It is not a comfortable feeling.

It strips away a great many illusions a parent likes to keep, the illusion that the world is basically safe, that family can be trusted, that the ordinary arrangements of life will hold.

But there is also a kind of clarity in it, a burning-away of everything nonessential.

In that trauma bay, everything I had ever worried about, every social nicety, every desire to keep the peace with my in-laws, every fear of making a scene, simply incinerated, and what was left was very simple and very strong: I would protect this child, from anyone, at any cost, and nothing else mattered at all.

I have never lost that clarity since.