We Wait

“Hi. How are you guys?” “Your little baby is very sweet. How old is he?” Your little one is in the pod across from our little Lila, I think.” …These are the thoughts I have today. These are the verses I silently say when I see the parents of other little babies in the CICU. I recognize them as parents because they show signs of the same fatigue as me. Some are tired from single day of stress and imagining the worst. Others are more battle worn. They have showered and wear fresh clothes, but they are tired from having their positive thoughts wrestled away from them to run off through the hospital halls with their bags of hope.

We have these things in common. Our eyelids hang a little lower. We smile and cry in shifts. We take longer brushing our teeth because we’re looking into the mirror for our thoughts and feelings. And we wait. We wait for the next specialist to say, “I see a bright future for your little one.” We wait for our little ones to recover from anesthesia. We wait for a look of real confidence from the neurologist. We wait for another parent, who’s across the hall to say, “It’s going to be OK.”

-Mike Walls