I suddenly came to be in a
hospital room, dressed in the sterile whites of a doctor's work clothes. Only when I looked around did I realize that I was standing in a
maternity ward, working alongside a patient who had been suffering a number of complications the least of which I knew nothing about. I go to the bedside, and see
my mother the way she was in photographs twenty-five years ago, about four years before she met my father and five before she started
having kids.
I ask one of the
faceless nurses what's wrong, and she says back to me, "Laurann is going through labor, but the baby isn't coming out. We're not making any headway at all." To my side,
the doctors prescribe drugs, the names of which point out to me that these concoctions are either
thirty years from the future or fifty years from the past- none of them sounds even remotely familiar.
Flash forward some time, and I am watching my mother sit face down, her features green and straining against a mesh of leather straps,
the tears running down her face speaking of the pain she is going through. My heart goes out to her, and
I wish I could make the hurt go away.
Flash forward some more, and she speaks in a weak voice to a doctor who is pointing out one of the sources of her problem- a
blood clot has formed in her
neck, and if they are going to be able to deliver the baby safely, they're going to have to operate simultaneously. My mother, seeing nothing to complain about, agrees, and I walk away certain that you don't need to remove
blood clots to deliver babies.