Seventeen years ago...

24 hours, and seventeen years ago, I was lying in a hospital bed.  I was dozing.  The dozing couldn't have been more than a few minutes until I was jolted awake by anxiety.  I lay there wondering what was happening.  I was bewildered.  Nothing like this had ever happened.  It was so unknown.

Eventually I fell into a deeper sleep.

Then I was awoken.  I heard my wife chastising the hospital staff.  She was telling them to let me sleep.  Not to wake me up. She was taking care of me.  

The reality though, was I wasn't the one in need of care.  She was being rolled into her own room by hospital staff after her own surgical procedure.  I was just waiting for her.  She had delivered our daughter after a relatively short but arduous labour.  A labour that was particularly hard on Nancy.  She was bleeding uncontrollably after delivery.  It needed surgical intervention.

I remember the the labour.......we walked down the hall together....I didn't know what else to do, but to crack jokes.....and each time she laughed, she got a sharp pain and nearly fell to the floor in the hall of the hospital....I got many nasty looks....

After delivery.....I crept between the recovery room.....to the nursery....to the recovery room....to the nursery.....Bailey was asleep......Nancy kept bleeding....

After about four hours, Nancy went back into surgery....

I waited in the waiting room......went to the nursery.....back to the recovery room....

Nobody had come.  Though many wanted to.  That night, there was an ice storm.  Travel was impossible.

There we were.  Two kids.....with a new kid....

And there I was....fallen asleep in the bed that was to be my wife's.   She was rolled into her room, I was roused....I got out of the bed, she was placed into her bed, I kissed her, told her I loved her.  She fell asleep.  As did I after I went back to make sure Bailey was as well as she could be....

Seventeen years later.....Her mom would be so proud.....