The second hospital

The hospital at night. Alone in my room, missing my son, I suppose it was inevitable I'd think back to his birth 7 and a half years before just a few rooms away. I remember it was late and everyone had gone home, and I was left alone to hold my baby boy. I remember how perfect it had been, how I snuggled him close in and whispered all the promises I still try to keep, promises born from my own failed childhood. I ached for him as I lay in the semi-dark, trying in vain to find sleep.

I guess the night passed; I remember more blood draws and eating at one point. Trying to watch crummy-reception TV. I'm sure someone talked to me about the status of tests. At some point they must have told me I was staying overnight, so then my hopes turned to release the next day.

In the morning, more tests, more people, more more more. I was wheelchaired at one point down for an MRI ... either of my brain or lungs, I don't remember. I felt so bad for the guy who had to push me, I tried to make up for it with stupid banter. The MRI wasn't as horrifying as it had been for my grandpa, whose terror at the closed space and subsequent flight from the room were the stuff of family legend. I worried about harm to the baby, and was reassured s/he would be OK. I'm thinking that test was something like $9,000, if I'm correctly remembering.

Back upstairs to the room, passing the day, into the night, with food, people, TV, boredom boredom boredom. And utter boredom. And still no clue as to the intensity of the circumstances. I just keep thinking now what a FOOL I was to be so ignorant. But how can one know when it's never happened before? I'm looking for self-forgiveness in this, along with the multitude of other regrets that pile up and demand attention.

I knew that when the doctor came to tell me I'd have to cancel my trip to Disneyland, planned just a week later with my son as a final it's-just-the-two-of-us trip, I smiled and nodded and smugly told my inner self he was full of bullshit. (This doctor will come up later in the tale, so mark him here in your memory.)

This doctor was the first to name what was happening to me: pre-ecclampsia. He explained the details of it, what was happening to me to land me in such a rare condition. My lungs were filling with fluid -- thus the breathing difficulties -- my brain was swelling. My blood pressure was still heading north. And so on. It's a rare condition, affecting about 5 percent of pregnancies, and the only cure would be the eventual delivery of baby and placenta. To stave off that event, I would be confined to bed rest, intensely monitored, medicated. I worried about work, but the doctor told me he'd write a note.

I guess they knew the outcome, though, that bed rest notes wouldn't be needed. Because when evening came, I was given the news that I was to be transferred to a Level 3 hospital -- the most critical of them all. Why? They explained that the hospital only delivered babies at 26 weeks and later, that it wasn't equipped to handle babies born earlier.

I was 25 weeks and two days.

Some inkling began then, because I wept as I explained the situation to my dad and sister. My dad kept kept repeating the words, in the way dads have of repeating words meant to stay quiet: "But a baby can't survive this early. A baby can't survive."