The Day you were Born...
The day you were born there was fresh fallen snow on the ground. The air was crisp and cold. The sky was bright as the sun peeked through the clouds. I had been up all night with a really bad backache, I wasn't sure what I had done, but I knew I must have pulled some muscles or something. The drive to the doctor wasn't that bad. The roads had been cleared and the day was warm enough that there wasn't any ice left on the roads. Traffic seemed fast that day. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed everyone was in a hurry to get where they were going.
I got to the doctors office. The receptionist had on a teal colored sweat shirt with a big teddy bear on the front of it. It wasn't really a Christmas shirt, just a wintery one. The doctor was already in his lab coat. There were a few paients in the waiting room, but not many. One woman looked like she was about to deliver her baby any day, another just looked bored, I don't know if she was pegnant or not. After talking to the receptionist I walked downstairs to the emergency department. It was so quiet down there it was almost eery. There were no other patients, just the doctors and nurses sitting around quietly talking amongst themselves. The whole place seemed to darker almost as soon as I walked in. It was like a cloud had come right into the building to shade us from the sun and light outside.
The rest is pretty much a blur as doctors and nurses jumped to their feet and started running around. The emergency room got really busy really fast, but no other patients came in. It was just me. I remember seeing the baby scales in the room I was in, and that awful multicolored curtain. The one with the verticle rainbow print that looked so faded it all mulled together as one color. I really don't like that curtain. Those nurses all had on different colored smocks too, the ones with the *fun* prints on them. They are so cluttered with cartoon like pictures that you can't tell what they were orginally supposed to look like.
The room they eventually took Emily to looked a lot like the room I had been in, except there was no baby scales, nothing that suggested a baby would be being taken care of in there. Everything was just white. That plain sterile white. Emily layed on a regular hospital bed, one meant for a patient much older and larger than her. That bed seemed to swallow her up. All the time it seemed to be getting darker and darker in that place. There were tons of lights on, which normally would have all but blinded you and at the same time accentuate the sterility, but they didn't seem to be working on my senses that way. Everything *felt* cold and lonely. All I remember was the darkness, not just from lack of good light, but empty darkness. The kind that invades you soul, your very being. Noone else seemed to notice it. They went on rushing about. Barking orders for this and that. I just didn't understand where the darkness was coming from or what it meant. Then for the breifest of seconds, everything changed. The room seemed to lighten the air seemed to calm, then it was gone, and so was Emily. She lay there on that huge bed, but her spirit had left. I didn't get to see anymore of her after that. They rushed me out of the room. I needed that room, I needed to find that light. If I could only find that light I could bring Emily home. I knew that. I don't know how, but I knew. It was all in the light. That light that came and left in the blink of an eye, she was there, she had to be. My sanity depended on it. As much as I fought, it was to no avail. They waited too long and the light had faded forever. From that day on everything was dark, my mind, my soul, even my physical senses needed the dark. I closed all my curtains and doors allowing no light in, I knew that this time the light meant she was gone forever. I could never have the split second glow that had fled so quickly in that room that day.
Even now a year later I prefer the dark. It matches my moods. I would rather be up all night and sleep all day just to avoid having to see the sun, and I guess to avoid having to live again in a sense. I do go out now, I have to. I have two living daughters here that need the sunshine and fresh air. I often wonder why they don't like the dark as much as I do. I think I crave the dark for it's peacefulness. Not too many creatures move around in the dark. I don't need to use my eyes in a dark roo either, so I can let some of my other senses take over. When I do I feel connected to Emily and Briana. I can *feel* them and *smell* them. As strange as that may seem it's true. They come to me in the darkest hours of the night. When everything is still. They wrap themselves around me and we share the smallest embraces. |
