Twilight Zone Moment Meme

Fiery over at the Athiest Homeschooler tagged me with this meme she got from Sean the Blogonaut.

So. Here are the "rules".

THE RULES

You should post these rules:

Recall and relate a time when you experienced a "paranormal event"
Explain it rationally if you can
Inflict this meme on 5 other people

*****

We had just finished watching Northern Exposure in bed and were drifting off to sleep. It was the rerun that came on after the local news. So it was sometime after 11pm.



"Xavier! Wake up! I'm bleeding."

Young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis wasn't due for another month.

My adrenal gland propelled me out of bed like an F-18 ejection seat.


I started assembling our "kit" while she called the pediatrician. He said he would meet us at Truman Medical Center, our chosen birthing location. It was about 30 minutes away.

As we were getting ready to depart, the pediatrician called us back and said "Truman is too far away. Go to St. Mary's (in Blue Springs, where we lived)." He would meet us there. St. Mary's was only about 5 minutes away.

I really didn't like the sound of that.

We loaded up in the jeep and I took off like a bat out of hell.

She said "Don't get a ticket!"

"They will have to shoot my tires out and follow the trail of sparks to the hospital before I stop this jeep!"

The hospital was expecting us. I handed her off to the waiting nurse and wheel chair at the emergency entrance while I found a place to park.

I ran from the jeep to the ER desk and asked where they had taken her.

I ran to the location they gave me. I thought. But I got lost. I ran back to the desk and asked again. I successfully ran to the correct examining room.

She was lying on the table, the pediatrician was between her legs and the first words I heard were him telling the nurse "There's too much blood. I can't see anything. I need an emergency Ceasarian."

She had an placental abruption. She had already lost half of her blood. Mother and baby were both at risk of dying.

As they were hustling her off to the operating room, they quickly dressed me in scrubs and started taking patient and insurance information.

By the time I got back to the operating room, she was prepped, taking anesthesia, a shield was erected and the pediatrician was in position.

I held her hand as she went under.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

I look up at the observation area above the operating room and there is a woman standing there, watching. She is wearing blue jeans and a blouse. Has shoulder length brown hair. I figure she must be a nurse or a staffer who heard the call for an emergency Ceasarian and just wanted to watch.

An eternity later, the doctor pulls a limp, bloody baby from my wife's open womb.

The baby isn't crying. There is no time for pointless, modern nonsense like letting the dad cut the abdominal cord. The doctor snipped it professionally, handed the baby to a nurse who silently whisked it away.

I look up at the observation room and the woman gives me a smile and a big "thumbs up". I knew then that everything was going to be O.K. I felt a rush of relief and was brought to tears. I raised my hand to her in acknowledgement. She smiled and nodded.

The doctor starts closing up. He removes the abrupted placenta, examines it, and asks if I would like to see it.

I politely decline.

He then asks if I would like to see my wife's ovarian cysts before he closes her up.

Again, I politely (but somewhat more urgently) decline his invitation.

He always was a talkative sonofabitch.

He gets her put back together and snaps off his rubber gloves.

The nurse informs him "Just for the record, it's been exactly 15 minutes since you declared an emergency Ceasarian."

I look up at the observation room again, and it is empty.

Just as they are wheeling my wife off to the recovery room and taking me to where they are cleaning the baby, I hear her cry.

My daughter is alive!

The next few days are pretty iffy.

The wife had to have a pretty substantial blood transfusion. And recover from an emergency Ceasarian. She was lying in her room hooked up to IVs and heavily sedated.

My preemie daughter was lying under a cake-keeper in the nursery with an E.T. light on her finger.



I was in a recliner in the wife's room with an ice pack on my blown out knee from all of that running that my sedentary body had NO IDEA how to handle.

It made for quite the family photo.

My wife's older son and daughter arrive at the hospital.

Somewhere around 3am, my wife groggily wakes up. Last she remembers, she was pregnant and bleeding. Now she's not pregnant anymore and there is no baby. I try to reassure her that everything is O.K. That G.T.O is Ok. She's in the nursery.

She doesn't believe me.

So I leave the step-kids in charge, limp out to the jeep, rush back home and get the video camera. I come back, tape G.T.O. alive and breating in the nursery. Then I take the tape back to the wife's room and play it for her on the TV.

Many happy tears were shed.

Later, I try to find out who the lady in the operating room observation deck was. I wanted to thank her for reassuring me.

No one else remembered seeing anyone in the observation room. I describe her as best as I could. No one knows anyone working at the hospital who matches that description. Certainly no one who would be there at that time of night.

It remains a mystery.

Are there a whole lot of rational explanations to who she was and why she was there? Absolutely!

But at the time, and for some time afterwards, I couldn't help but wonder.

Could that have been...? Nah! No way! Right? I mean, it couldn't have been!



I'll tag:

Trelvix

Dan

Joe

Spyder

emaw