Where did they put the Elevator?

Ordinarily Heather would be writing these entries, but for obvious reasons, you're stuck reading stuff from Ol' Jeff for the next couple posts. Then we will return to regular programming.

As she slept Monday morning, without any noticeable contractions, Heather's water broke at 2:45 AM. Naturally she took a shower, then came out and told me what had occurred. She was very excited, but extremely calm. She was smiling and humming as she dressed and fixed her hair, meanwhile, I was running around the house making sure dogs were fed and watered, bags fully packed, cameras packed and ready to go. Heather took the time to write an email, and I updated the blog. Neither of us were worried or frantic, but were quietly excited.

We were in no real hurry and there was no traffic, but I found it impossible to drive the speed limit, without touching the brake regularly. It seemed like the car was in a hurry. We arrived at the hospital around 4 AM, strolled through the emergency room entry, and walked straight to a pair of double doors where our childbirth classes told us the elevator should be. We thought we must have turned the wrong corner since we only had 90 minutes of sleep to our credit, but found out that the doors to the elevators were locked and we needed the security guard to admit us. I found the humorless security guard about halfway way through a Camel Light just outside the building, and he somehow found the energy to let us in, but couldn't muster more than a sentence of dialogue. Quite an inconvenience for two people dying to tell anyone and everyone about their mission.

Eventually we found our way to labor and delivery, and were greeted by the nursing staff. We strolled in so casually that they thought we were there for an induction and wanted to know, "So, are you all just early, we have you scheduled to check-in Wednesday night?"

We assured them that we were justified in our early arrival and that her water had broken. They checked us into Delivery Room #4 and started asking questions, but really didn't seem to believe us that the water had broken. A litmus test won them over and they were all business.
I made a run to the car to get all our things, inconvenienced the Marlboro man yet again, and we settled in for the rest of the night.