
The Hospital
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I was eighteen years old and my wife was having a baby. She was in labor. She had just called me at work and told me that they were on the way to the hospital and to meet them halfway. I told them I’d be in the parking lot at the church in Finney Switch. I told my boss as I was going out the door. I didn’t ask I just told him...he knew better than to argue. I had to hurry. Dad was driving and he didn’t waste ANY time. It didn’t matter that they were ten miles off pavement down a dirt road and it was raining cats and dogs. No little Texas thunderstorm would stop my dad.
I had ten miles to go on interstate highway. Dad had fifteen miles to go and ten miles was knee deep mud. I’d better get my ass in gear or he’d beat me there.
Mom had died two weeks ago and dad had offered to help my wife until after the baby was born. Mom missed seeing her first GrandBaby by two weeks.
I had barely got it parked at Finney before that little Suzuki SideKick came screaming into the lot. The rear passenger door popped open I jumped in and off we went...he barely slowed down. My wife’s eyes were big as saucers and she screamed a lot. I don’t know if it was from the labor pains or the drive.
It was a hell of a drive. Dad was a driver. Lately he drove trucks. He’d driven other things he’d told me..but didn’t go into a lot of detail. It was about sixty miles to the hospital in Lubbock and we got there faster than was possible. I didn’t know that little Suzuki would go that fast. Several times in the driving rain dad would come upon a cop. He was blinking his lights and honking his horn trying to get the cops to help us. Escort maybe. The cops never managed to keep up. Doesn’t seem possible but I was there...guess they got scared driving thru blinding rain and golfball sized hail and a hundred miles per hour….dunno. I was mostly tending to my wife. Looking out the window was just too scary.
We got there. We pulled into the ambulance drive thru at the hospital and angry people came storming out. Dad didn’t let them get the first word out before he used “command voice” (whatever the hell that was) and had them carting my wife into the hospital. Then dad drove off, as calm as could be...and parked the car. I could have sworn I heard sirens in the distance but no cops ever showed up.
We were ushered into a ‘birth room’ and about the time dad showed up my daughter got borne. Dad cried a little...
or maybe it was just water from the storm.