She let go and I smiled at her. I would bring my son home today but I could only hope that CC would soon follow.

The whole drive to the hospital I made a mental list of baby names that CC and I talked about. I remembered what she said her two favorites were and I would pick one of them; I just wasn’t sure which one yet.

I stopped at the nurse’s desk before making my way to CC’s room. They had me meet with the safety inspector to get the car seat all situated so that I would be ready to go once the doctor gave his final ok.

After that, I walked into CC’s room and stopped dead in my tracks.

7

I started coming around; I could hear the beeping noise again. The pain was still really bad; I didn’t feel like I had been run over anymore though. I tried to open my eyes a few times before they finally fluttered open. I took in the room I was in, a standard hospital room. In front of me was a TV mounted on the wall, under that was a whiteboard. On the board it read: ‘Today your nurse is: Lynn, Room 312’. Next to the whiteboard was what looked to be a bathroom, and then the door onto the corridor. On the left side of the room was a huge window; I guessed it was the middle of the night because it was dark out. There was a chair set up under the window and another covered in a blanket and pillow. Next to my bed, on the right, was a wall closet covered with flowers, cards and balloons telling me to ‘Get Well’, wishing me ‘Congratulations’ and informing me ‘It’s a Boy’. I instantly reached down and grabbed for my baby bump, only there wasn’t one. Oh god, what happened with the baby? Is he ok? Did he get hurt?

A nurse, maybe Lynn, walked in. “Well look who’s awake. How are you feeling MacKenzie?”

I tried to talk but nothing came out, and it was then the thirst hit me. Lynn saw me trying to swallow, she walked over to the rolling table that was set up right next to me and poured me a glass of water. She put a straw in and offered it to me; I closed my lips around the plastic and sucked the water in. I’ve never tasted anything so good.

When I was finished she put the cup down and introduced herself, “I’m Lynn, one of the nurses who have been looking over you and your baby.”

I smiled, “Thank you.”

“How do you feel, pain wise, on a scale from one to ten?”

I had to think about it for a minute; I had so much running through my head, “About an eight.”

She nodded and jotted it down on the little computer on her cart. She reached in her pocket for a thermometer and took my temperature, then proceeded to take my blood pressure. “Let me go find one of the doctors to examine you and then we’ll see what we can give you for the pain.”

“Wait…Can you tell me what happened to my son?” I started getting choked up.

“The doctor can explain everything to you, but rest assured everything’s ok.” Lynn was a pretty nurse. Short blonde hair, big brown almond shaped eyes. She was a tiny little thing, short and skinny.

“Ok, thank you.”

“No problem sweetie, I’ll be right back.”

When she left, I noticed that my hand and foot were in casts. I tried to sit up slightly in bed, bad idea, my stomach screamed out in pain along with my head. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my head.

The doctor walked in with Lynn behind him. “Hello MacKenzie, how are you feeling?”

“Pretty bad.” I answered with a groan.

Lynn handed him my chart and he wrote that down I guess. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Um,” I closed my eyes, trying to remember exactly what happened. “I remember I had a doctor’s appointment and it was raining. I remember driving down 295 and seeing a crash in front of me.” I opened my eyes and looked at him writing away on my chart. “Everything after that happened so fast. I know I lost control and I flipped my car, but nothing really after that.”

He finished writing while nodding his head. “That’s good. You gave your family a pretty good scare.”

I looked down at my hands and a few tears dropped onto the blanket.

“Well I’m Dr. Clearly, I’ve been working on you since you arrived seven days ago. When you arrived you were unconscious, we assessed all of your injuries, and then hooked you up to the ultrasound monitor to check on the baby. The on call OB-GYN made the call to perform an emergency Caesarean-section. You were having contractions and it was safer to deliver the baby than it was to wait.” He glanced down at the chart and then continued. “The baby was delivered at 4:38 p.m. and is perfectly healthy.” A few more tears fell. “You appeared to have protected the baby during the crash and took most of the injuries to your wrist and ankle. After your Caesarean section we put you into a medically induced coma so that we could tend to your other injuries. You dislocated your thumb on your left hand, which we have since reset. Your right wrist is broken and will need to be in the cast for at least six weeks. Your right ankle was severely crushed and we operated on it, so that too will be in a cast for six weeks.” He closed his chart and handed it back to Lynn. “After your surgery we took you off the medication for the coma, but while we were waiting for you to wake up, you had a seizure. So now that you are awake we’d like to get a CAT scan to make sure everything is ok. One of the nurses will come and get you shortly to have that done. We’ll see how everything goes after the results return.”

I held it together until the doctor left the room and I was all alone. Crying made my head feel like someone was beating drums on it, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe that I’d missed the first seven days of my son’s life. I must have cried myself to sleep because a nurse came in and gently shook me awake to tell me we were heading down for the CAT scan.

When I was back in my room, Lynn explained that I woke up about an hour after Hunter left. She said he’d been here day in and day out and last night was the first night he’d left me alone. She explained that he’d been hesitant about leaving but wanted to go home and have everything ready for the baby’s release today. She was supposed to call if anything at all changed with me. I told her not to call. I knew he would be back very soon and I needed to process everything on my own for a little bit. I didn’t want my family dealing with this for me.

Everything in my life had changed in the blink of an eye. I got into my first major accident and I damn near died. I missed the birth of my child, the guilt of that alone was enough for me to want to go back into coma so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. Hunter had to step up and be a dad without me, something I never wanted to happen, we were in this together. My body was not the same, nor would it ever go back to the way it was. I’d broken my ankle and wrist, my wrist would heal just fine, my ankle on the other hand was worrying me. I’d had an emergency C-section and my stomach was cut open to deliver the baby. The same baby I didn’t even want to look at because I felt like I’d failed him already.