The Father’s Day Gift

The nurse threw scrubs at the man and yelled, “Put these on and follow us.”  What had been a normal birth seconds ago had suddenly gone wrong. The baby’s heartbeat had dropped, the monitors screamed and the three nurses scrambled like ants on a kicked over hill.  One moment he was about to gain a son, the next he was about to lose everything.

Dammit. Forty-years-old and he couldn’t remember how to put on a pair of pants.  Then suddenly, his hand was ripped from his wife’s. He watched helplessly as his her bed was wheeled away.  It was time for an emergency C-section.

He had never felt so helpless in his life.

After two long minutes, he ran down the hall. He burst through the doors:  “Stay out of the way!” the closest nurse ordered.  What he saw caused him to drop his video camera.  The doctor was standing over his wife and saying,  “C’mon, little guy.” The nurses worked in symphony.  Alarms continued to sound.  Something was causing the baby’s heartbeat to drop to nearly nothing.  Not just any baby. His son.  A son he had never met in person but had talked to every night was struggling to survive.  NOOOOOO!

Time slowed to a crawl.  Voices became muted and more nurses burst through the door. All he could do was pray.

And pray he did.

The baby was half-born — partially down the birth canal and he had to be pulled back out. His heart rate was still erratic.  One of the nurses motioned to him. He walked over and held his wife hand.  “What’s happening?” She said in partial shock. The man looked down and saw his wife’s insides laying on her stomach.  “You sure have guts, honey.”  He joked to keep from screaming.

The baby came out blue.  Another team of nurses worked on him to get him breathing.  The doctor, shaken, patched his wife back up.  The husband still felt completely helpless.  “Dear God, please guide the hands of these wonderful medical professionals.”

A cry, weak but audible, rang through the room.  The baby, looking like an old wrinkled man, thrashed around, trying to come to grips with this cruel new world he’d been thrust into.

The dad squeezed his wife’s hand even harder and looked over at the warmer.  He had just received the greatest Father’s Day gift ever. His little miracle man had lived.