February 3rd

NOTE: I almost didn't publish this story on this web site. It's personal and has nothing to do with the airline industry, flying, or dual-aisle service flow. That said, United Airlines has been a big part of my life and the arrival of my daughter has completely changed my entire world. With joyous news, you often want to share with your friends and family---and JSN of course fits that bill for me.

This story signifies an end to my personal stories, as I will instead return to a more narrow focus on publishing flying/airline information on Jumpseatnews.

Part I

Door outside the operating room

February 3, 1981 – 11:00 AM

It started with a click. Then, a gentle latching metal sound. Finally, a tiny creak as the white door to my 8th grade classroom slowly opened and in walked the large office lady carrying a clipboard and yellow piece of paper. Several of my friends looked over at me. They knew.

I’m leaving. Again. I start gathering my books and Pee Chee folders to carry with me.

The last time Office Lady paid me a visit was two days ago – when my father had his attending nurse call the school to pull me out of class so I could rush over to the hospital and sit at his bedside. He thought it would be for the last time right there and then. We all did. He told me he loved me and that he was so sorry. I just sat there and told him it was going to be ok. What else could I have said?

11:02 AM
We’re walking out of the classroom now, myself and Office Lady. Usually I carry my head down so I don’t have to greet the usual stares of my classmates. But this time I actively look over at my buddy C.W. He and I exchange looks. It’s a gaze of understanding and sympathy that only 13-year-old boys can give.

11:06 AM
We’re still walking. I wish this lady would take her damn arm off my shoulder. I’m embarrassed because everyone else in all the classrooms can see us through those little rectangular windows in the doors. And I don’t like the way she is almost pushing me forward as we make our way outside the school on that cold, gray morning.

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS LATER...

February 2, 2008 – 9:20 PM

"Sweetie, are you still feeling nauseous?"

My wife was lying on the floor of our living room, trying to prop herself up with pillows. She had been feeling sick all day. There was a yellow legal pad, a pencil, and a stopwatch lying next to me. She was nine months pregnant. You could say I was beginning to worry. Oh yes, most definitely.

"Sweetie?"

No answer. Just her eyes closed.

"Sweetie!"

A mumble: "I can’t talk to you while I’m feeling these cramps. I told you that!"

"Sometimes all it takes is two words to change your life."

Her contractions were one minute apart. We saw no other labor signs earlier in the day. None whatsoever. We had just settled in for the evening. We were going to relax and watch a movie. It was going to be just another normal evening. And now this.

"We should head down to the hospital and get you checked out. Let’s go now. I’m worried about your cramping. It seems like it’s getting a lot worse. Maybe you got food poisoned?" Our hospital was located about an hour’s drive by car.

She closed her eyes and didn’t say anything again for a long time. Bailey nudged his nose against my leg. I could hear the stopwatch ticking. My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour. Perhaps it was the broccoli she had with lunch? Just a case of uncomfortable pregnancy gas? Or maybe pre-labor contractions---because our baby isn’t actually due for another week. In fact, I’ve got a --

"Get packed."

Sometimes all it takes is two words to change your life. That, or the gentle opening of a school classroom door.

That was enough for me. That was all I needed to hear. Since we’ve been down this rush-to-leave craziness road before, I jumped into action again. I gathered clothes, snacks, birthing books, and the still-ticking stopwatch from her latest cramp/contraction.

Twenty minutes later we were on the road and headed toward the hospital. We live up in the mountains outside L.A. and the dark, bumpy, white-smoke-foggy, curvy road snaking down the side of the mountain does not exactly deliver a pleasant Rush-The-Pregnant-Wife-To-Hospital driving ambience. I did my best to stay on course, among her shouts of "Slow Down!" and "Get back in your lane!" Back in the days, they would call this sort of thing an ‘E-Ticket Ride’.

As we drove onward, my wife's pain was getting worse. She was squinting her eyes closed in between yelling about my driving skills.

I was starting to get really scared. She was looking a lot more pale. We were in the middle of nowhere. There was not even cell phone reception in this area of the mountain and some city planner rocket scientist had the brilliant idea to remove the emergency callboxes from the side of the road.

I gripped the sweaty steering wheel as we drove on into the night, the lights of Los Angeles twinkling away several thousand feet below us at the bottom of the mountain.

February 3, 1981 – 11:15 AM

I’m standing in front of my school. I hate this place. I don’t fit in here. This year is really bad. I am missing a lot of school lately and I’m really behind. Miss Millerson is a snotnose know-it-all who smells really bad and you can’t even read her writing on the chalkboard.

The office lady went back inside. I still don’t see my mom’s car anywhere. A loud alarm bell is ringing now and everyone is rushing out to the playground area for the morning break. My friend C.W. sees me and comes over to stand near me in front of the school. We are talking about trying to sneak into the movie theater to see "Zombie" this weekend in Westwood. His uncle saw it and thought it was so rad. Maybe we’ll sneak out on Friday.

We both know that isn’t going to happen.

February 2, 2008 – 10:30 PM

OK, we pulled up to the hospital and I screeched to a halt in front of the ER area. There was activity everywhere; there were several ambulances shuttling people in and around the waiting area.

I jumped out right in front of the Emergency entrance and grabbed the nearest wheelchair. I raced it to the car, yanked the passenger door open, and gently (but quickly!) helped my wife out and into the chair. I fumbled with those dumb metal wheelchair footrest thingys for a few seconds while she tightened her grip on my arm from the contraction pain.

"Bailey, you wait in the car!" I shouted.

I then literally yelled out the magical words: "I’ve got a pregnant woman here!"

I really didn't want to leave Bailey in the car, parked at the busy ER in a tow-away zone ambulance area, but sometimes in life you just HAVE NO CHOICE in certain matters. Like the ‘Snoopy Come Home’ cartoon, there was a ‘No Dogs Allowed’ sign at this hospital also.

I slammed the door shut and pushed my wife toward the glass door entrance of the emergency room and ran smack into a long line of people. It was like Disneyland with the ropes and shuffling and weaving of patients back and forth. It looked like a two-hour wait.

"Are you kidding me? Are you KIDDING ME?" I muttered to no one in particular. I felt sweat dripping down my back. My mouth was dry. Mental note: when we leave to go home later tonight, there's a small bottle of Gatorade in the trunk. Check.

"Excuse me!" I shouted. No answer. A few people looked up, and then away.

I then literally yelled out the magical words: "I’ve got a pregnant woman here!"

That did the trick very nicely. Like the Red Sea, the line parted very quickly. Everyone, I mean everyone, standing around suddenly jumped aside to let her though. It must be some instinctual make-way-for-pregnant-lady hormone in human beings or something...

Right before we could make it through the second doorway, a security guard came running up to us and said, ""Hey, is that your car? You need to –"

Before he could finish, I used the magical ammo again: "My wife’s pregnant. I think she may deliver soon! Where are the elevators to the maternity ward?"

That was all it took. The security guard shouted, "Follow me!" Off we went down the corridor behind the ER, his hand holding his gun/flashlight belt to keep it from falling down his waist. The security guard (now official Pregnant Lady Escort) was running ahead of us and I was pushing my wife in a wheelchair further into the depths of the hospital.

February 3, 1981 – 11:30 AM

I’m still waiting outside for my mom. They will soon ring that bell again and everyone except me will have to trot back inside to class.

February 2, 2008 – 10:40 PM

"Oh my God. This is beyond an
E-Ticket Ride."

Third Floor. Labor and Delivery. Labor and Delivery. Labor and Delivery. Where is it! I ran down the hallway pushing my wife toward the nurses’ station. There were about 4-5 nurses sitting at the station desk.

"Excuse me," I say puffing and gasping out of breath. "We... are in... need of... your delivery services."

10:45 – 11:20 PM
The next half hour or so was a blur. We were checked in, handed triplicate paperwork to sign, my wife transferred to a hospital bed, and had a bunch of doctors come in with all sorts of gizmos, IV’s, and a big fat ultrasound machine.

As the two labor doctors looked over the ultrasound image, I saw from the expressions on their faces that I wasn’t going to need that Gatorade in my trunk after all. I was going to be a father before sunrise. I heard words like ‘effaced’, ‘plus 1’, ‘90% dilated’, ‘breech’, and saw them jot down a bunch of scribbly notes nobody could decipher.

"Mr. Lee, your wife is going to need a c-section and we need to get her into the surgery room right now."

We actually had been expecting this---as certain types of breech babies (facing feet first or laying the wrong way inside a woman’s belly) are routinely delivered by cesarean section in hospitals these days. But now that we were actually here (barely an hour or so away from that comfortable spot in our living room where were relaxed and about to settle into a good movie), the entire thing seemed unreal. There were people in white and blue outfits making my wife sign all sorts of routine I-Won’t-Sue-If-I-Die legal documents and paging the surgeons and an anthologist to prepare a spinal. The baby was coming within the next thirty minutes, they said.

Oh my God. This is beyond an E-Ticket Ride.

Oh my God.

February 3, 1981 – 11:35 AM

Everyone went back into the classrooms. I’m just standing here now. Well, at least I don’t have to sit through those boring afternoon classes today.

The playground is quiet. Some people are looking over at me as they drive up the street. I must look weird to them or something just standing here all by myself.

"Chris..."

I see my mom approaching, walking slowly.

February 2, 2008 – 11:35 PM

"Yes?" I answer.

"Here, you’ll need to wear these." A nurse tossed me some scrubs and a surgical mask to wear in the operating room.

We were standing outside some steel doors. My wife was just wheeled on ahead of us because they needed to prep her for surgery and give her some heavy-duty pain killers in her spine so she wouldn’t feel any pain---but could be awake for the delivery.

She mouthed "I love you" as she disappeared into the sterile area hallway.

Oh boy... I...

"Put this on as quickly as you can," the nurse directed. "We’ll come get you as soon as we’re ready to begin. Please wait here until we open these doors and let you in. It will be soon."

With that statement, the nurse disappeared behind the doors.

11:40-11:50 PM
For the next ten minutes, I stood alone outside some closed doors that had a red sign that said:

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
O.R. SCRUBS REQUIRED.

It was very quiet. I couldn’t hear my wife anymore or any activity beyond the doors. I didn’t see any other patients or soon-to-be dads pacing around the hallway. I was totally alone, smelling the linen/plastic smell from the surgical mask I had just attached to my face. I pulled out my camera and took a photo of the doorway.

I leaned against the wall and waited. More silence. All I could hear was the faint hum of the florescent lights above.

I looked down at my watch. It read: 11:50 PM. It was right then that it hit me: my daughter was going to be born on February 3rd. Not February 2nd or February 4th, or even on her due date of February 6th. Nope. She was definitely coming on February 3rd. I never felt

February 3, 1981 – 11:36 AM

so sure of anything else in my entire life. I already knew without needing to ask.

"Mom? What’s wrong?"

Her face had already told me everything.

"Bill’s gone."

Bill was my dad. He died of cancer that morning. I’ll never see him again.

February 2, 2008 – 11:50 PM

Another gentle click sound and both doors swung open. A nurse was standing there. Although her face was covered with a mask, her eyes were smiling.

"Okay. You can come in now. We’re ready to begin." She motioned me inward with her hand.

With that, I stepped through the doorway.

END OF PART I

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Part II

First Second of Life

February 3, 1981 - 12:03 PM

My mom and I are in the car driving back home. My hands are holding my books against my chest. I'm staring out the window at the telephone poles. I'm trying to count them as they pass by my vision while we drive by. The Pointer Sisters are singing "Fire" in the background on the radio.

You had a hold on me right from the start
A grip so tight I couldn't tear it apart

We say nothing to each other. I wish I could tell you that I blew up in tears and all sorts of stuff like that. But I didn't. I guess because I'm thirteen and don't know if I'm a child or a teenager so I'm so confused I don't know what to do. Whatever.

So I keep staring out the window and sitting there in silence.

February 3, 2008 - 12:03 AM

I sat next to my wife in a small chair they placed next to the operating table. They put up a large blue cloth between her head and belly so that you don't actually see the surgery. Of course, I could stand up and see it very easily. But I didn't want to. I didn't want to see our daughter before my wife did. I wanted us to experience our daughter's birth at the same time---and see nothing before she did.

"We could hear the tiny metal clanging sound of the surgical instruments being picked up and put down, but nothing more."

I held her hand. She was smiling and shaking. There were two anesthesiologists standing behind us, and three doctors plus four attendants working on my wife from behind the blue cloth. She and I kept looking into each other's eyes.

"I love you. You're doing great." I whisper to her. All the childbirth classes in the word don't prepare you for this.

"I love you too."

An operating room can become a very quiet place. There was only the regular beep of the monitors and some other machines hissing very faintly in the background. We could hear the tiny metal clanging sound of the surgical instruments being picked up and put down, but nothing more. They doctors worked in silence. Unbelievably, just a few short hours earlier my biggest concern had been what DVD we were going to watch that evening.

12:04 AM
"Here she comes!" The doctor suddenly said in an excited voice.

I gripped my wife's hand. We looked into each other's eyes again.

"Okay, get your camera ready. Get ready!! GET READY!"

"Oh my God sweetie!! This is it! Oh my God! "

12:05 AM - Keira Ariel Lee
On 12:05 AM, February 3, 2008, my daughter Keira Ariel Lee was born. The doctors held her up above the blue curtain so that my wife and I could see her for the first time. She had long arms and legs, a beautiful head of hair, and was kicking in the air and crying. Hearing her for the first time was something that I'll never forget. A hundred thousand million emotions all came crashing down in the span of a single second. Then another second. And then another. I took a photo of her first second of life. And then she was gone, as they doctors whisked her away to make sure she was ok and get her wrapped in a blanket. The last thing I heard was the sound of her crying. Her sweet sound of breathing in air and life on her own for the first time.

February 3, 1981 - 12:40 PM

I'm home now. I'm hearing crying in various corners of my house. There are a lot of people around dressed in nice clothes. Everyone is whispering and somebody is setting up a food platter on the counter.

People keep coming up to me and asking me how I'm doing. I've gotten the hang of just nodding my head and looking down. This seems to satisfy them and avoids any further conversation.

After awhile, people finally leave me alone and begin telling each other funny stories about my dad.

I leave and go into his bedroom. I cross the empty room and past the empty bed and enter the empty bathroom where I lock the door behind me. I'm standing in the middle of the room now and I'm not sure what to do next. There are all sorts of medical bottles on the counter. I pick a few of them up and play with them. I realize that I'm no longer a kid because I can open up a child-proof cap now. I put the bottles down and stare at the counter some more.

February 3, 2008 - 12:10 AM

The baby receiving room was right next to the operating room. While they were putting stitches in my wife, the nurse brought me over to the receiving room to hold the baby for the first time.

We enter the room and I see several people gathered around a clear plastic bassinet. In that bassinet is my daughter. She's crying and they are finishing up their examination of her.

I slowly walk over to the baby. I feel as if I'm in a dream. Keira. This is Keria. This is my daughter. She is real and she is alive and she is right in front of me. And she has her whole life in front of her.

"Sir, would you like to cut her umbilical cord?" asks Nurse #1.

Obviously, they had cut the cord already, but there was still enough left over that I was able to shakily hold a pair of scissors and cut her cord. It was tough and brittle, like cutting through thin beef jerky. She had stopped crying and was looking up at us, her blue eyes wide under the bright heat lamps.

"Would you like to hold her?" asks Nurse #2.

Would you like to hold her. Nurse #2 had no idea what she was about to have me do. I was getting dizzy. Too much had happened too quickly and I was about to collapse from the sheer emotion of everything. Just then, for some oddball reason, I thought of Bailey sitting alone out in the car---probably wondering what the hell was going on.

"Yes, I would love to." I replied.

"Dad, I'd like for you to meet your daughter." said Nurse #2 as she placed Keira into my outstretched hands.

February 3, 1981 - 1:00 PM

I finally notice a bottle of my dad's aftershave on the counter. I pick it up and slowly open it. I bring it up to my face and breathe in the smell. A single emotion hit me in just the span of a second: my dad standing there telling me to hurry up and get ready for school.

I put the bottle down and sat in the middle of the floor.

I put my head in my hands and begin to cry.

February 3, 2008 - 8:00 AM

We've moved to a regular hospital room for recovery. My wife is holding our daughter now. She looks tired, but calm and peaceful. She keeps smiling down on Keira and stroking her head. They are both falling asleep. I'm sitting in a chair nearby and watching over them.

I'm going to be leaving soon to drive Bailey over to the pet boarding place. There are dozens of things to do today; so much to plan and so much to get in order. I'm a father now. I don't have a single second to waste anymore. I'm forty years old and I'm about to begin the second half of my life--trying to fill the role of a father--and come to terms with my own that was taken away from me when I was thirteen.

Twenty-seven years ago today I was a scared kid standing in front of my school. Every year that has gone by since then I've dreaded reliving that day.

Not anymore.

I'd like to think that somehow somewhere my dad had Keira wait for just few more minutes so that she was able to be born at 12:05 AM into February 3.

Epilogue

I no longer cry with sadness on this day. I cry with joy. I no longer smell the aftershave but the sweet smell of my daughter in my arms. And I no longer hear my mom telling me that "Bill's gone." Instead, I hear my father's voice this time.

And he's saying that he's proud of me.

-- Christopher Lee, February 14, 2008

For William J. Lee and Keira Ariel Lee

Keira Ariel Lee