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that’s an order!”
    “Can’t I see my wife?”
    “Not now,” she barked. “She needs to get her rest, too. Now go home!”
    Like an obedient child, Hall nodded, and, after watching his baby placed in her crib, he waved his hand, whispered, “I love you,” and moved back down the hallway to the waiting room. With a hundred different emotions flooding his soul, each of those varying and often conflicting feelings pointed out to him that his life would never be the same, he slipped on his suit jacket and headed toward the exit. He was almost to the door when he yanked a cigar out of his pocket, hurriedly unwrapped it, grinned, placed it in his mouth, struck a match against the wall, and lit it up. From the hallway behind him a woman’s voice yelled, “Mr. Hall, I warned you!”

Chapter 5
    G eorge only slept a couple of hours. To save time the next morning, he opted to skip breakfast before driving the twelve miles from Oakwood to Danville. Though there was a new and special kind of sunshine in his life, the trip was made under cloudy, threatening skies. It was misting when he arrived at Danville City Hospital at nine thirty sharp. After parking his car in the visitor’s lot, he sprinted up the sidewalk and to the old brick building’s entrance. He took the dozen steps two at a time and jogged down the hall to room 134.
    George was hoping to hold Rose the moment he arrived, but that wasn’t to be. Thus it was an anxious Hall who was forced to wait in Carole’s room enduring a seemingly endless delay to what he sensed would be the biggest moment in all his twenty-six years of life.
    “George,” his wife scolded, “you need to quit pacing. You’re going to wear those shoes out.”
    “I know, honey,” he answered, his excitement shooting his words out like machine gun fire. “You’re not the first to say that. But I just can’t settle down. I barely slept at all. I can’t eat. Why haven’t they brought her in? You don’t think there’s something wrong? I don’t know if I can take anything being wrong!”
    Carole laughed. “No, Rose is fine. I saw her a few hours ago. She is strong and healthy. You just got here a bit too early. Now sit down and talk to me. I’m a part of this, too, you know.”
    He nodded, took a deep breath, and pulled a chair up to his wife’s bed. But rather than saying anything, he just stared at Carole as if he were seeing her for the very first time. Childbirth had done something to her, and whatever it was she wore it well. She still had the same round face, pug nose, blond hair, and gentle green eyes, but she looked different to him. Almost angelic. She seemed stronger, too. Finally, his words carefully measured and dripping in sincerity, George stammered out what his eyes had just stamped on his heart. “You are the most beautiful mother in the world.”
    Carole demurely smiled.
    After studying her for a few more seconds, Hall gently touched her cheek and traced her smile. Three years of marriage and things were even better now. He was more in love than he’d ever been. He felt like a schoolboy as he leaned closer and whispered, “I don’t know why you fell for me. You’re out of my league.”
    “That goes double,” she laughed. “Just remember I wasn’t the prize catch. Before me you went with Mary Cole, and she was not only the homecoming queen at Oakwood High, but she took that crown in college, too.”
    After patting his hand she added, “Maybe in your eyes I seem beautiful, but I’m really just another mousy, washed-out blond. My nose, with this bump, is too small, and my face too round. And look at my lips, they are too thin, and my teeth are not as large or white as the models in the magazines. And of all the girls you dated, I was the one who was not the prom queen. I wasn’t even considered for the court. So I don’t see what you ever saw in me.”
    He smiled. “A great deal more than you see in yourself.” He placed his hand on hers. As he did, a