DON'T PANIC

I had a very busy day ahead of me with a big project needing to get out the door tomorrow morning; it was going to be solid work from the moment I got in. As I stepped into my office my phone rang. My wife told me in tears that she was bleeding. I told her to keep calm, phone the maternity hospital, and that I was on my way. The journey home is 30mins. As I drove I begged God that my wife and the baby would be okay. I felt angry; God better not dare let anything happen to them...I think if you are going to try and get aggressive with someone it might as well be a being who is a lot bigger than you and owes you nothing! As I drove my prayer changed, and I asked not that my wife and baby would be okay, but that at least my wife would survive, that I couldn’t bear to lose them both.

12mins later I pulled up to find her standing outside in tears. She got in the car and we headed to the hospital. By now I was as white as her and asked her to tell me exactly what was happening...and she told me she had had some spotting. My sense of relief was incredible. When she had said bleeding, through her tears, I thought the worse. Spotting is normal. By now we were on the way to the hospital and, as we went, I tried to calm her, my driving now returning to a normal speed. When we got to the hospital she was given an examination, we listened to the baby’s heartbeat and breathed a sigh of relief. After she had calmed down a bit I dropped her home, and went back to work. By now it was 11am and I had lost a big chunk of my day. By 5pm I was frantic about the work that wasn’t going to be ready and that I was going to need to work till 7.30pm when the building is locked up. I then received a call saying the client was not collecting the manuals I was working on until Friday, so was able to sit down catch my breath and then go home.

It’s easy for me to think about the scare, the fear, the uncertainty, all the emotions that I went through, but perhaps I should be focusing instead on my healthy wife, healthy baby, and a deadline that I can now meet without killing myself.

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man