It’s 5:00 am. I hit the coffee pot for a shot of caffeine. By the time I get a couple of sips down the gullet, the shower is starting to steam. I step inside. The hot water slowly awakens the nerve endings beneath my skin. My brain is beginning to focus.

Today Marion is slated for surgery. The schedule starts at the crack of dawn which requires us to get rolling sooner than usual. The overnight bag is packed. Extra long sleeves for the frigid temperatures inside the hospital. Reading material. Even this crazy laptop.

We roll into the parking lot at Piedmont Newnan as the yellows and oranges begin to paint the eastern horizon. The streetlights are still on. There’s hardly any vehicles in the lot at this hour.

The air is crisp at 46° and we stand for a moment by the truck just taking in the sky. We’re about 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

“You nervous?”

I ask because I already know the answer. She gets quiet when she gets anxious. She’s been quiet since last night. And she gets busy doing stuff when she gets anxious. Wiping the kitchen counter. Folding clothes. Rearranging papers on the table in the family room. Toting a box to the basement. All without saying a word.

“A little,” she says.

We walk hand in hand toward the massive hospital building which is lit up like a cruise ship. In the shadows of the lamp posts I can see others walking along in silence with us. One woman pushing an older woman in a wheelchair. A young mom and dad with two small boys. Another couple about our age. We’re all making our appointments, uncertain of how the day will go.

Craig, our preacher, is already seated in the surgical waiting area when we step off the elevator. Blue jeans. Tennis shoes. Pull-over sweater. Preachers don’t dress in coats and ties any more when they make hospital calls. I like it that way.

My buddy, Wayne, who was a Baptist preacher, loved to work in the garden and then make hospital calls with his boots on, his straw hat in hand. He said it helped put folks at ease. “A suit makes people nervous,” he told me one time. “I find they like it when I have a little dirt on my knees.”

Back in pre-op, Marion is wearing the stylish gown of hospital victims everywhere. Light blue. Wide neckline. Classic metal snaps across the shoulders. Breezy in the back. They cover her up with a warm blanket and proceed to stick her four times before they got the IV started.

Rolling beds have changed a lot over the years. When I had my appendix taken out in 1966, the hospital beds looked like a four-legged metal table on industrial wheels. Two chrome plated side bars would lift up to keep you from rolling off going down the hallway.

The bed in pre-op looks more like a Formula 1 race car. Sleek design. Contoured panels. Aerodynamic, low-profile wheels. A control panel with fourteen buttons and five switches. A phone charger and a USB port. Even the name, Big Wheel Stryker, evokes images of coming in hot around turn #4 into the OR.

I sit and listen as the parade of specialists come in behind the curtain to ask their questions. Two of them prayed with us, so I figure Marion must have a thousand angels on duty right about now.

I ask the nurse an important question. “How long will she be in surgery?”

Marion sees me looking at my watch and decides to interpret my question for the nurse.

“You know why he’s asking? He wants to know if he’ll have time to eat while I’m gone.”

That’s not it at all. I am not that insensitive. I am here to support my wife. I’m here to stand by her. I am ready and on call for whenever she needs me.

Which led to my next question.

“While we’re on the topic, what time does the cafeteria stop serving?”

The nurse says that she’s gonna give Marion a little something to calm her down. That’s hospital speak for lights out. She puts on the little shower cap over her hair. The curtain is pulled back and they wheel her away.

The biscuit and gravy in the cafeteria wasn’t so bad. Romona went downstairs with me, and I bought her a cup of coffee. She even stayed with me in the waiting area until we got word that Marion made it to the recovery room.

My assignment while waiting is to keep friends and family up to date on the progress. I get a text from the hospital telling me the surgery has begun. I forward that to 47 different phone numbers. There’s even a screen on the wall with patient numbers and progress reports, sort of like the flight schedules on the board at the airport.

Patient #7628697 is in post-op. That’s the number I’m watching.

Four hours after they wheeled her away from pre-op, I get a call that they are moving her to room 209.

I know you’re probably wondering if I’m ever going to tell you what this surgery is about. So, here you go. Marion came here today to have her thyroid removed. No emergency. No cancer. But her endocrinologist has been monitoring her thyroid for about four years now. It’s been abnormal in size for some time. Nodules appeared. Slight pressure on her voice box. It was time to take it out.

The surgeon walks into the room. “Everything went very well,” he says. “It was bigger than I anticipated. About the size of a baseball, which made me work at it a little longer than expected. But she did great.”

It’s late into the evening now. They are keeping her overnight to help monitor her calcium levels. Evidently, the body doesn’t quite know what to do if the thyroid happens to disappear into thin air, because the thyroid is kind of like a control panel for a number of other glands. They’re regulating meds to make sure the signals don’t get crossed.

The procedure makes it hard to swallow for a few days. Her food tray consists of things like bouillon soup, a cup of Jello, and frozen lemonade in a plastic, peel-top cup. The meal of champions.

Me? I’m eating at Chick-Fil-A and Burger King across the road from the hospital. The pre-packaged food in plastic containers in the hospital cafeteria just does not cut it for me. But I’m being a good husband. When I go, I come back with treats like a Frozen Strawberry Hibiscus Lemonade and a Vanilla milkshake. This is winning me points.

We have shared a lot of experiences in our short time together. But there’s really nothing like a surgical procedure and a hospital stay to shore up the bonds of matrimony. She looks striking in her gown. I get to be the knight on the white steed who delivers the milkshake.

In sickness and in health, they say. I’ll take that.

Besides, I have a pillow and this really great hospital couch to sleep on tonight.