| and when it happens, you have to go to the bedside. this is one of the things i want you to know. you have to go to the bedside when you hurt somebody. you will want to run away, you will want to hide from them. you will hope that there is some way you don't have to ever see those people again. but you have to go to the bedside.
because the thing that you risk when you have a child is that something horrible will happen to them.
the thing i want you to know is that this was a wanted child. this was a longed-for child. she had a mother and a father and an older brother. she had a family.
i know her name. i said it. i want you to know that i said her name. i held her mother's hand and said her name and cried. i was on the floor at the time. i knelt on the floor and put my head on her hand and cried. it wasn't kneeling. it was collapsing. i want you to know that.
because the thing you risk when you love someone is that something horrible will happen to them.
and her husband was at the bedside. he was on the other side. he was in a chair on the other side, crying. his eyes were lost. they saw a world with nothing in it that would help.
i saw the memory box. the mother showed me her memory box. it had her pictures, the only ones there would ever be. her little footprints, so small-- the toes were crooked, they didn't all make an impression. some of them made no mark at all on the paper.
because the thing you risk when you love someone is that something horrible will happen to them.
i want you to know that i thought about abruption. i want you to know that driving into work sometimes i drill myself on what to do if there's an abruption. i run through the steps-- how do you tell it is happening. what do you tell the nurses to do? what do you say? i want you to know i checked. i checked and checked and checked. i want you to know that i thought about it. and i checked. and i was wrong. i want you to know that i was absolutely sure, but i was wrong.
because you can do everything right and still kill somebody. because the thing you risk when you take care of people is that you can do everything right and still kill somebody. kill them dead. forever. dead.
and you can still be on duty today.
and you will have to walk by that room-- her room-- a hundred times today. |
