Riley was only two weeks old when a blood vessel burst in his brain.

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Riley was a big, healthy baby - calm and settled. He fussed little and slept well. He was an absolutely perfect child - perfect in every way, with the requisite number of fingers, toes, eyes and ears. We settled almost immediately back into the day-to-day routine of raising young children: changing diapers, reading books, snuggling for naps and watching Winnie the Pooh. Our perfect little world seemed just that: Perfect.

Two weeks and twelve hours later, however, our perfect little world was turned upside down. While we were out of the house for the first time since Riley's birth, a blood vessel inside his brain ruptured, filling the spaces inside his head with blood. Riley began having seizures and became unresponsive.

Michelle's experience as a neonatal intensive care specialty nurse at Arkansas Children's Hospital enabled her to quickly recognize the severity of the situation, after which she uttered the now-famous words (at least within our family): "Take us to Children's."

Purely by the grace of God, the emergency room at Arkansas Children's Hospital was empty that Friday night. Before I could empty my pockets at the security desk, the triage nurse whisked Riley and Michelle away to the back. By the time I reconnected with them, Riley was surrounded by doctors and nurses who were at work assessing his condition.

After obtaining all of the pertinent information from us, a social worker walked us back to a "quiet room" to give us time to make some phone calls and collect our thoughts. From that room, we made three phone calls: one to our babysitter to say that we wouldn't be home anytime soon, a second to my sister and a third to a dear friend, who was also a social worker at Children's.

Making the phone calls was easy. Collecting our thoughts was not. Our infant son was seriously ill. The world was a blur. We were flooded with questions: What was wrong with Riley? What was causing the seizures? Was it the result of something we did? Was it because of something we failed to do? Was he going to die? What would we do if he did?

Somewhere during this process, the attending physician came in to say that a spinal tap had identified blood in Riley's spinal fluid, though they were unsure of the source (remember that no one knew yet that the blood vessel had ruptured). More tests were scheduled, including a CT scan of his head.

Around midnight, a neurosurgery resident told us that the CT showed that Riley's brain was filled with blood and that if something wasn't done to relieve the pressure and drain the blood, Riley would die. Relieving the pressure would require punching a hole through the soft spot in the top of his little head and threading a drain tube into the ventricles of his brain.

While the doctors performed that "procedure," our social worker friend took us to an empty waiting room in a remote part of the hospital. We headed there expecting a dark, quiet place. Instead we found the waiting room filled with a couple dozen friends and loved ones from our church family at Pleasant Valley Church of Christ. I asked myself why these people were there. After all it was now 2 o'clock on a cold Saturday morning - these folks should've been at home with their families in bed.