Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.

+ + +

I was about to learn what fear really was.

“Get her in surgery! Now, now!”

I thought I knew what it was to be scared. I have been in fights, car accidents, and have been told by doctors that I would die. But I was never scared before. Not really.

“Sir! You have to stay here, sir!”

The pregnancy had gone well so we expected the birth of our child to go smoothly. Robin ran marathons and triathlons. She was always running, biking, swimming, or climbing the Empire State Building every morning. She was in great shape, and it allowed her to carry the pregnancy well.

“Here’s a chair, sir. Sir, here’s a chair.”

We did everything right. We saw the doctor. We took birth classes. Robin would read aloud how the baby had developed every week, and recorded her progress with pictures. I wrote silly blogs about the classes.

“Just sit down, sir.”

The due date came and went but the baby was comfortably ensconced. About a week later, it was decided labor would be induced. We spent the night in the hospital, waiting for the labor process to run its course.

And then something went wrong.

Roxanne, our nurse, was standing by Robin with her hands on my wife’s belly when I returned with some ice. She turned to me and in an overly calm voice said, “Sweetie, I need you to go to the desk and get the residents.”

Years ago, delirious and woozy, I was brought to the Emergency Room by a friend who, as it turned out, was correct in his concern for me. What followed next was two solid months in the hospital.

I’d had no real idea how serious my condition was, but I was rushed in immediately by the triage nurse and the examination room filled up with doctors, all speaking in the same overly calm voice Roxanne had just used. I knew there was something seriously wrong then. Even through the thick delirium in my brain.

So when our delivery room began filling up with hospital staff early that morning I began to feel my first twinge of fear. Real fear.

“Not liking the readings.”

The stereotypes say you get a chill down your spine. Cold sweats. Numbness. Invisible icy fingers. Many allegories equate fear with frigid temperatures.

“Can someone page the doctor?”

The nice doctor who had been assigned to us came sprinting into the room right then, out of breath. She shouldered her way through the half dozen people surrounding my wife.

“Let me see, let me see!”

Fear feels like there is a bubble in the middle of your head that was not there before. It expands immediately, and it pushes all of your thoughts and emotions out of its way. It becomes difficult to think, and impossible to experience any other emotion.

“The baby’s heartbeat is down.”

It is as if you have a balloon in your head. Not light-headedness exactly, as I could imagine pressure pushing out from the inside of my skull. My body had gone numb insofar as I was no longer considering it at all.

“We need to go for a C-section right now.”

I began to lumber up from my seat but by the time I was standing, they had rushed Robin out of the room. I plodded after them to see them disappear through double doors and that’s when a nurse stopped me.

The balloon in my head was screaming. Incoherently. Unrelentingly. It was taking maximum effort to not lose it completely. Screaming in my head. Screaming. Screaming.

As the nurse led me to a chair I could see a group of young med students. In mid-tour, they had witnessed the whole thing. They were new at this and none of them had the practiced calm of the veterans. Some flushed red, some drained pale. All reflected how I felt.

Sounds had become muted. Screaming. My vision was flooded. Screaming. I could only try, and fail, to stem an unbidden river flowing down my face. Screaming.

A nurse had come out of the Operating Room and was telling me to follow her. She had scrubs for me. Before I could change into them, another nurse had appeared.

“Mr. MacDonald, the baby is out, everything is fine.”

This is where I felt the chill. The balloon in my head popped, and like a sudden rush of air, the screaming shot down through my body, dusting me with snow. I had to concentrate on keeping steady.

I wanted to ask if she was sure; if Robin was OK; can I see them; what happened; how does our son look? But my mouth wouldn’t work. Instead I made a vague twirling with my finger next to my head. She smiled and said the baby would be right out.

And then he was in front of me. Liam. Emotion flooded back into the shell that was my body. Another river. But no screaming, so that was OK.

The students were still standing there. All of them were beaming. I walked with Liam past them to their congratulations. Some of them were crying with me.

Robin is fine. When our doctor came to tell me the good news, we embraced long and hard. I made a point to find Roxanne later to thank her. Without her sharp eye, maybe I don’t have a son now, maybe not even a wife.

The whole incident from start to birth, took about five minutes. It turned out to not be that big a deal, actually. We were in the hospital in case anything went wrong, and the staff there reacted quickly and knew just what to do.

While it was natural to feel fear, it didn’t help the situation, and made the whole thing seem a lot worse than it was. And those feelings of fear were melted away by the love for our son. That was far stronger.

This morning, as I left for work, Robin was holding Liam gently. Our fat cat, Mickey, preened in the sunbeam that flooded them with gold.

It is a snapshot in my mind I will treasure forever.