The doctor ran to the father in the waiting room, “Sir your wife is fine but the child is having complications. The umbilical cord wrapped firmly around his neck, and while we managed to get him breathing, he was without oxygen for a while and well… He may not be highly functioning.”
The father sighed and silently walked with the doctor to see his wife and baby boy.
At five years old now the father tried to teach the boy to play catch. His hands could never seem to line up with the ball and more often than not would strike him square in the jaw. When asked by the school nurse about the bruises on his face he told them he had a complication with baseball.
At eight they tried to teach him multiplication but again a complication led to the eradication of the notion that he would ever understand anything but the most basic of things in school. The kids laughed and called him stupid. They laughed at his best friend and called him a nerd. Seems the only acceptable place to be was ordinary. Complicated.
At twelve years old he tried to ask a girl to the dance. His stutter made her angry and everyone laughed. Who was he to ask out the prettiest girl in school? He learned that day that love is complicated.
At fourteen his mother ended up in the hospital. Her heart was failing and the doctors didn’t know why. He was told by his father her heart had complications and so she had to take the eternal sleep. The doctors were still baffled, guess medicine was filled with its own complications.
At fifteen his father drank too much, still reeling from his wife’s passing, and drove his car over a bridge. Nobody knew if it was an accident or on purpose. Now left to the system, he became a ward of the state and learned a whole new meaning to the word complicated.
At seventeen he ran away from his foster family and never looked back. He was laughed at and beaten for his shortcomings and tried his best to make his own way in this crazy world. Who knew, he thought, that being an adult could be so complicated. He scrounged for food and work, sleeping in homeless shelters and bus stations until he was twenty-three when he finally had a decent enough job to rent an apartment.
At twenty-four he met the most beautiful girl at work and they soon fell in love. Everyone around them laughed and they couldn’t care less. Her large round head was beautiful to him and the way he would get flustered building Legos was endearing to her. They loved like a freight train on a non-stop trip at full speed. They both had their flaws and loved each others’ as if it were the most important part of them.
At twenty-five he married her and soon after they were expecting a baby. The doctor warned them that the chances of down syndrome were high and they didn’t care. What was one more complication.
A day before his 26th birthday, they went to the hospital and he was ushered out of the room. The doctor looked sadly at him and said that there were complications. He looked at the doctor calmly and said “Isn’t there always?”
Secret Life of a Pet 