On hospitals

The corridors were a maze; hurried people in scrubs ushered us deeper and deeper into the unseen bowels of the London Royal Hospital emergency room. Injury victims waiting room, and she was offended because she wasn't even injured. A young boy sat across from us. When they told him he'd broken his arm, he cried, and his friend had no sympathy to offer. Another drunken fight. The halls were full of them. 

By the time we left the hospital, she sun began to rise over London Town. It spread a pink sheen over St Paul's dome, glittered in the skyscrapers and dusted the dirty streets with a quiet calm. We sat at the front of a double decker and it felt like the entire city lay at our feet. It was perhaps the greatest moment yet, and the bus driver didn't charge us fare. 

There's a picture in my inbox, with other hospital sheets, a hundred times I've seen it already. A small baby lies in his mother's arms, a tiny hand clutching at reality and clothes he must wait to grow into. He looks like his father. I saw it at that last pub, right before the taxicab and the hospital turmoil, and I cried in the dim lights at the wooden table, overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder. He lives now, he exists now, he is here. He doesn't know it yet, but he is my family. 

I loved him before I knew how.