Last tuesday Jen called me at work and said that the bleeding that had been mystifying us for a couple of days had gotten worse, and that she wanted to go have it looked at. She sounded worried, so I left work and drove quickly home. I met her in the driveway. Our friend Diana was there to drive her to the hospital (at this point I still thought she was going to go have a simple sonogram). I followed them in my car to Valley Medical Center where we bypassed the emergency room, electing instead to go directly upstairs to Labor and Delivery. We explained our problem and were seen quickly (by hospital standards). A lot of the staff remembered her from her previous stay in December, so they already knew a bit about the history of the pregnancy. It felt like a bad kind of deja-vu. They saw us in the same triage room we had been in last time, one bed over. The bleeding was copious enough to worry them and it was determined that is was not coming from the cervix, but through it from the inside - most likely from her placenta. The doctors started talking about c-sections, and the feeling of deja-vu grew more intense. At least this time we were closer to the baby's due date. Our hopes of having a home birth were dashed, and before we knew it Jen was being wheeled down the hall to an operating room. I was going to be able to witness the operation, but had to get into hospital scrubs. I found myself in a little supply room where I struggled into the necessary garments. Through a gap between some shelves I could see out the window as the sky began to darken in preparation for the oncoming night. On a shelf behind my I noticed boxes containing something called "skin staplers". Out in the hall I could hear a nurse (or perhaps a doctor) discussing the operation, calling it "another c-section". I wanted to walk out there and introduce myself to her as Another C-section's husband, but thought better of it. I reminded myself that what was hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime event for me was probably a several-times-a-day occurence for them. Then a nurse rushed in and told me they were ready to begin the operation. I dropped the bag containing Jen's clothes, pulled on a mask that was hastily handed to me, and rushed into the operating room... (to be continued)