14 April, 2011
RFD2
An Alien In a New Galaxy
Ever since I was a little girl, I always imagined aliens to look like little green people with four or less fingers, a big eye or a bunch of little ones, and two short stubby antennas on their heads who fly around outer space in gigantic UFOs and speak different dialect tones. Aliens are said to be nonexistent, so I will leave picturing an alien to your imagination.
I am taught such creatures do not exist so I cannot believe my eyes as they stumble across a computer screen that is attached to a television that shows an alien in a thick, liquid bubble, inside me. Through the screens is the only way to see him, otherwise he is an unknown creature to the naked eye. Technology allows me to see him and with my hands and body I can feel him. He does not speak any tones yet, but he does yawn, swallow, hiccup, "breathe" and blink just like humans. He has only a couple fingers visible at the moment, but more are on their way soon. He has two big eyes that are closed now, a tiny nose and small lips that looks just like mine. No hair on his head like mine, yet, but there are no antennas either. What kind of creature could this be that I am staring at? A UFO is his own spaceship that he just floats and swims in all day long. His UFO is his safety bubble with its own o-zone layer that protects him from all harm of the outer galaxy, also known as his outer space called Earth. [[THESIS]] Definitely an alien, could be the only word to describe him to some, but I like to call him my baby boy. [[THESIS]]
As the clock strikes twelve the night passes and grows to the morning of February 22 two-thousand and eleven. I start to end my day, or so I thought, finishing my marathon of 'The OC' a television show I love to watch over and over. One forty-five strolls along the clock and my eyes start to get super heavy. This alien makes me wobble and waddle like a duck strolling along a river bend. I slowly make my way over to a ship to take me to never, never land, and I realize just before setting foot on dock that there is water every where. Calmly, I walk back to the bathroom to check myself. I exit the bathroom for the second time and turn left to my moms room, where she is laying in bed doing her own Sudoku print outs. "Uhm, mom? I think my water just broke" I say to her as she springs up from her bed faster than lightning. I look at the clock and notice that my water broke at two in the morning. I quietly say to myself, "Finally, the UFO is about to land and I am finally getting by body back to myself."
My mom and sister are running frantically around the house gathering things together to go to the hospital, while I am moving at one mile per day, trying to pack my things together. I grab my pink Dakine backpack that is bitten by my four year old brown floppy ear bunny and stuff it with a toothbrush, toothpaste, a hairbrush, my phone charger, a stem cell kit, and a change of clothes to come home in when I get discharged. Feeling like I forgot something useful as I always do, I grab my cheap, no brand, yellow purse that has everything I need in it to get through a day or two. Packed and ready to go, I grab a dark, vibrant, almost blood red towel and squeeze my light brown, Kona Wind brand, rubber slippers on my swollen feet, kiss my bunny good-bye and head out the door.
The morning is dark like night. The air is cooler and thinner than an air conditioner, I love how it makes my skin feel so clean. The stars are shinning almost as bright as the orange street lights that line both sides of the street outside my tan and beige Kahala town house. Two parallel lines of cars line the street leaving absolutely no spaces except in front of the designated fire hydrants. My sister, mom and I walk to the back parking lot in a single file line to Lola, my moms two thousand and nine, tomato red Corolla. This early morning, Lola is driven by my mom to the hospital and returns back home with my sister.
Entering the freeway from the on-ramp heading west from Kahala, my mom says, "At least there is no traffic right now, we will get there in no time." In about ten minutes we arrive at a sign that reads Kapiolani Medical Center for women and children, next to a pink building with huge windows and sliding doors. We leave my sister at the door entrance with Lola as she returns home to study for school tomorrow. We arrive here so quickly, my mom was right. It is only two thirty a.m. when I check in at the pink hospitals front desk and they give us directions on where to go. I think being at this hospital is giving my mom mixed feelings since nineteen almost twenty years ago I was born in this very hospital, and now her baby of three is going into labor.
The feeling of water oozing from my aliens UFO, is such a weird feeling. It feels like water is escaping all over the hospitals white tile floor. However, my water and presence does not seem to phase the young adults that are sitting in the waiting room watching the Disney channel, a television station meant to be watched by little kids. I giggle as I watch how entertained they are by the innocent jokes on screen, because I must look the same way to my mom when I am entertained by that station. I had a short wait in the waiting room that should not be considered a room. This waiting room is not like the waiting rooms you see on television shows that is a separate room from the hallways with a door and windows, but a "room" with just a television and a handful of chairs in the corner of the labor and delivery wings entrance. I sat there no more than two minutes leaving me no time to mass text everyone the huge news.
After the short wait, I walk down a hallway between two huge automatic wooden doors to what appears to be a whole other floor. I than struggle to unload all my bags and dump them on my moms outstretched arms as a nurse takes my weight for a quick second. I arrive at my first room, that just so happens to be the same room I was in earlier last year for a check up. It is such a small room, it seems to be the size of half a bedroom. This room is a glass door that lines all the rooms down the hall and seems to be separated by a thin wall on both sides. In each room is cramped with a sink (a small toilet hidden inside it), a bed, one chair, a television and a wall full of gloves and supplies. Everything is happening so fast, it is as if the little alien is controlling the whole universe to make way for his grand entrance.
I am finally getting in the hospital mood, in other words clothed in nothing but my gown and under the warm heated sheets in bed number one. A bunch of nurses start hooking me up to monitors and pricking my veins with millions of needles that are either draining blood or pumping fluids in me. I am finally finishing mass texting everyone who is a close friend or a family member, when my nurse enters with a black and blue wheel chair that looks like it is designed for a ten foot tall persons torso. Just through another set of automatic wooden doors, down the hall, around the corner, is a door with the golden numbers 301 nailed to it. This is room number two and I tell my mom that, "I feel lost in this hospital, it is a huge maze with all these automatic doors everywhere." Kicking, kicking, kicking so hard the alien is pumping all the liquid from inside me out. He must know that I am being wheeled to the room where he is going to make his grand entrance into his new galaxy.
This room is twice the size of my first room and way colder than any room I ever stayed in before. It is bigger than my bedroom at home, and bigger than any master bedroom I have seen with my own eyes. But all I can do now in this room is wait, and wait and wait, as he kicks harder and more often. It is still dark outside and he is still submerged in darkness. Nurses come in and out of my room every half an hour, leaving my mom and I no time to sleep, not that the cold air conditioner or the alien allows me at east to sleep. It is so cold, nurses pile more than seven heated blankets on me as my body is shivering from the cold medicine coursing through my veins. Sooner than ever it is light out and eleven o'clock came out of no where.
Shortly after my mom and I are finishing up watching two new released movies for free on the hospitals television, due to not getting any sleep, I receive the wonder drug to kill the pain. This experience is one I am going to remember always. It is the worst pain ever and the most abnormal feeling in the world. This epidural is a sharp but dull pain that sends chills and spastic feelings up and down my spine and legs. Thinking I am going to break my nurses finger as she tells me to hunch my back, relax my shoulders and squeeze her finger when I feel the unusual pain in my spine. My nurse than announces she will expect me to deliver around midnight. The alien must have felt my pain from the shot, on the back of his UFO because the delivery came sooner than the nurse expected. Rather than waiting twelve hours, two hours came with a lot of cramping pains from him pounding "let me out of here." Some wonder drug, I could feel everything from the cramping to the pushing to the wonderful relief. Finally the last hour went by faster than lightning and the alien, my baby finally arrives at two thirteen p.m.
This tiny alien from his UFO is the most quiet and cutest thing I ever seen. Tones start to seek out of his little chest as he lays on top of his UFO and grasps my finger tip. He grips it tight and we instantly gaze into each others eyes, bonding like we knew each others faces for years. He is all slimy, a grayish purple color, soft and squishy. If you did not know he was a new born baby you could think he is an odd purple alien with no antennas. I do not care what he looks like, just as long as he is mine, my flesh and blood, my one and only little purple alien.
When he blinks his eyes it still looks alien. The movement is so slow motion, almost like he is uncomfortable as he squints his whole face with every blink he takes. His eye lids are so swollen and puffy I do not know what seems to be a thin and transparent layer of skin that covers his eyes when he blinks his uncomfortable blink. His eyeballs are all black when he opens them and they have no white around them. Miraculously within minutes, he starts to look different to my eye, he is more human like. He is no longer slimy, he gains color in his squishy skin and what use to be the unexplained sounds that emerged from him is starting to sound like a feeble cry. I continue to examine every square inch of every detail on his little seven pound and one-point-one ounce body, from his hair on his head, to his eyelashes that are long for a newborn, to his extremely long fingers and toes.
I have seen him from a computer and television screen, pictures of a 3D pixel face and he seemed like galaxies away, to a real life three dimension physical being, laying right in my arms in front of my eyes. As we part our own ways now, I can only imagine, my own little purple alien crawling amongst us humans, till the day we meet again. Slowly growing everyday, making our one UFO called Earth his own personal galaxy waiting to be reborn again.
