Chapter 9 - The Operating Room
|
At the hospital, doctors separated us at the emergency doors. My father shouted that he was my next of kin. Someone asked for consent. Someone asked about allergies. Someone said “placental trauma.” Someone said “possible abruption.” Someone else said “prep for emergency C-section.”
I remember my father’s face above me one last time before they wheeled me into surgery.
“I love you,” he said.
I tried to answer.
Darkness took the words.
I woke to the sound of humming.
At first, I thought it was my mother. She had hummed when she cooked, when she folded laundry, when she brushed my hair after bad dreams. For a moment, I was sixteen again, feverish and safe in my childhood bedroom. Then I opened my eyes and saw hospital curtains, pale morning light, and my father sitting in a chair beside my bed with a tiny bundle in his arms.
He was humming badly.
That was how I knew he was happy and terrified at the same time.
My throat felt scraped raw. My abdomen ached with deep surgical pain. My body felt emptied, rearranged, and impossibly heavy. I tried to speak, but only air came out.
My father looked up immediately. “Nora.”
The bundle in his arms shifted.
My heart stopped. “Baby?”
He stood carefully and came to my side. Tears filled his eyes before he even answered.
“He is alive.”
The words entered me slowly, then all at once.
“He was born early,” my father said, voice shaking. “They took him straight to neonatal care. He had trouble breathing. But he is fighting. He is strong, Nora. So strong.”
He lowered the baby just enough for me to see his face. My son was impossibly small, wrapped in white hospital blankets, a tiny cap over his head, a tube near his nose. His eyes were closed. His mouth moved in a little searching motion that broke something open in my chest.
I sobbed. It hurt to sob, but I could not stop.
“He looks like Gabriel,” I whispered.
“He does,” my father said. “And like you.”
May you like
“What happened?”
His face changed. “Emergency surgery. Placental abruption from the trauma. You lost a lot of blood. They almost—” He stopped, swallowing hard. “They saved you both.”
