First goal

When I picked up the phone, I jumped. The bright screen showed 18, eighteen missed calls. My heart skipped a beat. A bad feeling came over me. All the calls were from the same number. My wife's. I immediately pressed redial. The phone rang once, then the other party picked up.

Illustration photo.

My wife's voice rang out, choked, broken, only able to utter one word, as if shouting into my ear:

- Give birth!

I was petrified. How could it be so fast? Just yesterday I took my wife to the doctor, the doctor said the fetus was only 36 weeks, almost four weeks to go until the due date. Private hospital, modern equipment, the doctor is a leading expert, could it still be wrong? Or… my child did not want to wait for the right day, the right month, but decided to come to this world in its own way?

I didn’t have time to change, I put on my soccer uniform, and drove like the wind towards the hospital. The sky was dark after a hot day. The streetlights cast yellow light on the puddles left from the afternoon rain. My heart was pounding like a drum on the soccer field, except this time it wasn’t for a goal, but for a birth, a match without a coach, without spectators, but the first and biggest match of my life as a father. When I got there, I rushed into the delivery room. My wife lay there, her face pale, her eyes swollen with tears.

- What football are you playing that you just arrived at this hour?

My wife's voice choked with a mixture of sadness and pain. Next to her, her sister, who had given birth three times, immediately spoke up to reassure her:

- It's still not too late, you won't give birth right away. Just calm down, don't worry.

My wife grimaced, her hands occasionally clenching the bed sheet as the pain flared up. She recounted that while she was cooking dinner, her stomach began to ache. Panicked, she could only call me, call and call, desperately, but no one answered. With no other choice, my wife had to call a friend in the same apartment building, then ask the building's medical staff to take her to the emergency room.

I gently squeezed my wife’s hand. A sharp, needle-like pain rose in my chest. Guilt. Just because of a football match. Just because of a few hours of personal pursuit, I almost missed the most sacred moment of my life, when my child was born. After more than an hour of continuous monitoring, the doctor examined, measured the indicators, then looked at the monitor, shook his head slightly and said:

- We have to have a cesarean section. Our amniotic fluid is running low.

That seemingly short sentence made the air in the room suddenly thick. My wife trembled. Although the doctor had advised her about the possibility of a cesarean section, when faced with a real surgery, my wife still could not hide her anxiety. I tried to stay calm and immediately called my mother. She used to be a surgical nurse, retired for several years now but still remembered the names of every good doctor. Thanks to my mother's connection, after only a few minutes, we chose a good doctor in the obstetrics department. The operating room was prepared. My wife was wheeled away, lying on a stretcher, her face pale but still trying to look at me. I followed her to the door of the operating room, held her hand tightly and whispered:

- I'm here. The doctor is good. It's okay.

The operating room door slowly closed, blocking me outside with a myriad of thoughts swirling in my head. My wife and I sat silently on the waiting chairs. The night sky gradually covered with a thin layer of clouds, then the rain began to fall, quietly and steadily. The first drops of rain of the season tapped on the hospital roof, the sound echoing in my heart like a prelude to the sacred things that were about to happen. An indescribable feeling arose, at once anxious, hopeful, and choked with emotion. I told myself over and over again: “It’s good that it’s raining. The sky is blessing me. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

The entire fourth floor was silent. The yellow light scattered on the white tiles, casting my shadow down the hallway. The clock's hands were still ticking, but each minute dragged on, longer than a grueling game on the soccer field. I stood up, sat down, then stood up again. My eyes never left the door at the end of the hallway, the place that separated me from the two lives facing the moment of their lives.

Then the door opened. The nurse came out, holding a newborn baby in her arms. As she walked, she called out loudly:

- Where is the baby's father?

I jumped up, my heart stopped beating for a moment. I rushed forward, catching the little creature that was moving slightly in the nurse's arms. A tiny, rosy body, eyes still closed, a pretty mouth pouting as if wanting to cry. The tiny hands and feet kicked weakly in the air, as if looking for the first support of his life. I hugged the baby to my chest. Tears welled up without me realizing it, a warm stream, rolling down my cheeks. In that moment, I knew: I had truly become a father.

We were taken to the postnatal care room. I gently placed my baby in the heating lamp, his skin as thin as paper, the pale yellow light covering his body with the first layer of warmth of his life. I took the breast milk that had been prepared, carefully feeding him the first sip to clean his intestines. He opened his mouth, tightly held the bottle, and sucked passionately. I sat beside him, not taking my eyes off him. Every feature on that tiny face seemed to have been engraved in my heart since long ago. He looked exactly like his father, I thought. This nose, these ears, even the sleepy eyes when they slightly opened, all were like a tiny copy of me back then. I bent down, quietly checking each finger, each toe, each tiny joint. A silent fear crept in, an invisible fear that perhaps any father or mother had experienced: Fear that the baby was not healthy, fear that something was wrong. But then I breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was fine. My baby was completely healthy. A gratitude welled up in me, both light and sacred, as if life had just given me a miracle.

My wife was wheeled back to the room after a few hours of post-operative observation. Her face was still pale, but her eyes were softer, no longer panicked like before. She looked back, saw the baby lying peacefully in the incubator, and her eyes immediately filled with tears.

- How is the baby? - My wife whispered, her voice hoarse with fatigue.

- I'm fine. Handsome like his father - I tried to joke, hiding the emotions still in my chest.

My wife looked at the child, then smiled slightly. The first smile of a mother after the pain of death, tired, weak but strangely radiant. I stood beside her, quietly watching the mother and child. The small room, the warm yellow light, the hum of the air conditioner, everything seemed to shrink into a single world: Our world. A family. A love. And a life that had just begun. But in the midst of that happiness, there was still a lingering silence. My father, the boy's grandfather, was no longer there. Nearly two months ago, he passed away after a long battle with illness, not having the chance to hold his eldest grandson in his arms. Just thinking about it made my throat tighten. I whispered softly: "Dad, your grandson has been born: White, healthy, just like you. Can you see him up there?"

In the early days, my wife and I were both immersed in the cycle of taking care of our child. The child was strangely “difficult”: He cried when put down, and only stopped when picked up. It was as if he measured love by keeping his parents busy all night. Although exhausted, every moment I held him in my arms, I silently thanked that both mother and child were safe, and somewhere, my father must have been smiling too. I learned to fall asleep standing up, to take quick naps in rare short periods of time. But strangely, despite being exhausted, I never got angry or lost my temper. On the contrary, I always felt a strange peace in my heart, as if he was silently teaching me how to grow up, teaching me to become a real man.

That World Cup season, I watched every match, from the first match where Argentina lost shockingly to Saudi Arabia to the thrilling final match when Messi lifted the prestigious gold cup for the first time. Thanks to whom I was able to watch every moment? Thanks to my son who wouldn’t let me sleep all night. I held him in my arms, my eyes following every move, thinking to myself: “I wonder if he will love football as much as I do?”. Maybe he will become a footballer, or a dedicated doctor. Or simply, he will be a kind man, loving and caring for his family, as his grandfather taught me.

That was my “surprise goal”. But I understood that to win the long game called life, I had to play with all my heart, with all my patience, love and sacrifice. And I was ready.

Short story by Le Ngoc Son

Source: https://baobacgiang.vn/ban-thang-dau-doi-postid419561.bbg