantha. ‘Mrs. McLane, I'm not sure what’s wrong with your son, but he isn’t mentally slow, that’s for sure. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a mental problem, mind you. He might be autistic, for instance. But he’s abnormally receptive to speech. At his age, that’s very, very strange.”
Samantha nodded her understanding. “So what should I do?”
“The best thing you can do for him is to teach him some basic sounds. For some reason, vocalizing isn’t coming naturally to him. Also, try to get him to start crawling around. I'm not too concerned yet by his lack of moving around, since he still shouldn’t technically be crawling yet, but if he isn’t crawling in the next few months you should bring him back here for a checkup.”
With that, Samantha drove Bath home.
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“Bath,” Samantha called out while getting baby food out for lunch. “Can you say, ‘mama’?”
Bath hoped he was supposed to be able to say “mama” and that this wasn’t a trick.
“Mama,” he cooed.
Samantha froze. “Thank God,” she sighed. “So you do speak.” She smiled softly at him from across the room.
“Mama!” Bath said again.
“Hehe, his first word is mama,” she grinned devilishly.
“Can you say, ‘dada’?”
“Dada!”
“Can you say ‘mommy give me food’?” she said, this time with a bit of hilarity in her voice. Was that supposed to be difficult? Babbling?
He grinned and proudly repeated the phrase.
Samantha suddenly dropped the food container into the sink and turned around in a rush of air.
“What!?” she yelled. Now she looked afraid.
Ah, Bath thought. So that was the trick. He’d fallen for Samantha’s trap.
“Mama!” he called out again, trying to feign some semblance of innocence.
She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t fool me with that anymore,” she said pointedly. She leaned against the sink, her arms crossed in front of her. Then she asked, “Who on Earth are you?”
Bath thought responding unwise.