God and Tomas, part seven

The next few weeks were still pretty rough, but mostly from a medical standpoint. I was at the doctor or hospital (for the NSTs) at least 3 times a week. Most of those visits took me down that winding drive to the bridge across the river. Every time I went a bird or birds flew with me. Never again in a triangle, but always they were with me. I remember knowing at the time who they were from and why they were there and I was so very, very grateful.
At the visits, half of the time someone didn't like what they saw and I had to go on to Orlando (the women and children's hosp - about an hour from home) to have a biophysical profile done on the baby. They would watch him on the ultrasound screen and see how many times he did this or that during an allotted time period. A few times he failed and I had to haul myself back there the next day for a repeat. And so it went, on and on, and over and over.
Life at home had reached a degree of stability, some parts were still a little shaky, like when we would try to imagine just how we were going to do this. We thought once the surgery was over and he was home, the largest part of our trouble would be raising a child with a disability. How naive we were! We also listed the house during this time, adding to everything the stress of keeping it uber-clean, and leaving whenever there was a showing. We made it through Christmas and had a good scare on New Year's Eve, but got sent home after a while. My c-section had been scheduled for Jan. 28th, the feast day of St. Tomas Aquinas, so Tomas would be our little boy's name.
Eventually, we all just came to roll along, and to take one day as it came. One day in early January, I was driving home from my doctor and realized there were no birds with me. None, I could not see any at all anywhere in the sky, much less along with me. I asked God what happened to my birds, I had enjoyed their company and the gift they brought with them. Just then I drove past a clearing in the mangroves and could see the river. It was flat, motionless, like glass. And every bird, quite possibly, on the island was resting on the surface. And I knew! I knew what it meant! I was at peace, I had found my resting place and I did not need the birds anymore. And that is exactly what God told me, and when God talks to you, there is no mistaking it for anything else. He said, "You don't need them anymore."