Of all the many things I’ve told you that I’m not proud of, here’s one that I absolutely am. I never even hesitated. Immediately upon realizing that Meredith was not going to answer my redial -- I imagined her calling, after all, from a pay phone in the hospital lobby -- I put my phone back in my pocket, went up to my hotel room, threw everything that was mine back in my suitcase, went down to the front desk, checked myself out, and then had a bellman hail me a cab to take me to the airport.
It was only when I was in the cab, and on that long stretch of highway out to the Denver airport, that I decided to call Mary.
“Hello? Alan?”
I could hear the amplified voice of Wes’s keynoter in the background.
“Yes, Mary. It’s me.”
“Alan! Where are you? What is going on?”
I told her in as few words as possible. The phone call had been from my mother-in-law. My wife had gone into labor. The baby was five weeks premature. They were doing a c-section. I needed to get home as quickly as possible. I was very sorry. When I was finished there was an odd silence on the line -- a silence at least from Mary, the ambient noises of the ballroom still coming through loud and clear.
“So… You’re leaving?”
“I’ve already left, Mary. I’m almost at the airport. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry. And who is going to manage this meeting?”
A few choice words came into my mind, but I swallowed them down. “I’m sorry. The conference service manager there is a woman named Brandi Olsen. I have her card. I’ll call her and ask her to connect with you tonight.”
“Oh, Alan, don’t bother. I’ll find her myself.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“You should be. Good-bye, Alan.”
And then the line went dead. I sat in the back of the cab looking at my phone as the driver pulled into the departures lane and began looking for a place to get to the curb. The surrealism of the situation was intense, but I remember the penetrating shockwave that Mary’s words had created in the otherwise psychedelic fog of the moment. Was she really going to fault me for trying to get home in time to witness the birth of my child? To be with my wife as she underwent and recovered from a (hopefully) successful surgery? What did she expect me to do after such a phone call? Come back to her table and finish my dessert? Or maybe collect all the dirty dishes that she and Eleanor Rumford and Wes Howard and now Amy fucking Crawford had created, and wash them so they could use them again and again?
Good-bye, Alan.
There had been a tone of finality in her voice, as if she was communicating something more than just the end of a phone call.
Good, I remember thinking as I threw money at the driver and bounded out of the taxi. Maybe I was finally free of her and all her bullshit.
The next several hours were a heart-pounding blur -- moments of self-induced terror punctuating long stretches of anxiety and inaction. At first I thought I would have an easy time of it, as the agent at the ticket counter, once I breathlessly explained my situation, told me there was a flight leaving in twenty-five minutes -- but that it had an overnight layover in another city about 90 miles away from my hometown. That’s okay, I thought hastily. I’ll rent a car when I get there and drive the rest of the way. When she took my credit card and told me the $900 ticket price, I didn’t even blink. That’s what plastic is for. In a few minutes I was running down the concourse, getting stopped by a security line unbelievably long for that time of night. I wasn’t bashful. I told people what was happening -- that my wife was having our baby and that my flight was leaving in twenty minutes -- and they let me skip, some congratulating me and others angry at the peer pressure that was being exerted on them. After security, it was another run down another concourse, and a waiting gate agent, literally holding the door open for me. Crushed into the absolutely last seat on the flight, I counted the minutes as we went through the preflight checklist and began taxiing out to the runway, certain that at any moment one of the engines was going to fall off the plane and we’d have to be called back to the gate. Once in the air I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. I tried to read my book, but couldn’t. I tried to slow my heart rate, but couldn’t. Stuck in a pressurized cabin at 40,000 feet with no way to talk to the outside world is sometimes a blessing to the business traveler, but on that trip it was absolute torture. Has our baby been born? Is it healthy and whole? Was my wife okay? More than likely, given the length of my journey and the tone of Meredith’s disquiet, the events that provided the answers to those questions had already occurred. Our baby had been born -- or it hadn’t. The baby was healthy and whole -- or it wasn’t. Jenny was okay -- or she wasn’t. Observers outside my hermetically-sealed box knew the answers, but I was stuck like Schrodinger’s famous cat, both alive and dead at the same time.
As soon as we were on the ground, I turned my cell phone back on, hoping that someone, anyone had left me a message. But after refreshing several times, I had to admit that no such communication was waiting for me. I deplaned and ran down to the rental car counters, discovering, to my growing frustration, lines of people at every company. Choosing the one with the shortest line -- only three people ahead of me -- I fished my phone back out of my pocket and started to make some phone calls. First, directory assistance; yes, please connect me to the hospital I knew Jenny was in; then, hello, yes, my wife is there having our baby, what, yes, please connect me with the Labor and Delivery Department; then, hello, yes, my wife is there having our baby, what, sorry, Larson, Jenny Larson, her name is Jennifer Larson; then, hold please, I was placed on hold.
I looked around, realizing that I could march forward one position in my rental car line, and that three people had already gotten in line behind me. I looked at my watch. It was 1:25 in the morning.
“Hello, Mister Larson?”
“Yes, hello?”
“Your wife is sedated.”
“What? What did you say?”
“She is sedated, recovering after successful c-section.”
I suddenly started crying. The tears came unbidden to my eyes as my heart rose within my chest and tried to choke me. Jenny didn’t want a c-section. For a moment, it was the only thought that existed, expanding to fill my entire universe. Meredith had told me it was going to happen, but it hadn’t seemed real then. Now, with the voice of this unnamed triage nurse, it seemed overwhelming, permanent, irrevocable.
And I had missed it.
I swallowed with some difficulty. “And the baby?”
I heard paper shuffling. “A girl. About five weeks premature. She’s in the nick-you.”
“The what?”
“The NICU. Our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I also had no idea what it was.
“Is she all right? The baby?”
The nurse said something but I didn’t hear her because the guy behind me in line told me to get my tail in gear. I stumbled forward, oblivious to whether there was a rental car counter or a yawning chasm in front of me.
“What?” I said. “Say that again, please.”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said clearly. “I don’t have any more information than that. I can connect you to the NICU if you’d like.”
“No,” I said, more out of fear than reason. “No, that’s all right,” I continued, telling her briefly where I was and why I was there. “I’m renting a car right now. I’ll be there in two hours.”
“All right. Are you calling on your cell phone?” She then read off my cell phone number and asked me if that was a number I could be reached on.
“Yes,” I said. “Why?”
“I’ll get an update from the NICU for you and call you back.”
I started crying afresh, this time actually blubbering, overwhelmed by emotion evoked by this simple human kindness. The strangers around me, even the jackass behind me, could now see that something was wrong.
“Okay,” I choked into the phone. “Thank you, uh, thank you…”
“Eliana,” the nurse said. “My name is Eliana Alvarez. If you’re two hours away, I’ll still be here when you arrive. You ask for me when you get here, okay, Mister Larson?”
“Okay,” I said, distracted by the need to step up to the rental car counter.
“Okay. I’ll call you back in a few minutes with an update from the NICU. Good-bye for now, Mr. Larson.”
“Good-bye,” I said.
I put the phone down on the counter and wiped my tears away with the back of my hand. When my vision was clear, I could see the attendant sitting there on his high stool, looking at me like I was about to melt into the floor.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
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