demeanor helped calm the staff, as well as thousands of anxious patients. The fluorescent red plastic button he wore on his green scrub shirt reading Don’t Panic probably didn’t hurt, either.
“She’s so small,” Yolanda murmured as Reece managed, just barely, to put the blade of the infant laryngoscope into the baby girl’s rosebud mouth. “She could fit in the palm of my hand.”
“Probably another crack kid,” the cop muttered as he stood on the sidelines and watched.
While Reece slid the tube between the tiny vocal cords, Molly said a quick, silent prayer and checked for a pulse.
“Sixty,” she announced grimly. She did not have to add that it was much too slow for a preemie.
“Dr. Winston’s the neonatologist on call,” the clerk announced as Reece put in an umbilical line to start pushing drugs. “He wants to know how much the baby weighs. Because if it’s less than five hundred grams, the kid’s not viable.”
As soon as the line was in, Reece bagged the baby girl, forcing air directly into immature lungs through the tube. Molly wrapped a towel around the frail infant in an attempt to warm it.
“See if you can find a nursery scale,” Reece instructed Yolanda. “And round up an Isolette, too.”
When the baby suddenly kicked, Molly felt her own pulse leap in response.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Reece warned as they exchanged a look. “It’s only reflex. No matter what she weighs, we’re not even talking long shot here, Molly.”
“I know.”
Yet, even as she prepared for the worst, even as she saw the infant crumping before her eyes, Molly took the weak little kick as a sign of encouragement. Death was a frequent companion in her line of work, but Molly had also witnessed enough miracles to allow her to hang on to hope now.
Yolanda came back with the scale and a hush suddenly came over the room as Molly placed the baby girl on it.
“Four hundred and twenty grams.” Molly closed her eyes and heard the onlookers sigh in unison.
“Too light to fake it,” Reece said what everyone already knew.
The clerk passed the information on to the neonatologist still waiting on the phone. “Winston says to pull the plug. The kid’s FTD.”
Fixing to Die. Accustomed as she was to the term, Molly was irritated by it now.
As was Reece. “Easy for Winston to say,” he muttered. With an icy, controlled fury that was almost palpable, he marched the few feet to the phone and snatched the receiver from the clerk’s hand.
“As much as I appreciate your consult, Dr. Winston, we don’t throw terms around like that in my emergency department. She may be small, but she deserves the same respect we’d show your child, or wife, or mother, if they showed up down here.”
He hung up.
“All we can do now is make her as comfortable as possible,” he said. Every eye in the room was riveted on him as he turned off the line, pulled the plug from the baby’s lungs, wrapped the painfully tiny girl up again and placed her in the Isolette.
“She’s still breathing,” Yolanda pointed out unnecessarily.
“She’ll stop.”
An aide popped her head into the room. “You’ve got a stab wound in treatment room B, Dr. Longworth.”
He turned to Molly. “I’ll need you to assist.” Without waiting for an answer, he cast one more quick, regretful look at the baby and left the room.
After asking the clerk to page Father Dennis Murphy, who she’d seen going upstairs to bring Christmas communion to Catholics on the medical wards, Molly followed Reece.
After stitching up the wound that had resulted from an argument over whether “Away in a Manger” or “Silent Night” was the Christmas carol most appropriate to the season, Reece stopped by to check the baby again and found her still breathing. They also found the cop still standing beside the Isolette.
“I’m off duty,” he said, as if worried they’d think he was shirking his work. “My daughter’s pregnant with her first. This could be her kid.”
Despite the tragedy of their situation, Molly managed a smile at the thought of a new life on the way. “I’ll add your daughter to my prayers.”
“Thank you, Sister.” Patrolman Tom Walsh, a frequent visitor to the ER due to his work patrolling the seediest parts of the city, managed a smile. “Someone needs to baptize her.”
“Father Murphy didn’t answer his page,” the clerk, who overheard his statement, informed Molly. “The guard said he left about thirty minutes ago.”
“Looks like it’s up to you, Sister,” Walsh said. “How about naming her Mary?” he suggested. “That’s my mother’s name. And it is Christmas, so it fits.”
It took all Molly’s inner strength to grace him with a smile when she wanted to weep. “Mary’s perfect.”
The patrolman put his hat over his heart. Molly sprinkled water over the tiny bald head, wishing for the usual cries, but the infant didn’t so much as flinch. Even so, the hopelessly immature lungs valiantly continued to draw in rasping breaths of air like tiny bellows.
“Mary, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Walsh exhaled a long breath. “Thank you, Sister. I feel a lot better.”
Molly was grateful that she’d managed to bring one of them comfort. With a no-nonsense attitude that had always served her well, she reminded herself that such emotionally painful situations came with the territory. She’d chosen to live out her vocation in the real world, where a sacred moment was when someone shared with you—like Thomas earlier, and Officer Walsh now. If she’d wanted her life to be one of quiet dedication contemplating holy mysteries, she would have joined an order of cloistered nuns.
Baby Mary fought on. Two hours later, when the flood of patients had slowed to a trickle, Molly slipped back into the room and took the swaddled infant who was no heavier than a handful of feathers out of the Isolette. She held her in her arms and felt the tiny, birdlike heart flutter in a last futile attempt to keep beating. Then it finally went still.
As a grim-faced Reece called the death for the record, and Patrolman Tom Walsh made a sign of the cross, Molly, who was suddenly having trouble breathing herself, escaped from the room.
Reece found her on the rooftop, looking out over the lights of the city.
“Repeat Longworth’s rules of critical care,” he said.
The rules—known as Longworthisms—were a joke around the ER. They were also right on the money.
“Number one—air goes in, air goes out,” Molly answered remotely. She didn’t feel like joking at the moment. “Number two—blood goes round and round. Number three—bleeding always stops.” She drew in a weary breath. “Number four—oxygen is good.”
“Very
