We’re home. It feels marvelous.? And quiet.? For the first time in weeks, it feels like.

Back to the story.

Someone put an oxygen mask on my face and I remember it made it so hard to breathe somehow.? I had to really concentrate.? Then, a nurse was pressing on my throat and I heard the anesthesiologist telling me I’d feel that pressure and then I’d drift off.? I have a vague recollection of not quite believing her before there was blessed nothingness.

Actually, I think I might have had a dream.? What’s more, I think it was a very pleasant, comforting, peaceful dream.? Maybe I finally had a dream about Jackson?? I don’t know.

I woke up in a room not unlike room 207 (turns out it was room 203) next to the windows and a pulled curtain on my right.? Joy, the nurse who’d taken me into the operating room, was there.? I remember being in no small amount of pain.? I moaned and Joy gave me a shot of something in my IV.? I think she ended up giving me three or so of those wonderful things (turns out it was morphine, natch) before it was said and done.? Shortly after I came to, I looked to my right and K was there, ever kind.? I remember reaching out and taking his hand.? It was so good to see him.? joy chased him away for about 10 minutes before he was back.

When I’d gone in, he went to move the van.? I’d forgotten it was still in the unloading zone out front.? He got congratulated by the lady at the parking garage.? He had to look into the backseat and see the carset, set up and ready to go.? Poor guy.? When he got back, he saw Dr. Brown and they sat and had a long talk about what had happened.

It was a “cord accident”.? He had been very high in the uterus.? A few days earlier he must have turned, wrapping the cord around his neck.? Then when he had tried to drop into the pelvis, the cord had constricted, cutting off the flow that kept him alive.? Completely senseless and unstoppable.