The last hug I remember as a man without a child happened in a corridor of the Rotunda Hospital, under lights too bright for three in the morning. My wife, Niamh, was wearing one of those thin blue gowns that make everyone look smaller than they are. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, and she was trying to smile at me, though her hand kept tightening around mine every time another pain came.
We had walked past that hospital a hundred times before, back when pregnancy was still only an idea we discussed over chips on Moore Street or pints near Parnell Square. We used to joke that someday we’d go in there as two and come out as three. It sounded sweet and simple then, like something that happened to other people in films. Nobody tells you that love can become fear so quickly, or that the person you love most can be right beside you and still feel out of reach.
The pregnancy had been mostly ordinary until it wasn’t. Niamh’s blood pressure went strange in the final week, and the midwife’s voice changed from cheerful to careful. That was the first thing I noticed. People think bad news announces itself loudly, but sometimes it arrives as a pause. We had come in with a half-packed bag, thinking we might be sent home. Instead, we were told the baby needed to come now.
I remember the small, ridiculous details because the big ones were too frightening to hold. The vending machine coffee tasted like burnt cardboard. A man in the waiting area had odd socks on. My phone had 12 percent battery, and I kept looking at it as if it might offer advice. Niamh asked me to ring her mam, then changed her mind, then asked me again. She kept apologising for being scared, which broke my heart more than the fear itself.
When they said I had to wait while they prepared theatre, Niamh looked at me as if I was the one leaving. A nurse, kind but firm, told us we had a minute. That minute has stretched across my life since.
I hugged her carefully at first because of the bump, because of the wires, because I was afraid of hurting her. Then she pulled me closer with surprising strength and whispered, “Don’t let them take him anywhere without you.” We didn’t know he was a him. We hadn’t wanted to find out. But she said him, and I nodded like I could control anything in that building.
I told her she was brave. It was a useless thing to say, but it was all I had. She said, “I’m not. I just love him already.” Then she put her face into my neck, and for a few seconds the whole hospital disappeared. There was no beeping, no footsteps, no fear. There was just the two of us, the same two who had once missed the last Luas and walked home laughing in the rain, the same two who had fought over paint colours in a tiny flat in Drumcondra, the same two who thought love meant choosing each other every day. We didn’t understand yet that love was about to get bigger and wilder and far less tidy.
When the nurse touched my shoulder, Niamh let go first. That was the part that hurt. I watched them wheel her away, and I stood there with my arms still shaped around her. I felt suddenly unemployed by the moment, useless in my own life. I had always thought of myself as calm, but I went into the bathroom and cried into a paper towel until my name was called.
Our son, Cillian, arrived at 3:42 a.m.,
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