For all the trouble she was having, there were several babies on life support that night. By God’s grace, each of them was stable, at least for this shift. Thanks for this fact had no sooner crossed my lips, than the alarm on her ventilator sounded.
It had crashed! Not a simple malfunction, but an outright, no longer working- crash. The very thing that was pushing breath into her body had stopped. As I scrambled to fix and finally replace the machine, the doctor stood bedside and manually ventilated her lungs. As he stood there he told me the story of this family. “They are counting on me, because I took care of their older daughter, as well.” She had been a C-section baby that needed a little support after birth because of fluid in her lungs. Feeling somewhat of a failure, the decision had been made to transport this baby to Houston. She would have to be travel via ambulance instead of helicopter because of inclement weather. There was little hope that she would survive the trip. As he talked, my mind wandered down the hall to her mom’s hospital room. I wondered if she knew the gravity of her baby’s situation. But for a few seconds after delivery, she had not seen her. My heart ached as I looked down at her and wondered if she would leave this world without realizing how much her family loved her. Would the only touch that she experienced be the mechanical touch of doctors and nurses that manipulated her body just long enough to carry out whatever procedure needed to be done?
With the new ventilator in place, the wait for the ambulance began. Her dad entered the unit again and stood as a sentinel. With resolve that had all but slipped away, I quickly turned my back and busied myself. Thankfully the nurse across the aisle asked for my assistance with another baby. I noticed tears in her eyes. I asked if she was okay. She told me that her husband had left her that evening. I tried to offer comfort from a heart that was already bruised and bleeding. She wiped her eyes and went on to say that even so, her problems were small compared to what this family was experiencing. That was all I could take.
“That is my brother.” It came out as a whisper. “And she is my niece. I need to go be with my family.”
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