Something has happened, and you don’t know what it is. You wake on a bumpy stretcher under a glowing Exit sign. Shadowy figures rustle past beyond a drawn curtain. You’re too weak to get up or raise your head.

You have no idea how you got here or what this here is. You remember a flatbed truck growling through the neighborhood, its loudspeaker blasting something unintelligible as a subway announcement; you could only make out the words Alternate Routes and Temporary and Thank You.

The streets were barren, and the air smelled ripe, like before a storm. The palm trees were trembling. A dark fringe of cloud hung down. Up on the hillside, you could see a solid line of cars snaking along the main highway. In the distance, there was the rumble of artillery or thunder, you couldn’t tell which.

Two big green Chinook helicopters roared overhead like fierce insects.

For weeks the TV news had been warning about a state of emergency, but you can’t remember if it was an impending hurricane or a rebel insurgency in the foothills. The capitol had been shut tight, and every morning military trucks lumbered by in a steady parade.

You knew you had waited too long. In the garage you had stacked jugs of water and extra cans of gas for the generator. You had made it through bad storms and violent outbreaks by hunkering down. But you couldn’t leave this time, not with your daughter about to give birth in the Hospital Municipal.

You grab the railings of the stretcher and haul yourself up. A sharp pain stabs your right thigh. You look down and see the trouser leg has been cut off, there’s a clot of matted gauze.

You reach down to touch it, and something jerks at your hand. There’s an IV port attached to a tube, with a clear liquid flowing down. You must be in the ER of the Municipal. You rip out the port, and blood drips down your fingers onto the floor. One of the machines starts to beep, its red light blinking.

You have to get out of here, you have to find your daughter. She must be on an upper floor in Delivery.

You manage to straddle the stretcher and scoot down the hallway, pushing off with your good leg like paddling a canoe. Ahead you can hear an elevator door ding open. The hallway is a chaotic scene with the emergency lights on and orderlies jamming beds against the wall. Commands are being shouted amidst the groans and shrieks of the wounded.

You manage to steer to an UP elevator and hurl yourself to the floor with a thump just as the door shushes closed.

Inside the padded car there’s a grandma in a bathrobe puffing on an unlit Pall Mall in the corner. She’s slouched in her walker.

You reach up and push 4 for Delivery.

“What’s going on?” you ask the grandma.

“Nobody knows,” she rasps.

Floor 4 lights up with a ping, and the doors slide open. I roll out onto the floor.

“Good luck,” waves the grandma.

Rain is slashing through shattered windows into the hallway, a few inches deep with a muddy eddy of syringes, bottle caps and wristbands. But Delivery is empty, eerily silent. I grab onto a wheelchair and heave myself into it with a wrenching pain.

Down the hall I see my son-in-law emerge from a doorway. I call to him and he runs over, surprised to see me here in this state.

“Hey gramps!” he laughs and grabs the handles to roll me. “Congratulations!”

He shows me his wife with her baby boy, swaddled with blankets in the tub for safety. My daughter looks up with smeared eyes and manages a faint smile. She unwraps the baby’s face so I can see his blissful countenance, the color pink as a cherry blossom, eyes pinched shut against what’s to come.