New Life

Yesterday, here in the hospital, there were no less than ten babies born down on the birth wing. How do I know this? Because this particular hospital does a stunning thing: every time a baby is born here, someone pushes a button somewhere and then "Lullaby And Goodnight" chimes in all over the hospital. You can hear it from your room; you can hear it when you're lying there in a hallway waiting for an x-ray; you can hear it on your way to the cafeteria. Usually, the song comes on once, perhaps twice in a given day. Never more than three times. That is, until yesterday. Ten times, from about 7:30 AM until 8 at night. I counted.

One of the therapists here deflated my wonder with a splash of cynicism. "I know why there are so many births," she says. "Tax deductions. The economy's pretty rough, you know."

How mean of her to bring me down to earth like that. But even if she's right, that parents ask for labor to be induced so that the child tax credit can be claimed for 2008, I'm choosing to focus on the wonder of so many births in so brief a time.

I'm also choosing to marvel at the idea of playing the Lullaby song throughout the hospital every time a new life takes its first gasp of air. Whose idea was that? How brilliant. I think about the nurse cleaning soiled bedsheets for the 6th time today, or the elderly patient who wonders if his broken hip will ever heal, or the ER doc who just lost a battle to save a life. They all hear the magical music at the same time. Do they notice? Does it lift their spirits, even just a little? How can it not?

I got some New Life news of my own yesterday: my doctor said I can start walking again, after four agonizing weeks-that-feels-like-years of calling this hospitally place my home and getting around in a chair on wheels. This is step one to going home, though that might still be a week or more away. But it is a step nonetheless. And I took that literal first step today and it felt difficult and painful and good and gravity-defying all at once. And if I didn't know better, I thought I heard Lullaby And Goodnight playing yet again. But this time it was only in my head.