Surreal, it was absolutely surreal. Looking back, I see only flashes; fleeting moments that I cannot completely comprehend, much less fully recall.
Arriving at St. Mary’s Hospital before six a.m. with only decaf coffee and Pop Tarts in my body is not the best way start the day. Though we don’t talk about it, both Karen and I are rather nervous about the pending ordeal. I pull our Maxima around the circle toward the main entrance. “Thanks, this is nice,” she says.
Feeling like a sixteen-year-old driver on his first date, I try to explain, “What do you expect? It’s the least I can do. You are having the baby, after all.”
After parking the car, I meet her in the vast, polished lobby of the hospital. She had found a seat between two older folks who look as if they had spent the night in the comfy leather chairs. As we make our way toward the elevators, the couple wishes us well. “Good luck,” they sing in unison.
When we get to the third floor we are greeted by a friendly-face, “Karen Byrd?” she asks, glancing at the printer orders she holds in her right hand, as her left hand absentmindedly punches the stainless steel square on the wall above the desk, opening the door to admit us into the ward.
“Ah, they’re expecting us! Imagine that.” I mutter in a failed attempt at humor. It is too early for such a sad grasp for laughs – not even friendly-face laughs.
The double fire doors to the left slowly began to open, granting us entrance into the protected corridors beyond. As we round the wood and glass enclosed nursing station, the friendly-faced nurse meets us. She leads us down a short hallway. “That,” she gestures and explains as we passed glowing, clouded glass doors on our right, “is the surgery center, just a short walk from your room.”
As we arrive at room 3122 another smiling, friendly-face joins us – this one seems only twelve years old – maybe. Karen sits on the bed. I wander around the room. It does not take me long to spy my abode for the next few nights – a bed, not so cleverly designed to impersonate a sofa. Though it is folded like a luxurious futon, experience tells me not to expect anything near comfort. I spy a 21-inch flat panel TV tucked into a nook near my “bed”. I almost grow excited – maybe I will be able to catch some Olympic coverage in HD!
While the friendly-faced smiling nurses instruct Karen about what to put on and where to wait, I find a place to sit. I manage to catch a few words of the conversation, enough to figure out that this will be our room until we check out three or four days from now. “Sweet!” I thought, “Nice room.”
Flash – the doors open and I walk into the icy air and head out to unload the car. I figure there is no sense just sitting around, letting my anxiety take control (and maybe be noticed by someone else, I am an ego-centric man, you know).
As I exit the soaring atrium back through the main entrance, I see a lone figure bobbing towards me in the darkness between streetlights. A voice breaks the chill, “Hey Nathan.”
I am taken aback, not expecting anyone to meet us this early. I know Karen’s folks will be heading up just before 8:00 after seeing our two older (and adopted) kids safely onto the school bus. I attempt to scan my mental database of voices, body types, and folks who know our schedule, but my decaffeinated mind draws a blank. I recognize the voice, but no face comes to mind. “Dang decaf!” wanders across my mind like a scrolling marquee on a bank sign.
Then, out of the darkness a light dawns, Karol!
Karol, my wife’s best friend that we hardly ever get to see now that we have left metro Atlanta
Flash – Doctor Elder comes in… exchanges quips with Karen. He says something that I think I need to remember…, I have no idea what it is, nor how long he stays….the rotund anesthesiologist with the game show announcer’s voice seems to float into the room. I think we all laugh at something. Though I have pictures of me clad in scrubs, standing beside Karen as she lay in the bed in the room, I have no remembrance of getting dressed or posing! All too soon Karen is walking out with the friendly-faced nurses with me I trailing behind. I remember sitting on the lone bench, the surgery bullpen, outside of those milky white, glowing glass doors. Karen’s parents and Karol take pictures of the new dad-to-be all decked out in green from head to toe and make a few quips to ease my nerves. It doesn't work. I manage a weak smile beneath the surgical mask.
I don’t know how long I wait – seems like an eternity passes in a second or two. Lots of folks come and go through those milky white, glowing glass doors. It seems like time is moving in triple time, like a fast forwarded a video tape – caps, masks and booties fly out of the wardrobe adjacent to my bench. Nurses and aids talk in high-pitched gibberish as they ready for surgery. Friendly-faces are covered with green cloth, leaving only smiling-eyes peeking through.
The milky white, glowing glass parts again revealing an icy-cold brightness into which I am drawn by a beckoning, now scrub-clad, friendly-faced nurse.
Flash – I am sitting on a cold stool in a freezing room whispering into Karen’s ear, kissing her hair, as she shivers and her teeth chatter. she is ensconced in green drapes, wires, needles, and tubes. We are behind a drape with the anesthesiologist and all his devices of pain-retarding torture. On the other side is a flurry of activity. Bright lights shimmer between the threads of green, 80’s rock dances and echoes from wall to wall as the cadre of scrub-clad attendants prepares for their debuts in the grand performance that had just begun. “Here we go” the doctor’s voice floated through the fabric.
Karen shudders. I hold her ice-cold hands. “I’m freezing! She explains, “They tried to warm me up with all these blankets,” indicating the piles of oddly placed coverings on her splayed arms.
Before I had only seen her head, but now I notice that she is lying cruciform – her arms stretched wide from her body on extensions of the table on which she lay. I suppose I thought all of the fabric was a part of the elaborate drape system that had been erected to keep her from seeing the action around the lower half of her torso.
“Make sure you do everything you need to do before you close me up!” Karen reiterates to the unseen doctor several times throughout the procedure. She didn't want to risk another “miracle baby.”
“It would take divine intervention for you to get pregnant after this,” he counters.
Karen shoots back, “that’s what this one was. You better do better than that.”
“Make it God-proof?” he queries, amusement in his voice. The whole team chuckles in unison.
Months earlier, in response to an inquiry for a tubal ligation during the requested c-section, Dr. Elder cautioned, “You know these things are not 100% guarantees. A very small percentage of women get pregnant after such procedures.”
Karen, always ready with sarcasm, responds, “Oh, you better make sure it’s 100%! Do whatever you have to do. Take stuff out, I don’t care! I don’t plan to use any of it ever again.”
It is not long before the anesthesiologist encourages, “Dad, you may want to stand up. Something exciting is about to happen.”
It is only then that I leave my bride’s head to look over the wall of green. The lights are so bright it takes a few minutes to adjust to what I am seeing. It is surreal. Her abdomen has been covered with yellow-brown Betadine, followed by a clear film, and then surrounded by more green fabric. Just as realization dawns, bloody water gushes across the film, then the fabric. Doctor Elder’s gloved hands are buried in Karen’s tummy and his assistant tugs on a large stainless steal bar hooked around what looks like yellow rubber. At some point, I realize this is Karen’s incision. Doc is widening the opening for his searching figures. I can not believe how much effort is given by the attendant as she pulls, and the doctor, as he finally finds what he is seeking and then stains to pull a white mass out of the opening. At first, I don't realize what he is holding. Confused, I think that there must be some wad of fat or covering that he had to remove; and then I see it – tiny hips and buttocks slowly wriggling out of Karen’s womb – then legs, and feet, and a back. One expert hand gently reaches in again, searching, finding, and then twisting and supporting a tiny head, guiding it cleanly into the blinding lights. I am shocked by how ghastly white the tiny body is. My pulse quickens. Time freezes. I fear something is wrong. Then I hear it, a cry; even before her mouth emerges, I hear the beautiful sound of my baby's clear, soft cry.
Flash – In relief I drop back onto the stool, my face returning to my wife’s. Tears blind my eyes. I choke out a whisper, “You do good work! She’s perfectly beautiful.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I repeat until, around the corner of the curtain, the doctor holds up our blood and goop covered daughter for Karen to see for the first time. I nudge her to look. Once her head is turned, she says in drug muted monotone, “I only like them once they have been cleaned up.” She turns back to me and the amused doctor passes our daughter to the next team. Friendly-faced nurses immediately get to work cleaning, prodding, warming, suctioning, and drying the tiny writhing, crying, infant girl.
There is a moment when all seems to stop, a moment frozen in time where all sound is muted, all movement ceases, and my eyes lock into the glassy stare of Karen’s deep brown gaze. My fear is gone, her shivering calms, and we are one again, lost in the wonder of life.
The anesthesiologists voice breaks our gaze, starting the sound and action in the room again; “Dad, you can take some pictures.”
I think I snap a few shots and ask a few silly questions of the scrubbed friendly-faces feverishly working around the odd wheeled table that held our pink, screaming child.
Flash – I am handed our tiny swaddled daughter, she is so light! I bend to introduce her to my bride; Here’s Karlie.” We both choke with emotion, my eyes again filling with tears.
One set of smiling-eyes gently tears me away from my wife’s side to carry the tiny bundle to the next room. I obediently follow, tear-filled eyes locked onto the minuscule features on the round face peaking through the blankets. “I know that face,” I think. My wife’s complexion, cleft chin, dark hair, and upper lip are molded there in miniature.
As we enter the nursery, I look through the large windows in the distance. Karen’s dad and Karol see me and rush to the glass to view the bundle in my arms. Karen’s mom comes into view, cell phone pressed against her ear, already announcing the birth.
Flash – fast-forward, events blur in my memory as they pass – tears, laughter, and joy as Karlie is measured, prodded, twisted, and examined some more. The nurse is incredible and lots of fun; not just another friendly-face, but also a comforting mom who has done this many times before.
A wall phone connects me to the folks outside of the nursery allowing me to pass along vital information – weight, length, time of birth, hair color, as well as Karen's condition.
Flash – Doctor Elder suddenly appears, expertly assuring me that all went well – twenty more minutes and I can go see my bride.
More measuring, poking, bathing, crying, and snapping of pictures before I am able to hold my tiny girl again. As I bend over her, my fingers remembering, gently applying her first diaper and calming her cries with soft caresses on the back of her head and across her tiny, slender fingers.
Flash – a realization – we made this life together. She is a part of Karen and me. And we are a part of her. We do good work. Together.
Flash – a tidal wave of emotion – I miss my dad. He would love this moment. Then a realization – he is watching. And smiling – his blessing surrounds us, breathing in Karlie. I can imagine this bitty girl, cradled against his soft tummy – we used to call it our pillow – safe in his experienced, loving Papa-arms.
Flash – back in room 3122, returning once again to my wife’s side. A few tears trail unnoticed down my check as I look at her with a sudden depth of love I have not known in our 20 years of marriage. She is cold, freezing cold. Piled with six inches of white blankets, Karen shivers beneath the covers though the heat in the room is dialed to 85°.
The room quickly fills with excited family, friends, and many bustling friendly-faces. I retrieve our daughter from the nursery in a rolling bassinette. Everyone ogles and “coos”…it is surreal – she is finally here.
Flash – I am back. It’s 2:00 a.m., the second day –memories flash through my fingers onto the laptop screen, casting preternatural light throughout the dark room. Karen silently sleeps beside me in her hospital bed. It is finished. We are done. Yet we are beginning anew.
As the memories continue to flash, I am blown away. Love is amazing – it engulfs me, and I swim deep within it’s waves. Sobs rack my body as I remember – surreal experiences of the past few years – my father’s death, beginning a PhD program at UGA, the shock of an unplanned miracle pregnancy, a roller-coaster ride of my wife’s emotions, the joy brought by our two now eight year-olds at home, and now Karlie Nicole.
She is incomprehensible. She is grace embodied. And I am in love again with another perfect little girl.
And most amazing of all – it is real.
1 comment:
Sometimes you make me weep - this time with joy & amazement!
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