The Long Walk....

The Long Walk…

“We need to deliver your baby NOW”…. The words hit me like a mortar shell against a concrete wall.

I am crying, holding back sobs. “No Lord, No!” keeps resonating in my ears. I tell the nurse I have to use the bathroom. She reluctantly allows me this one last piece of freedom before my body is cut open and my baby is torn from my womb months too early. I gaze into the mirror. I am shaking. Tears are already staining my hospital gown. I grasp the sink and breathe. “Lord, please stay with me” I utter in the midst of my fear. A peace washes over me and greets my anxious body. The shuddering begins and I have to hold the wall as I make my way back to the nurse who worriedly waits with a wheelchair; tears are in her eyes, tempted to spill over.

Running, the nurse is running as she pushes my wheel chair around the corner. We enter the elevator and the nurse hurriedly presses the button for the next floor up. Outside the sun is shining down, sending shimmering sparkles across the water in the 4-tiered fountain below. The door opens and we are running again. I look back at the elevator, to see its final seconds of the doors closing with a small thump and I watch as the lights above count down to the floors below. Then I see it… the glass walk into a reality I am not ready to accept.  Sharp sunlight floods the threshold in blinding light. I look around the empty lobby. The sunlight dances against this marble floor, sparkling and shimmering in a wave of methodical color.  And then we are inside this glass tunnel of beauty. I glance left and then right. There are people in the sky bridge across from us, slowly making their way back to the parking garage. The tunnel is hot, at least 10 degrees warmer than the lobby had been. The sunlight beats in strong, warming my shaking body. Its warmth wraps around me, enveloping me in a safe cocoon… as if God himself is carrying me down this sunlit path.

As quickly as it starts, it ends, and we are back in reality. Back in another lobby, running in a race to the next bank of elevators. Fingers jab the buttons on the console as we wait for the doors to open. Eternity seems to fill the walls of this cell, as I am lifted in the sky to my fate. Doors are opening and rushed nurses meet us, as double doors swing open with a bang.

I breathe in deep as I see the entrance of my hospital room. Lord, stay with me….