A New Beginning ... and a Peculiar Ending

Orson Aurelius Thayer-Hansen, born May 18, 2005.

My wife Toni is a force of nature to be reckoned with. In the past two days it's like she gave birth twice - once naturally, going into the hospital on Monday evening with very strong and close contractions which had petered away to nothing with exhaustion and disappointment by noon. Then after a few hours of drug-induced rest, she struggled with the effects of Pitocin - but without the assistance of an epidural - to give birth to a monstrous boy, 10 lbs. 3 oz. She was literally one more push away from an emergency C-section when the boy was born, just after midnight.

He is big. He is strong (his heartbeat never wavered during the exhausting ordeal) and he lives.

You can see where I am going with this. I will attempt to be interesting.

Looking at Ellen, our midwife, yesterday, I was struck with a memory I had not thought of, well, since it happened. We were interviewing midwives before we got pregnant, in mid-2000. Like a lot of people, we wanted to time our first child (who we imagined would be our only child) with all of our other projects. Ellen moved from this office to a different one shortly after Calvin was conceived and so I have a fuzzy memory of the place. It was on Chagrin.

And who was I then? 32 years old, the artistic director of a no-profit (sic) theater company and erstwhile webmaster (that's so new economy!) And I knew nothing. This is what struck me last night, the night at the end of that journey - Ellen has led us through three child births in the past five years. And that day in her office, how much less of a million things did I know? How many experiences, sure, but simply, how many words? How many drugs? How many diagnoses? How many rooms? How many nurses, midwives, doctors, chaplains, and bereaved parents? How many dead children?

Orson was born in room 15 of MacDonald Women's Hospital, Second floor. Zelda was born in 16. And Calvin in 17. A trifecta.

I hadn't been in room 17 since we left it, late in the evening, just after The West Wing (it was a repeat - part one of the episode "Manchester") on Wednesday, March 21, 2001. I walked past it several times when we were expecting Zelda, it's not on a main corridor, it's tucked away, around a corner, but I could always see the doorway as I passed. Just the doorway, nothing inside.

Yes, I went in yesterday. No, this morning, probably around one-thirty, as I was fetching post-partem ice water. After Orson was safely among us. I told Toni about it. "I don't recommend it," I said. She had thought of it as well, and wouldn't dare go in, anyway.

It's the same. Maybe the drapes had changed, and the computer. Everything was in its same place. The bed. The tee vee. The incubator. The wallpaper. And a big, "country-style" rocking chair, set against the wall overlooking the atrium. Away from the bed.

It happened here. We saw him here, held him here, and nowhere else. I wrote a play. This is where it takes place. Even the bits that don't take place in the this room, take place in this room.

I left after a few seconds. Not a happy place. I know countless people have healthy, living children in this room. Their memories of this room exist in a different dimension from the one normal humans live in.

We also had a visit with Carrie - Nurse Angel. When we had Zelda two years ago, she walked past me in the hall and I couldn't say hi. I was shy. Then I saw her this time, as I was helping a contracting Toni down the hall. Again, couldn't say anything. Probably because what needed to be said, couldn't be said in the hall, passing by.

"Oh hi, maybe you remember me, we had a stillbirth in 2001 and you were our first nurse, the one who was responsible for laying out all of the decisions we needed to make, and your candor and compassion, though disorienting at the time, were so perfect, so exactly what we needed, that we have remembered you ever since, and you have even served as a model for the way we now speak with people about their grief, and, uh, I immortalized you in a play about the experience and have impersonated you on-stage in Cleveland, Minneapolis and New York City and have a gig this Friday at MetroHealth."

We made sure we invited her to sit with us yesterday, and she did. We hadn't spoken to her since then, either, it's been four years. How often do you get to share with someone you know only briefly, fleetingly, about the incalculable impact they had on your life with one act of kindness, compassion and respect?

I may never step onto "Mac 2" ever again. I know its layout very well, at least the bits birthing fathers get to see. And yet, that's it. Its geometry, its architecture, its corridors, its furniture, its cast of characters, get relegated to that vault in my mind reserved for my old elementary school, my first house, Cindy's uncle's house off West 25th street. I may never see them again.