The drive to Newport was a tunnel of darkness. The heater struggled against the February bite, blowing air that was barely warmer than the frost outside. Every bump in the road was a physical blow. In the backseat, she was silent between the waves, staring out at the passing skeletons of the trees. When the contractions hit, she didn't cry out; she hummed—a low, vibrating note that seemed to anchor her to the seat.

My hands were numb on the wheel despite the gloves. The windshield kept trying to fog from the inside, and I had to keep wiping it clear with my sleeve, the glass cold and slick under my palm. The dashboard lights cast everything in a sickly green glow.

Newport appeared as a smudge of orange sodium light on the horizon. The Royal Gwent Hospital loomed like a fortress of glass and steel, the emergency lights pulsing like a slow, red heartbeat against the fog.

The transition into the hospital was a shock of white light and the smell of industrial lemon. The warmth of the lobby felt aggressive after the bitter cold outside—artificial, overheated, making my skin prickle. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed, casting everything in a flat, colorless glare that made people look like ghosts. The floor was polished linoleum that squeaked under our shoes, and every sound echoed—voices, footsteps, the distant beep of monitors, the rattle of gurneys being wheeled down corridors.

Then, the wheelchair. The squeak of rubber on linoleum. The elevator ride felt like it lasted a lifetime, the numbers ticking up in a slow, agonizing crawl. 4. 5. 6. Maternity.

I sat in the plastic chair in the maternity waiting room, the one designed for men who didn't know how to sit still. My hands were too large for the armrests. My knees were too close to my chest. I'd been in rooms like this before—hospital corridors, accident wards, the kind of places where time moves differently because the stakes are higher. But never like this.

Through the double doors, I could hear the soft hum of the ward. Somewhere beyond that wall, a girl I'd met when she was twelve years old was becoming a mother. Somewhere beyond that wall, the world was breaking open and being born at the same time.

I stood up and began to pace. Three steps to the water dispenser. Three steps back. The fluorescent lights hummed a tune that seemed designed to drive a person mad. Every few minutes, a nurse would push through the double doors, and I'd look up with a foolish hope, as if they were coming to tell me something had changed. They never were.

The thing about being old is that you've seen more endings than you have beginnings. You know what loss looks like. You know the weight of it. And you know that sometimes, when you try to build something beautiful, the world finds a way to smash it into pieces.