The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture
took me aside.
“Look, you’re going to have a job tonight,” he said, “and you’re
the only person who can do it. Your wife is halfway to clinical shock. If
she goes into shock, we can treat her. But it won’t be easy for us. So you
have to help her remain calm. We want you to keep her with us.”
So often, everyone pretends that husbands have an actual role
when babies are born. “Breathe, honey. Good. Keep breathing. Good.”
My dad always found that coaching culture amusing, since he was out
having cheeseburgers when his first child was born. But now I was being
given a real job. The anesthesiologist was straightforward, but I sensed
the intensity of his request. “I don’t know what you should say to her or
how you should say it,” he told me. “I’ll trust you to figure that out. Just
keep her off the ledge when she gets scared.”
They began the C-section and I held Jai’s hand as tightly as I could.
I was able to see what was going on and she couldn’t. I decided I would
calmly tell her everything that was happening. I’d give her the truth.
Her lips were blue. She was shaking. I was rubbing her head,
then holding her hand with both of mine, trying to describe the
surgery in a way that was direct yet reassuring. For her part, Jai tried
desperately to remain with us, to stay calm and conscious.
“I see a baby,” I said. “There’s a baby coming.”
Through tears, she couldn’t ask the hardest question. But I had the
answer. “He’s moving.”
And then the baby, our first child, Dylan, let out a wail like you’ve
never heard before. Just bloody murder. The nurses smiled. “That’s
great,” someone said. The preemies who come out limp often have the
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