There is a plant to my left. It's fake, a fig tree with too-bright leaves and patches of plastic showing through its twiney trunk. There's moss at its base, the kind my mom used to stuff into the bottom of our Easter baskets, only ours was dyed green and blue. The woman at the desk picks her head up and looks at me every few minutes over the rim of her sturdy black half-glasses, as though I'm easier to look at when things are hazy and not quite in focus. She thinks she recognizes me. It doesn't enter her mind once that I am who I am, but that I'm someone she's met before, the son of someone she sees only at her high school reunions. It's 2:31 AM, by my watch. Everything is mauve and forest green, grandmother colors.

I wonder about the lights in here, about their careful placement so that they shine low and warm on the wallpaper from behind frosty globes. I wonder how many psychologists it took to figure out the whole scheme, to consider every trauma that could possibly put people out here waiting. Car accidents must have been a high priority. Then heart attacks. Then strokes and plain old accidents like falling down and shooting up. I'm sure my sort of trauma wasn't considered very high up on the list. You could always have more babies.

I realize that I've been clenching my hands and I pull them apart, like removing steak tips from a skewer. The desk woman pulls her head up again. Then she goes back to her paperwork. There is a bowl on top of the desk, filled to the brim with hard candies in clear cellophane wrappers. She reaches up and pulls one out, a minty blue one, her eyes never leaving the paper in front of her. The wrapper crackles into the silence of the room. I can almost feel the insides of my brain making the same brittle, frantic noises. I close my eyes and for an instant, it almost becomes a fire, the kind dad used to make in the fireplace at Christmas.

I want to tear it out of her hands, to ball up the cellophane and with one finger, reach in her mouth and pull the candy out, the way they teach you in CPR classes. The Clean Sweep method. I stand up and for an instant, I can almost see myself doing it, her saliva dripping off my index finger.

"Do you know where I can find a pay phone?"

She looks at me through the glasses for the first time. "Right down the hall, sir. Take a left at the nurse's station." Her eyes focus on my t-shirt. By the time she makes it to my face she realizes that I'm in my pajamas, that the spot on my left knee is still damp from where Susan's water broke. It wasn't nearly as horrible as I would have thought, not like the intergalactic green ooze you could buy in toy stores when I was 12, the kind Zac used to invariably get tangled in my sisters' hair. It was just water, not so different from what flowed into the sink and the Arkansas River.

I nod and walk out into the hall. It's white, so sterile and fluorescent that I can feel my pupils shrink at the shock of it. Apparently the psychologists had been confused about where to put the phone. The booth is built into the wall and closes completely behind heavy sliding doors so that your tragedies stay as neatly tucked away as possible and don't spill into the halls, like there isn't enough there already. I'm still wearing my jacket, and it's only when I start to fumble for change that I realize my hands are shaking, and that I don't have my wallet. The image hits me immediately, like I'd snapped a Polaroid to remember my stupidity by. It's sitting on the dresser next to Susan's Bo Peep lamp, the same one she's had since she was three, that she insists will go in the baby's room. Maybe. After a frantic moment or two of going through pockets and then double checking, because this is the kind of night that warrants double checking, I find one, wedged in a corner, almost shoved into the lining.

"Hello?" He's groggy. I knew I'd wake him up, and I don't care.

"Taylor..."

"Isaac... God... Do you know what time..." I can almost hear his brain switch on. "Where are you?! Did Susan go into labor?"

"I'm at the hospital... Actually, something kind of happened... There was a problem..." I swallow, hard, to at least give my voice a chance at working properly.

He inhales sharply. "What kind of a problem?"

"The cord was uh... tangled around the baby's neck. Emergency cesarean... I'm in the Intensive Care waiting room... " My voice stops. Nothing. I can hear his breathing on the other end.

"How long have you been there?"

"Hour and a half?"

"I'll be there in ten minutes." He hangs up and I can almost picture it, his hand tossing down the receiver, the struggle to find his shoes, an abbreviated version of what I was doing two hours ago.

When I get back to the waiting room, there are two other people in the room besides Candy Girl at the desk. A dark-skinned man with a mustache is sitting with his arms crossed over his chest. There seems to be something almost futile in the act, his spine rigid and pulled away from the back of the chair. The other person is a little girl, no older than 2 at the very most, her wiry hair sticking in every direction off her head. It's 2:46 AM according to my watch, and she's fully dressed in a pair of denim overalls with a pink turtleneck underneath. Baby Gap. I'd started paying attention to the ads for the first time three months ago. She's sitting on the floor, intently filling in the lines of a coloring book, the crayons scattered around her for easy access. I try not to stare as Big Bird turns an odd mossy green under her guidance, the color slipping out of the lines more than it stays in. The man has closed his eyes now. His chest is twice the width of mine, without argument and I can almost start to feel myself breathe in unison with him.

I break it, the odd symmetry between us, when I realize that the girl has left the book and is standing in front of me, her mouth open, waiting for me to react. She smiles, exposing two tiny teeth, one on the bottom and the top. I hold my breath as she reaches into my lap and touches my hands, my index finger filling most of her palm all by itself. Gently, she bends over and places my finger in her mouth and closes it, her bony little gums chomping against my first knuckle.

The man opens his eyes and sees her. His voice comes out sharp and angry saying something in Spanish and she immediately reacts, dropping my hand and casting him a pout before she heads back to her coloring book. There's drool on my fingers. I can feel myself start to choke, my airway closing and opening so quickly I can barely control it. By the time the first tears start to run down my face, there's an arm around me from somewhere and I realize that it's Taylor, who's taken the time to find his jeans as well as his shoes. It's 2:50 AM, according to my watch, and Taylor Hanson looks great.

"Come on, Isaac. Come on. We're going to go take a walk, OK?" He's easing me out of the chair now, so close that his hair is brushing my forehead. The tone of his voice is the kind mom used to use when we'd fall down and scrape things, elbows and knees, that she still uses with Zoe and Mack. The man is staring at me, not a trace of judgment anywhere. If psychologists think that babies are low on the priority list, it's entirely possible that what had put him here is worse than what put me here. I don't want to know what it is, and I say a silent prayer for him, for the little girl, as Taylor steers me toward the desk.

"Ma'am, can you tell me if there's a way to get outside the hospital without going through the front?" He chooses each word carefully, striving to not give it away but he does anyway. There's press outside. They met him on the way in. I fight the urge to hurl her candy dish against the wall, because I know instantly that it was her who called them. Her face is empty.

"Well, there's a garden on the ground floor that's for patients only..." She pauses, contemplating whether we qualify or not. "Take the elevator to the first floor and turn right, it's straight down the hall past Admitting."

Taylor nods, fumbling around in his pocket for something. He pulls out a scrap of paper, and tugs at a pen that's anchored to the desk by a ball chain. He scribbles something on it and shoves it across the top of the desk to her. "That's my pager. Call us the minute anything happens."

He's got an arm around my shoulder and I wonder how much of my weight he's supporting as we get to the elevator and press the down arrow. We get to the ground floor and I start to think about my dad, about whether I should have called him instead of Taylor. He would know what to do, given his incredible amount of delivery room, waiting room, hospital room experience. But no, I'd upped him on this one. Intensive Care, I'd be willing to bet money, he'd never done. I'm glad I called Taylor.

The garden is wide and square, surrounded on all four sides by walls of the hospital. A doughnut hole, I think. The psychologists must have had a say here too, I imagine, picking plants that don't have offensive smells or blossoms too gaudy, things that could make a person feel something. There's a path of concrete blocks set around the edge, a place for all those car accident victims to learn how to walk again, for new moms to walk with their babies in the open air. It's warm, too warm for March but I leave my jacket on anyway because I'm not sure what I'd do with it. Taylor's arm is still around my shoulder as we start to walk along the path and now I'm sure he's at least supporting some of my weight.

I get a flash of an image, one that fades quickly. It's us at our grandmother's funeral, sitting in the pew up near the front with our shoulders all pressed together, Taylor at my right and Zac at my left. Taylor is so close I can feel his shoulder blade digging into my arm. His eyes are riveted to the casket. The smell of gardenias is making me gag.

I'm crying again and Taylor tightens his grip on my arm. He doesn't say anything because he knows he doesn't have to, and because he also knows I'll kill him with my bare hands if he does. I hope I don't live to see the day when Taylor gives me a pep talk. It's 3:17 AM according to my watch, and I'm wondering about whether my wife and my baby are alive. Thinking about Susan makes me want to die, to close my eyes and disappear, never to be heard from again. If this is me, if this is my sorry state, I can not even begin to imagine what she must be feeling. I have never needed to hold someone so much in my life.

Taylor's pager beeps into the silence of the garden and he releases me to check it. It's only when I almost lose my balance that I realize just how much of me he was holding up. The green display of the pager illuminates his face for an instant. He's way too young to have to do this for me. I'm way too young to have to do this.

"That's it. Let's go."

I'm running now, out of the garden, down the hall. My fingers hit the up arrows on the elevator so many times that Taylor pulls my hands back when he finally catches up.

The doctor is already standing there when we get back. He's talking to the woman at the desk who's having another candy, a clipboard under one arm. The man with the mustache and the girl are gone. He's old enough to be my grandfather and for some reason this makes me nervous. Dr. Warren. Like something out of a soap opera.

"Mr. Hanson?"

Taylor and I both instinctively jerk our heads over our shoulders behind us. We're looking for my dad.

He starts to speak and I'm only filtering out the important pieces, the phrases that could possibly change my life in some important way. Taylor is holding me up again.

"... Some complications... a lot of blood lost... cord... detanglement... weak but stable."

"... Susan?" It's the only word that will come out of my mouth.

"She's resting, but she'll be in a lot of pain when she wakes up."

Stable. The word reverberates in my head over and over until it's the only thing I can hear. By the time my knees give, Taylor has found me a chair and has maneuvered me into it. I am a father.

I can hear Taylor and Dr. Warren talking as my face falls into my hands, my body shaking so hard I start to wonder if I could use a hospital bed myself. Their voices echo like they're standing miles away. When Taylor places a hand on my back and starts to speak, I notice that all of the tension has faded out of his voice, giving way to something else, tiredness.

"Isaac, you should go see them. The doctor says it's okay."

I'm standing now, making my way down the fluorescent hallway in between Taylor and the doctor, who has put a hand on my shoulder and is talking to me like we're best friends. I'm not really listening and I can feel myself start to go tense again as we near the ward. He notices and trails off. "How old are you, son?"

"Twenty-two."

He clears his throat as we approach the room. "Well you're doing very well under the circumstances." He explains things that I'll see when I go into the room, tubes in Susan's nose, the IV still in her arm. It is nothing to be afraid of, he contends. He holds open the door, a signal that I should go in. Taylor makes a motion indicating that he'll stay in the hallway.

The room is almost completely dark, save a single dim light above the bed. She's sleeping, her head tipped to one side and her mouth open slightly, a position I'd marveled at so many times at home but that scares me now. The tubes are where the doctor said they'd be and that doesn't make it any better. The hospital gown has little yellow ducks on it. The quiet, rhythmic beep of a monitor is the only sound, save Susan's breathing which sounds calm and empty. For some reason it makes me feel better.

I touch her hand wondering if it'll wake her up but she doesn't move at all. Her breathing doesn't even break its relentless course. Part of me is glad. I start to smooth a piece of her hair away from her forehead when I see something out of the corner of my eye. I can feel tears well up again as I more closely inspect the palm of her hand. There's a row of them, four marks made by her fingernails, little half-moons contrasting a deep crimson against the paleness of her palm. It's 3:38 AM according to my watch and my wife is sleeping soundly. I kiss her on the temple and head back out into the hall, which is still too bright, even though I should be expecting the shock by now.

Taylor is leaning against the wall with his arms folded. A pretty nurse walking by checks him out. He returns the favor. "Well...?"

I just nod in response. I'm not sure medically what's happening to her and to put it into my own terms would cheapen it somehow, I'm sure.

"Isaac, did it never occur to you to ask the doctor whether it's a boy or a girl?"

The answer forms itself in my head out of habit and falls out before I can stop it. "I don't care as long as it's healthy." Healthy. I hadn't asked the doctor that either. I start to panic and words start flying out of my mouth in no particular order.

"Woah. Calm down. The doctor told me everything. Now if you want to just hold on not freak out, I'll tell you, or you can go down the hall and see it yourself."

"Is it... OK?"

"Yes. They caught the problem before there was time to do any kind of... damage. They expect her to be into the regular ward by tomorrow."

"Her?"

"Yeah. It's a girl, Isaac." He smiles for the first time all night as I stand there, my hands hanging at my sides like an ape. It starts to sink in as he reaches out and throws his arms around me. "Congratulations. We should call mom and dad..."

"I want to see her first." I'm starting to think of things as we move further down the hall, those Baby Gap ads again, the little girl's crayons rolling across the floor, drool on my fingers.

"Name?" The nurse behind the desk looks at Taylor first, like she doesn't already know.

"Hanson."

"Oh yes, of course. She's sleeping, you know. If you wake her up now, she'll keep up every baby in this ward for the rest of the night."

"I don't care."

"I didn't think you would. Come back here and wash your hands up to the elbows. You'll need scrubs too. If your brother is coming, tell him to do the same." Her movements are perfunctory and quick. It jars me out of the slow motion that has enveloped the rest of the night. She tosses green cotton scrubs at me, and then at Taylor, who drops his onto the floor. The nurse snickers and tosses him another one.

"Sit. Right there." We're in a small room just outside of the Intensive Care nursery, papered yellow and green in the same duckie pattern that was on Susan's hospital gown. She points toward a straight-backed chair in the corner, the kind they set up in library auditoriums for lectures. "You don't have a cold or anything, right?" She's looking at Taylor, hands planted firmly on her hips.

"No... I don't think so."

"Good, because I'm supposed to throw you out of here if you do. Normally we only allow the father, you know." She's out of the room before the sentence is finished. She's back now, holding a bundle so small that it barely fills her arms. All I can see is the cotton swaddle, the same duckies as before.

I can almost feel my breath fail as she's placed in my arms. All I can see are her hands peeking out and her face, round as a softball and pinker than I ever could have imagined. She looks like Susan. It looks like I've managed thus far to not wake her, and the rest of the ward, up. The tag around her wrist reads, in even blue ink, "Hanson - girl."

"Have you got a name for my niece, or what?" Taylor reaches down and runs a finger along the curve of her cheek.

"Abigail Taylor."

"Shut up." He punches me in the arm and then remembering the precious cargo, quickly pulls his hand away. "Oh, sorry." He pats the spot protectively. "Well, I think she should continue in the family tradition of using your middle name as your first..."

"Not a chance." Suddenly the quiet bundle in my arms begins to squirm. A hand moves; five perfect little fingers stretch wide and grasp at the air in front of them. A mouth opens and a wail lets loose. Taylor laughs and I hope Abbey wakes up the whole hospital, never mind the whole ward.

It is exactly 4:00 AM according to my watch and the sun will be up in an hour and a half. My mother, who doesn't know yet that she's a grandmother, will be up in two, nudged out of bed by Zoe who has never really learned to sleep through the night and will probably stay that way until she's fourteen or so. We'll call them then, when it's late enough to wake up Zac without getting him cranky. My wife will probably be asleep for the next three days, and I couldn't argue with that plan of action if I tried. My brother Taylor, after whom my daughter is named, will be twenty in two weeks. And I'm here, holding my daughter who is an hour and a half old and screaming her brand new lungs out, because what we all have, whether we understand it yet or not, is time.