The Glass I Stood At for My Son

Walked Back

I have been through that door a hundred times in my head since.

Rosa did not march me past the front desk like a win. She took me the back way, through the delivery wing.

As we walked she talked low and fast, the way nurses do when they are telling you the rules while they bend them.

She said Brianna had come through fine. She said the baby was seven pounds, one ounce, and healthy, and loud.

She said the baby had been born at 10:52. That meant he had been on the earth for nine minutes before anyone came to find me.

I had been standing eleven feet away the whole time.

“Nine minutes,” I said. “He was here for nine minutes.”

“I know,” Rosa said. “I cannot fix the nine minutes. I can fix the rest of it. Keep walking.”

I kept walking. My boots were loud on that clean floor and I did not care who heard me coming.

“She was out of it,” Rosa said. “First baby, long labor. When somebody asked who should be in the room, she was not in any shape to run a meeting.”

“Her mother ran it,” I said.

“Her mother ran it,” Rosa agreed. She stopped outside a door. “I asked her just now, clear as I could. I said, honey, is there anybody else you want.”

“She said a name,” Rosa went on. “She said your name. Said it twice.”

“Cole,” I said.

“She said Cole,” Rosa said. “So that is who I came and got.”

She pushed the door open.

Brianna was in the bed, propped up, her hair stuck to her face. She looked wrung out and about nineteen years old, even though she is twenty-two.