#65 [The Baby Who Vanished into the Hallway and I Who Was Left Behind] My Son's Story Part 4

What was beside the delivery table
was not my long-awaited son

but a large, dark red,
slickly glistening placenta

Pop,
pop,
pop.

Only the sound of the needle stitching
the episiotomy wound echoed.

Even though I shouldn't have had any anesthesia,
for some reason, I felt absolutely no pain.

"Is my son... going to be okay?"

I asked the midwife in a raspy voice.

"He'll be fine.
Since he was in the womb for so long,
he just has a lot of amniotic fluid stuck in his throat.
We're clearing it out now, so
you don't need to worry."

I could feel the tension unraveling
at the nurse's gentle smile.

Even though it should have only been a few minutes,
on that delivery table,
it felt like an agonizingly long time.

A few minutes later...

The nurse carefully wrapped my son in a towel,
smiled kindly, and handed him to me.

With a bright red, scrunched-up face,
my son, crying with all his might,
was in my arms.

"Oh, how precious you are."

"Thank you so much for being born."

—At that moment,

a vibrant field of flowers suddenly spread
across my monochrome field of vision.

"Life is rose-colored."
There is such a cliché saying,
but that is no metaphor.

The sterile delivery room,
the scenery outside the window,
everything I could see
looked as if it were framed in roses.
The world reflected in my eyes was far too beautiful.

Ah, so this
is what they call "happiness."
It was the day of the peak of my happiness, perhaps the greatest in my life.

I will never let this child
go through the same things I did!

Facing the tiny life that had entered intensive care,
I will protect this child no matter what.
That is what I firmly decided in my heart.

On a hot, hot summer day when I was 20.