Sophie sat next to Danny, talking softly to him through his
incubator portholes. He still had the breathing tube in but
was doing much better. She knew he was listening to her voice.
Rihanna sat with Isabelle, who had graduated out of an incubator
and into an open crib.
Dr. Sheldon came in and went over to Rihanna. Rihanna
stopped singing and looked up at Sheldon. They spoke in sharp
whispers. There was a pause in the conversation, and Dr. Shel
don gently stroked Isabelle’s head. He turned, said something
more to Rihanna, then abruptly left the pod.
Sophie gave it a minute, then went over to Rihanna. “Hey,
Ri. Is everything okay?”
Rihanna wiped a tear and looked at Sophie with her beauti
ful smile. “Yeah, everything’s okay.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“I knew this was going to happen. Something’s changed with
him.” Rubbing her baby’s back, she said, “Isabelle is what’s keep
ing him around. He’s too busy for me these days. He’s always got
something else to do. His work is definitely coming between us,
but I think there’s something more.”
“Oh, Ri, I’m so sorry.” Sophie wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Maybe it’ll get better once you and Isabelle go home?”
“The truth of it is, I need Sheldon. I need him to help me get
my US citizenship. Isabelle is all set because she was born here.
But if I want to stay here with her, I need to be a citizen.”
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“Ooh, that’s a big one.”
JULIE HATCH
“Yeah, and he’s my ticket.”
“Wow, that’s a little harsh.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. We really were in love, and we
both love our baby, and I think we can be a family . . . if he wants
to. Anyhow, things are a little rough now. But I think it’ll all
work out.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it will. You two make a good couple.”
Sophie went back to Danny’s incubator. A couple of minutes
later, when they were the only two in their section of the pod,
she called over to Rihanna. “Ri? I’m curious. Did you ever ask
Sheldon what’s going on in his office?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him I saw him outside his office door in the
middle of the night?”
“Nope.”
That evening, Sophie and Rihanna were together again in their
pod. Nurses came in for change of shift, melted snow dripping
off their hats and jackets.
“Damn, it’s nasty out there!”
“I can’t believe more snow!”
“It better be gone by the end of shift, that’s all I can say. I’m
not staying here for the night.”
Sophie turned to Rihanna and laughed. “Do you realize
there’s not one window in our pod that looks outside? There
could be a tornado happening out there, and we’d have no idea.”
“It’s like a time and weather warp in here,” replied Rihanna.
“Too bad, I love watching the snow fla—”
Suddenly all the lights went out, plunging the NICU into
darkness. All the ventilators and monitors started alarming
simultaneously. The only light in the unit came from a few dim
emergency lights and the red emergency exit signs over the doors.
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THE VERY BEST OF CARE
“Hey! What’s going on?” someone yelled.
Every piece of lifesaving machinery in the forty-bed NICU
was sounding off. Computer screens flickered, then went black.
“Someone turn on some lights!”
“Hey, what the hell?”
“Turn on the lights!”
Parents started talking and then yelling at once. Nurses ran
around, flashlights in hand, shouting out to each other.
Sophie yelled, “Hey! I need some help over here. Someone,
please help me! My baby’s ventilator isn’t working.”
Other mothers were crying out for the same help. Nurses and
respiratory therapists rushed to plug ventilators into emergency
outlets. They waited, expecting the hospital generators to kick
in. Alarms continued to blare. The dying ventilators whined and
groaned as their energy supply died out. The oxygen wall outlets
whistled, then the sound faded away.
Sophie began to panic. “Kim!” she yelled out again.
By the dim light of the emergency exit sign, she grabbed Dan
ny’s resuscitation breathing bag and attached it to his breathing
tube. She squeezed it, as she had seen Kim do many times. Even
without electricity, the ventilator still blared its alarm. Big help the
alarms are. There’s no electricity to fix what they’re alarming about.
The alarms continued like warning bells, announcing that
electricity needed to resume soon.
“Kim!” Sophie screamed in desperation.
Beads of sweat broke out on the back of her neck as Sophie
tried to focus on keeping her baby alive. It was all on her right
now.
She continued to bag oxygen into Danny’s breathing tube,
willing the generators to start running and get the ventilators
working. She prayed she was doing it right. She couldn’t see his
color in the dark, but his chest was moving up and down with
the rhythm of the breaths she was giving him. When she put her
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JULIE HATCH
hand lightly on his chest, she could feel the steady beat of his
heart. Okay, that’s good.
The piercing NICU alarms continued to sound off. Why isn’t
someone fixing this?
The chief respiratory therapist announced over the hospi
tal-wide intercom system, “All available respiratory therapists to
the NICU, stat!” There was a lot of frantic yelling about what to
do next.
Respiratory therapists flooded into the NICU, with flash
lights lighting their way into the pods. They spread out to first
help babies on ventilators, then moved on to any baby who
required oxygen.
“There’s power in the rest of the hospital. Why is the NICU
the only place without power?”
The electronic doors were propped open. Hospital staff filled
the hallway to catch a glimpse of the bedlam unraveling in the
NICU.
Seven long minutes. Then, as suddenly as the electricity had
gone out, it came back on.
Frantic voices began to calm.
“What was that all about?”
“Why just the NICU?”
“Must be the weather.”
“But why not the whole hospital?”
As the urgency of the moment subsided and activity returned
to normal, people chattered on, relieving the stress of the past sev
eral minutes that had felt longer. The electronic doors resumed
working. Sophie looked up to see the doors closing and caught a
glimpse of the chapel guy standing in the hallway.
