When Family Goes to the Hospital

It's hard to focus today.

Life is beautiful. Our children are blessings. My daughter is so beautiful that I could watch her sleep for hours. (Which is why I wake up way, way too early in the mornings.)

At my in-laws' last night, while I breastfed my daughter, my husband told me that my sister wanted me to call her. She told me that both my dad and my sister-in-law were in the hospital. My sister-in-law is 38 weeks pregnant. My dad is 63. My sister-in-law's water had broken. My dad had seen blood in his urine.

I didn't have to try to be excited for my brother and his young family. This is their second child.

Since I'd handed off my daughter to make phone calls, she'd been screaming. As I spoke to my brother, I took my baby from my husband's sister. She calmed down but let out a wail every now and then. All I wanted to do was cry with her.

Blood in his urine. The only men I've known who've had that problem have gone home with a prostate cancer diagnosis. I almost don't want to type that because I don't want to acknowledge the possibility.

As soon as we got in the car to go home, my husband made a joke that I now forget. I didn't laugh but instead snapped at him. He told me I didn't have to get defensive, and I responded, now crying, that all I wanted to do was cry. So I did. He couldn't do much from the front seat but ask occasionally if I was OK. He told me there was nothing to cry about yet; we can't jump to any conclusions. "It could be a million different things," he said. Only it can't.

I fed my daughter again when we got home. I cleaned the kitchen and got lunches ready for the week. My husband told me it would be OK and asked me if I trusted him. I lied on his chest and listened to his heart beat until I fell asleep.

I'm waiting on news of my new niece or nephew. I'm waiting on news from my father. He wants this baby to be a boy, saying it's his only chance of carrying on the Russell name. I want it to be a boy for him.

But I almost don't. Will he give up, stop fighting for life if he knows the name is going to live on?