Our Private Eden: Family

An attendant with a wheelchair was waiting when the Mustang stopped under the covered entrance to the maternity unit at a quarter til midnight. I helped Holly into the wheelchair before parking the car and bringing the bag in with me. I stood in the waiting room for about 10 minutes before a nurse emerged from two double doors. She instructed me to hand the bag to an orderly who would tag it and securely store it to be taken by the staff to Holly's room when one was assigned to her after delivery. Then she led me down a series of hallways into a closet-sized changing room. She pointed to a light-green, long-sleeved cotton garment on a hook that looked like a surgical robe. Beside it was a surgical mask and a scalp covering. She instructed me to put them on, requisites for anyone entering the delivery room.

"Dr. St. John is on her way. We're prepping Mrs. Vaught now but it will be a while as labor and dilation progress before we move her into a delivery room. After you get those on, we can take you to the prep room to be with her," the nurse said.

I did my best to fasten the rear-closing garment on myself. An orderly came in and helped me but told me I didn't need to put the mask over my mouth and nose until we were in the delivery room.

Holly was on what appeared to be plastic-upholstered exam table with her back and head slightly elevated for her comfort. She was in a hospital gown with a sheet pulled over her. A series of wires originating from beeping and humming instruments disappeared under the sheet where they were fastened by small adhesive patches to her abdomen and one to her chest where it monitored her heartrate.

"I feel like a Christmas tree with all these wires on me," she said. Then she winced, shutting her eyes as a labor contraction hit. I grabbed her hand and she squeezed it - hard - until the contraction eased.

"I'm sorry, babe," I said. "It was me and Sir Hollywood who caused all this."

She feigned a pout. "Don't you bad-mouth Sir Hollywood. Wouldn't have it any other way."

The door opened and there was Dr. St. John, still in her street clothes, far cheerier than any doctor should be at such a wee hour. Behind her was the nurse that had summoned me from the waiting room.

"Holly! It's your big day! So let's look at your numbers and see how you're doing," the doctor said, pulling down the sheet to check the leaders and the connections to her tummy. "Those look good."

"How's she progressing?" Glenda asked the nurse.

"About four centimeters, looks like it might be quick."

"Good, let's root for a short first-time labor. Go ahead and set up the FHM and have anesthesiology come in and start the block while I prep," the doctor instructed the nurse. Then she reassuringly patted grasped Holly's hand. "Everything looks good. You're going to be a mom very soon."

"FHM?" I asked the nurse after Glenda had left.

"Fetal heart monitor," she said. "It allows us to hear what's going on with the baby's heartrate as delivery progresses. Hold on just a minute and you can hear for yourself."

The nurse pulled up stirrups from either side of the exam table and nestled Holly's calves in them. She grabbed a wire, attached it to an instrument, pulled up the sheet and went to work, her sure hands encased in white latex gloves expertly engaged in Holly's vulva.

"This might pinch a little, Mrs. Vaught," the nurse said as she guided a probe into her and took a couple of minutes to adjust it. "All right, you two ready to hear your baby's heartbeat?"

She flipped a switch on a blue metal console on the wall and turned up a volume dial. A rapid, rhythmic rushing sound came from it, not the classic thump-thump one expects of a heartbeat. Holly and I looked at each other, a bit alarmed.

"Very strong," the nurse said, noting the concern on our faces. "Oh, that's how it's supposed to sound. It's not exactly like a stethoscope; it's the sound of the baby's heart pumping blood through its body."

She stood, removed her gloves and dropped them in a sanitary waste can, then addressed Holly. The anesthesiologist would arrive shortly and set up the epidural, essentially a spinal nerve block that blocks pain signals from Holy's lower body to her brain. I would have to leave the room for that, she said. She reminded Holly not to try to get up and that the catheter would make sure she didn't need to use the restroom.

Another labor contraction hit, and Holly reached for my hand. I grasped hers and she squeezed, harder even than she had before. The nurse checked her watch, noting that her contractions were now about 10 minutes apart. She would be moved into the delivery room once they reached five minutes apart.

"I'll send Dr. Chandrasekkar in for the epidural," the nurse, who had not yet shared her name, said as she left, closing the door and leaving Holly and me alone for perhaps the last time without a child.

"You're not chickening out, getting a little weak-kneed, are you?" Holly asked me. "This birth business ain't always pretty."

I bent over to kiss and caress her brow.

"Honey, I am here now and I'm here always," I said against her cheek. "Wouldn't have it any other way."

She placed her hand behind my neck, strained upward and kissed my lips.

"I'm so glad I gave you a second chance that night in Conway's," she said with a smile.

The door opened and a small man in scrubs, a mask and impossibly black hair strode in.

"Good morning. I am Dr. Bijay Chandrasekkar and it is time to get your epidural block started," he said. He flipped through papers on his clipboard, then cross-referenced it with Holly's chart, and then put both of them down. "Mr. Vaught, I presume? I am afraid you must leave the room. You may wait in the hall but do not go into the general waiting room outside the sterile area. We will send for you when the procedure is complete."

I blew Holly a kiss and closed the door behind me.

Glenda St. John was barely recognizable in her gown. I recognized her only by her voice as she approached.

"Mr. Vaught, the epidural went smoothly. From this point on, it's going to be a little more crowded and hectic in that small prep room where Holly is now until it's time to take her into the delivery theater. I am not saying you can't go in, but you might have to squeeze yourself into a corner and stay there. Things are going to start moving much faster," Dr. St. John said.

"At this rate, you could be holding your new baby in two or three hours," she said.

I told the doctor that if they needed space that I would take up, I'll sit out here, but I expect to be brought in instantly should Holly ask for me.

It was the longest ninety minutes of my life. I paced like a caged panther in front of the nurse's station centrally positioned amidst the prep rooms like the one Holly occupied, the delivery suites where she would go next, and the recovery rooms, where new moms would be allowed to rest, receive pain meds if necessary, get disconnected from most of the wiring attached to them and see their husbands if they wished as the neonatal staff bathed, diapered and wrapped the newborn in life's first garments before putting it in a warm incubator bearing its name near a window behind which relatives could huddle for their first glimpse of the child. In another corner was an area I preferred not to ponder: the neonatal intensive care unit for infants born with life-threatening complications. At the moment, it was empty and its lights were dark. I wanted it to stay that way.

A door opened. Voices filled the hallway. The exam table bearing Holly was being rolled out of the room by two large men. At the front of the procession was Glenda St. John. The wires that had fed data into monitors in the prep room were draped across the sheet covering Holly, ready to be reconnected to identical machines in the delivery room.

"Corey, it's time. We're moving Holly into the delivery room. Follow me. Pull up your mask and put on your head covering."

Holly saw me as she was wheeled past and smiled. I rushed over and clasped her hand.

"You all right, baby?" I said.

"Piece of cake," she scoffed just before another labor contraction gripped her.

Inside the delivery suite, attendants carefully lifted her off the prep table and onto a steel table covered with a thin cushion and sheets. Prominent stirrups sprouted from one end of the table.

The wires were reconnected and suddenly the cold, sterile room with its bright, overhead surgical lights was a cacophonous swirl of otherworldly noises and medical professionals speaking in their own jargon.

Eight CM.

IV flow established.

FHM rate in range.

BP 180 over 90 and steady.

To each new burst of data, Glenda St. John would acknowledge with a simple "Check."

The doctor looked at me and instructed me to move to Holly's head and shoulders area and begin what we had learned in Lamaze. Breathing exercises. Biofeedback techniques to calm Holly between labor pains, now coming less than five minutes apart.

Nine CM and progressing.

"Check," the doctor said, noting times and other data on a form by a counter at one end of the room. "Crowning?"

Crowning confirmed. No complications.

Glenda put down her pad and pen, scrubbed her hands with a brown disinfectant at a sink in the room, rinsed and dried them. One nurse sheathed her hands in a pair of blue, rubberized gloves as another rolled a steel stool on coasters toward the white sheet that now acted as a tent stretched over Holly's thighs parted and raised in the stirrups. The doctor, now silent and serious, was handed a conical metal instrument that she employed on Holly somewhere under the sheet. A nurse looped a clear plastic tube feeding oxygen into Holly's nostrils around her head.

"Good crown. We're at 10," Glenda said. "Holly, time to start pushing. Corey, support her. When I say 'push,' Holly, you bear down. OK... push!"

Holly strained, her face contorted in effort and flushed red. Sweat beaded on her brow. I brushed locks of hair from her face and placed my hands on her shoulders. "That's it baby, good job."

"Good job, Holly. Catch your breath a minute," Glenda said.

I timed my exaggerated breathing for Holly and coached her to follow along as we had been taught in Lamaze classes - loading her lungs and her bloodstream with oxygen she and our baby would need in the minutes ahead. She looked up at me and nodded that she was all right.

"OK Holly, again when I say 'push,'" Glenda said. "Ready... push!"

Holly grabbed my hands and again mustered all her energy downward to push the new life inside her into the world. She gnashed her teeth, her eyes shut tight, and made a grunting sound as she exhausted herself.

Glenda looked to her left quickly. "Suction," she said, and a nurse with a large bulb syringe handed it to her. "Forceps." A nurse handed it to her.

"Holly, you're almost done. Take a minute, get some more air and let's do it again," the doctor said.

Holly opened her eyes and looked at me. Breath after breath, synchronized with mine, she filled her lungs as deeply as she could.

"One more good push like the last one should do it," Glenda said. "Let me know when you've caught your breath."

She took five more exaggerated breaths, each time exhaling fully, then filling her lungs. Then Holly looked me in the eye with steely determination and nodded. I looked at Glenda. "She's ready," I said.

"Holly, give me all you got, girl. Ready... PUSH!"

And with that Holly bore down with every ounce of her being, a strained growl slightly stifled by her clenched, bared teeth. Her face turned beet red as she crushed my hands in hers. Then, suddenly, then she let go, exhaled and resumed breathing. At the other end of the table, a flurry of action, hushed and hurried communication, more suctioning, metallic clipping sounds.

Then a cry. A high-pitched, piercing wail. The first earthly exclamation of our child.

"Holly, Corey - you have a son," Glenda said. "Mark official time of birth: 4:27 a.m. Central Standard Time, Tuesday, March 21st, 1978."

Holly was still flushed and exhausted from her final push, but tears streamed down her face. She was laughing and crying at the same instant. And so was I. We shared a mix of emotions. Euphoria. Gratitude. Pride. Humility. Love.

The long sweep of creation, of innumerable generations, of lives lived and fates met, of chance encounters, of loves and losses, of space and time, of all that had brought me to Holly and her to me - because of all of that, a unique, new life at this precise moment began its earthly journey, to start it all again.

I leaned forward, broke the rules ever so slightly, lowered my mask and kissed Holly on her sweaty brow. "I love you beyond words, Holly."

A few more snips and swabs and the unnamed nurse who had met me hours earlier in the waiting room handed Holly a naked, pink, scrunched, tiny human and laid him on her chest.

"He is eight pounds, seven ounces," she said. "By all indications, perfectly healthy. Congratulations."

Guided by instinct that predates humanity, she placed her infant at her breast, feeding him for the first time.

In this moment, words could not suffice. The child that a doctor once told Holly in her girlhood she could never have suckled at her breast, her beating heart inches from his - flesh of her flesh.

"Mr. and Mrs. Vaught, have you decided on a name for the child," a nurse writing on a clipboard called over to us.

"Give us a moment," I said. I leaned over near Holly's ear.

"We said the right name would come to us. Well, it did for me the instant I first saw him. Do you trust me? Want to hear it?"

She batted her eyes and nodded. I whispered it in her ear and she began to sob.

"Yes... yes," she said. "Perfect."

I turned toward the nurse who waited, pen in hand, and said in a loud, clear voice: "He is Conway Porter Vaught."

Then I spelled it, letter for letter, first, middle and last name to ensure accurate transcription.

"He's named for the fathers of the two women I love most," I said.

"Oh Corey... I wish daddy could see him, his own name on his own grandson. He'd be so proud," she said.

Maybe the strong and gentle Conway Raymer of Van Buren, Missouri, and my mom's father, the late Rev. Porter Moore of Memphis, could see it from some bright promontory in paradise. Maybe they shared this moment of awe together as, on earth, their genes, their legacies, their names took living form. That's a story that can't be known or told this side of eternity.

But in this world, a wild, improbable and unbreakable love had lived up to its ultimate purpose and fulfillment. Corey and Holly Vaught would strive for the rest of our lives to make the most and best of this new life, to guide him in the ways of truth, to pass on, beyond our fleeting years, the blessings of love that the Creator had given to us through the gift of each other.

In this moment, however, baby Conway nursed at the breast of his slumbering mother. I stood beside them, motionless, enraptured by the perfection of the moment, and the rest of the world dissolved into hazy, muffled irrelevance, almost invisible.

It's as close to Eden as this world gets.

THE END