A young nurse quietly shut the door behind her. "Sir?"
The man was haggard, rumpled and unshaven. He raised his head anxiously. "How is she?"
The nurse took a deep breath. Even after so many years, it was still so hard to say words like these, to break bad news.
"Sir, your wife is fine. She’s resting right now. But your baby was premature, and he wasn’t fully developed yet. We’ve had to put him in an incubator. In a minute, I’ll be able to take you to see him, but first I’ll let you go see your wife." She turned and held the door open.
Slowly, the man crept through. The hospital room was crisply clean, but that did not comfort him. He could feel the cold efficiency behind the warm exterior.
"Honey?" A small woman lay, pale against her halo of auburn hair, on the high bed. At his voice, her eyes opened.
"Is he going to live?" she implored.
He paused.
"Tell me the truth."
He sighed. "They don’t know. The nurse said they put him in an incubator. Listen honey, I know I’d feel more comfortable if I could see him. Would you mind…"
She nodded almost imperceptibly. There was no need to finish his sentence. They knew each other too well.
"This here is the nursery, sir. This is where we keep the healthy babies…" The nurse gestured at one side of the room, where various little figures wriggled fitfully. "And here’s where we keep the ones we’re not sure about, so we can keep a constant eye on them."
The man nodded. He leaned over the little incubator marked with his name, and ran his eye over the little scrap of flesh and bone that lay within.
Suddenly he felt a flash of anger. Why did those babies have to be born so healthily? What was so wrong with his son?
His son.
He saw him clearly now. A tiny life, just starting on the road he himself had begun on all of 39 years ago. Again, he was angry, but now no longer with those other babies.
He was angry with the God who had made his son this way.
The little boy lying on the foamy sheet might not live. He might not have the chance of seeing all the sights along the way that led to where his father was now. He may never see the simple walls of his home, he may never take his first step. He may never feel love, anger, happiness, sorrow, or any of the other overpowering emotions that waited at the roadside for travellers through life that they took a fancy to.
A nurse silently placed a chair behind the overwhelmed father, and he sat slowly, still staring at the tiny body in the plastic case.
He felt an uncontrollable urge to hold out his hands to the baby, to say to him, Let me help you! Use my hands for whatever you want, but live! Live so that I can help you walk that path we call life, live so that I can show you everything I’ve seen along the way.
He thought of the wonders he had seen, the incredible amount of beauty he’d managed to take in in such a comparatively short time. Of so many billions of years, couldn’t just a little more be spared for this one labourer?
The baby’s chest rose and fell rhythmically somewhere below his father’s hand. For almost half an hour, they stayed like that, almost unmoving. Eventually, he looked up from the floor and let his gaze settle on the child again.
Please live, he thought. Do it for me, to spare me the pain of your loss. Do it for your mother, the one who brought you into this thus-far miserable existence. If not, then do it for yourself. Do it so that you can see all the things that just one trip down this road can give.
Through the window, a few nurses looked on.
Hearts broke as the man lay his cheek on the living coffin and wept.