I’ve walked past the front desk of the hospital wanting ask my question for a good solid two weeks now. Twice a day at least, on my way to or back from the cafeteria, but they are always helping somebody find their way here or there. Yesterday, the clerk sat upright and looking vigilantly ahead like a little soldier ready for command but without purpose.
‘So, excuse me ma’am.”
‘Yes?’
‘Well, is it like the movies, I mean, you know how you can stand behind the glass and look at the new babies? I mean, I work in the hospital across the way…”
‘The seventh floor is where they’re at, and most of the time they’re in with their mommies…in their mommies rooms, but if you’re lucky, you might get to see one up there.’ Such big white teeth in her smile that said ‘Welcome!’
‘Thanks.’
So, today I took off up the elevators, riding with a very old man and his daughter. His daughter was saying something about how stubborn he was, as she carried his overnight bag and pointed at various places she thought he should stand. Before they got off at 6, she was saying that ‘he wasn’t done yet’. He said that he felt like he was ‘already done.’

I rode up to 7 where they’re just starting and walked in a circle seeming lost, looking for a long horizontal rectangular window down each of the four halls that radiated from the elevator. In the final hall to my left, the wall seemed to reflect the light a bit, and I walked toward it.

I approached the window slowly, and saw lots of cozy, twinkling heat lamps, and baby humans wrapped up in white cotton cocoons, but still squirming under color coded caplets that told their gender. They lay on their backs in clear plastic buckets, propped up adult waist high, by metal legs on wheels. In one of the buckets, the child lay stripped of clothes with a white tumor clamped at her belly, and she was slowly stretching her legs as far out as they would go and then pulling them back toward her much more quickly to test out her new range of motion. One of the attendants in white t-shirt, soft green pants, and smart shoes was swirling baby wipes over her; rinsing off the remnant vitamin sludge that had been keeping her alive all these months. The women behind the glass looked up at me and shuffled their feet protectively, and one even wheeled the baby out of my sight.

I suppose a single thirty year old childless woman dressed completely in black is a little scary near the nursery.