Later that afternoon, Dr. Vandewater came back into the pod,
this time to talk with Sophie and Adam. He introduced him
self to them as one of the NICU attending neonatologists.
“Hello, Dr. Vande . . . Vande . . . Geez, Doctor, I’m sorry.”
Adam looked to Sophie for help. He extended his hand in
greeting.
Dr. Vandewater laughed as he shook Adam’s hand. “Yeah, I
know. It’s not your run-of-the-mill last name.” He laughed. “As I
told your wife earlier, call me Dr. Sheldon—it’s easier.”
Dr. Sheldon was on the short side, coming up only to Adam’s
forehead. He wore thin wire-rimmed glasses that kept sliding
down, stopping to rest in a permanent line on the bridge of his
nose. His curly dirty-blond hair had a bedhead look to it. His
Oxford shirt was one size too big, with a gaping space between his
neck and the collar. He wore a loosely knotted, wrinkled tie and
scuffed-up shoes. His shirttail hung untucked outside his pants.
The overall impression was of an absent-minded professor. When
he smiled, his whole face lit up. Sophie found him attractive in
an endearing way.
Dr. Sheldon listened as Sophie and Adam recounted Danny’s
unexpected arrival.
“You know, Dr. Sheldon, I came here with a little minor
cramping, never expecting to deliver. The poor woman who came
in at the same time ended up dying. It’s been a very strange, not
to mention upsetting, twenty-four hours. I just can’t understand
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why I went into such early labor, especially since my pregnancy
had been going so well.”
Looking directly at Sophie, then at Adam, he said, “I am
truly sorry for all you’ve been through. It’s such an unpredictable
business we’re in.” His calm voice helped to soften Sophie’s anx
iety. “I wish I could give you better answers.”
He picked up the preemie-sized stethoscope attached to the
incubator and examined Danny. When he was done, he closed
the incubator portholes and turned back to the couple.
“Congratulations to you both. You have one fine young boy.”
That clinched it for Sophie; she loved this doctor. Nobody
yet had called Danny a fine young boy.
After they’d finished the conversation with Dr. Sheldon, he
stood up to excuse himself and let them know he looked forward
to getting to know them and Danny better over the next several
weeks. On the way out of the pod, he slipped over to Rihanna’s
baby, stroked her head, and quietly talked to her. After a few
minutes, Rihanna still hadn’t appeared, and Dr. Sheldon left the
pod.
Soon after Dr. Sheldon walked out, Rihanna rounded the
corner of their pod and went over to Isabelle. Sophie joined her.
They started chatting again, picking right back up on their ear
lier conversation. Then Sophie asked about Dr. Sheldon.
“Rihanna, I couldn’t help but notice you and Dr. Sheldon
look like pretty close friends.”
She smiled. “Yeah, there’s a story there.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow, waiting for more.
Rihanna explained that after taking care of her ailing mother
in the Bahamas for five years before she finally passed, she came
to New York for a visit. She met Sheldon one Sunday while
ice-skating in Central Park. They fell in love, and not long after,
she got pregnant. She decided to stay in New York and have the
baby.
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JULIE HATCH
“Sheldon is a different kind of guy. I think I fell in love
because he’s got a little bit of a bad-boy streak in him. Have you
ever been attracted to the bad-boy type, Sophie?”
“Ah, no, can’t say I have.”
“He was raised by a single mom. In fact, he and Dr. Wagner
are half brothers. They have the same mother. I don’t know how
many people know that, so maybe don’t say anything?”
Sophie drew her thumb and finger across her lips, vowing
silence.
“But Sheldon, he’s laid-back. He doesn’t take life too seri
ously, which I like—it reminds me of the Bahamians. And he’s
a good doctor.” Rihanna paused, resting her hand on Isabelle’s
stomach. “He was kicked out of prep school, which is a little
bit of the bad boy, but still graduated from med school. Life has
always come easy to Sheldon. He was married briefly, but that
didn’t last; it complicated his life.”
Rihanna paused, thinking. “He’s one of the best men I’ve
met. He’s smart, he’s a ton of fun, and he has a heart of gold.” A
smile broke out across her face. “We didn’t mean to fall in love
and get pregnant. It just happened.”
“Bad boy meets Bahamian beauty—I love it.”
“Yeah, we have a good time together.” Her smile faded. “I
don’t know, though. Now, with Isabelle, I’ll have to see how
much fun he thinks having a baby is.”
Later that afternoon, Adam and Sophie sat close to Danny’s
incubator, curtains closed around them, trying to keep the
NICU world at bay. They had a nice quiet cocoon, just the three
of them. Sophie and Adam explored every inch of their baby,
studying his tiny toes, his downy hair, and his minuscule finger
nails. His chest rose and fell with the rhythm of the ventilator.
“Remember that song called Particle Man?” Adam started
humming the tune. “He looks like a little particle man.”
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“He does kind of, doesn’t he?” Sophie gazed at Danny. “Our
little particle guy.”
Then that horrific screeching alarm sounded, demanding
immediate attention to a baby’s slowing heart rate. Over the
intercom boomed a voice calling for help to Pod B, stat.
Sophie peeked out from around their curtain, anxious to
know what was happening, worried about the baby whose mon
itor wouldn’t stop alarming. Watching through the plate-glass
windows, she saw the sides of the baby’s incubator drop, giving
full access to the baby. One nurse covered his face with a rub
ber mask and squeezed it repeatedly, breathing for the baby, and
another nurse started pushing on the baby’s chest. One of the
residents stepped up and put a breathing tube down his throat.
Doctors called out orders, and a portable X-ray machine was
wheeled in. The alarms continued to blare.
Sophie closed her eyes, praying that the baby would be okay.
She and Adam squeezed each other’s hands tightly, each feeling
the tension in the other. Kim came in and tried to distract them
by talking about how well Danny was doing, but Sophie couldn’t
help listening to what was happening across the way and hoping
for the voices to calm down. She waited for the alarm to stop.
Eventually the alarm quieted, and the heart monitor returned
to its reassuring regular rhythm. Without missing a beat, the staff
quickly returned to what they had been doing before this hiccup
in their routine, almost as if nothing had happened.
Irritated, Sophie turned to Adam. “This place is crazy.”
“You’ll get used to the alarms and all the activity,” Kim told
them. She pulled her stethoscope from her pocket and hung
it around her neck. “Usually, helping a baby to recover from a
low heart rate isn’t so involved. Almost all preemies have these
apneic episodes where they stop breathing. It’s all part of being
premature, and it’s usually not a big deal. This one was a little
more serious. But it’s all good now—another baby saved in the
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JULIE HATCH
trenches of the NICU.” She smiled sympathetically at Sophie
and Adam.
After the commotion settled down, Sophie saw Dr. Wagner
in the periphery, pacing, scowling, and glancing up every few
minutes to watch what was happening. When it became appar
ent that the baby was going to be okay, he turned on his heel and
left. Sophie turned to Kim.
“Why does Dr. Wagner hang around the NICU? Isn’t he an
OB?”
“He is,” she said, busying herself with cleaning her stethoscope.
“Maybe he’s just following up on the babies he delivered so
he can talk with the mothers with up-to-date information?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Kim replied
