I remember fighting to stay conscious as the room filled with doctors. One I had never seen walked over to my husband, shaking his head. I remember my husband pushing through the crowd to grab my hand as he told me our perfect baby boy was gone. I remember screaming but not being able to hear it. With Simon’s life gone, the focus became saving mine.
Several needles pierced both my arms, though the sensation was muted. Someone commanded another to run to get blood from the bank. The doctors and nurses were urgently yelling, but it all faded to a dull hum as my ears filled with a high-pitched ring instead. I didn’t look away from the lights above me, my body completely numb. A new heaviness settled into my gut. The triangle pattern of the bulbs glaring down imprinted in my memory.
I remember closing my eyes and wishing I could fade away, but something kept bringing me back. I wasn’t allowed to leave. Still fixed on the lights on the ceiling, the only thought in my head, the only words in my mind, were, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:18).
I could not have recalled or quoted that scripture a day before. Those were not words I knew. And yet they played over and over again in my mind. In those initial moments after Simon died, I felt more like an observer than a participant, but each time I tried to drift away, those words would snap me back into my body.
