Tired from our early rising and arrival, we settled into a post check-in lull. Laura was gowned, hooked up to a rastafarian tangle of wires and the IV, and ensconced in her throne. Too keyed up to settle for mere reading and since all the preparations had come to completion, we turned on the television in the room.

I can't remember the images themselves, as much as the quality of them. There were garish taillights, whirling red sirens, serious men in windbreakers bathed in red and yellow light. There were guns. The TV news graphics fairly screamed from the perimeter of the small screen; "breaking news", "developing story", "break in the case".

Asleep in their Chevrolet Caprice at a rest stop in western Maryland, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo were captured. They had murdered ten random people and wounded three more, sniper-style, in our area, sparking fear and trepidation at every gas station and parking lot across the region.

Our own developing story, our breaking news, red-headed baby Margaret, arrived on this day on 2002. It was a good day.

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