Life After Hope

Week twenty-nine.

It’s four o’clock in the morning, and I feel exhausted—I haven’t slept for two days. A tremendous amount of adrenaline is rushing through my veins, keeping me awake. My mind is hyper-alert, buzzing with turbulent thoughts and images. It’s working extra hard to catch up with what happened a few hours ago.

I’m walking down a dark, long hallway. In front of me, a company of doctors and nurses. They are pushing a “clear-box” isolette. Inside, a tiny baby.

My baby.

I’m walking on autopilot, paying no attention to the surroundings, stumbling on the flat floor. One nurse—a young woman in her late twenties judging by her voice (she is wearing a mask)—tries to talk to me hoping it would distract me from my anxious thoughts.

She knows I’m worried.

She knows I’m a father.

I answer her every question. I tell her where I’m from, what I do for a living. I try hard to stay focused but have a hard time. It’s difficult to think about things that seem so trivial in this moment. I can’t think of anything other than my daughter.

My eyes and mind are glued on the isolette, on my daughter’s weak little body.

She lays still, wrapped in a transparent plastic film that’s supposed to keep her warm. Her body is pale and immovable, except for the occasional rising of the chest caused by the influx of air pushed through a clear plastic tube placed in her mouth.

I can tell she’s struggling to breathe.

I have a hard time believing my eyes. No one thought this little girl would make it this far. But she did. My daughter defied the medical prognosis, proving all my fears wrong.

Hope was born against all odds.