"Well, I'll tell you what," said Dr. Greenwald. "Let's just happen on down to the ICU and let me take a look at the dosage. It never hurts to doublecheck."
So DeAnne and Vette followed him to the ICU, where he stopped and looked at several of the babies before finally getting to Jeremy. "Hey Zap," he said. He reached his hand into the builtin gloves in the side of the incubator and began probing a bit, touching the baby here and there, lifting his arms and legs, lifting an eyelid.
"Some of these babies here just break my heart," said Vette. "So tiny or so-wounded."
"Ah," said Dr. Greenwald. "But they don't break my heart, because on this particular day all my babies in here are doing quite well. I think we're going to keep them all. Especially Zap here. He looks downright husky."
DeAnne noticed with resignation that everyone was picking up the name Zap, despite her resolute use of Jeremy. But as long as he was telling her that her baby was doing well, DeAnne really didn't care all that much what Dr. Greenwald called him.
"He's pretty nonresponsive, isn't he?" said Dr. Greenwald.
"Like a rag doll," said DeAnne.
Dr. Greenwald looked at the chart. "Hmm," he said. "Quite a dose of pheno, too."
"Is it too much, do you think?"
"No," said Dr. Greenwald. "It's a normal dose."
"Oh," said DeAnne. "I just thought-it can't be right that he's so sleepy that he doesn't eat."
"No, it isn't right. In fact, I'd say he's got way to much pheno in his system right now."
"So it isn't a normal dose?"
"Phenobarbital's a funny kind of drug. Everybody's body uses it differently. I'd say that it looks like your little boy's system just isn't flushing that drug out of his body as fast as most people do, and so it's getting built up inside him. Normal dose going in, but then it's building up, you see."
"Can you do anything?"
"Well, it isn't very hard. We just cut way back on the dosage until we find it maintaining at the right level in his blood. It means a few more blood tests."
"Do they have to keep taking the blood out of his head like that?"
"Oh, don't you like his haircut? Kind of punkish, I'd say. You see, this is a newborn baby. It isn't like his veins are particularly big or easy to find. Heck, we've got needles bigger around than his finger."
"That's all right, I know it can't be helped, it just looks so awful. Dr. Greenwald, would you mind telling me what his current dosage is?"
"Would the numbers mean anything to you?" asked Dr. Greenwald.
"No," said DeAnne. "But if the number's not lower tomorrow, that will mean something to me."
He grinned. "You're pretty stubborn, aren't you?"
She didn't smile back. "This is my baby," she said.
"Dr. Greenwald," said Vette. She was over at one of the other incubators. "Is it right for this one to have liquid dripping from this needle?"
Greenwald immediately went to the incubator where Vette was standing. "Not one of my babies, but I'll say that it doesn't look right. Hasn't been going on long, though, the sheet's not even marked yet. Dana!" he called.
One of the nurses immediately came toward him.
"Have a look at this while I call Dr. Yont."
The nurse named Dana came and immediately shook her head. "Have you been a bad girl again, Marisha?
Pulling out your needles. We're going to have to staple this next one on." She looked up at Vette. "Thank you for noticing this. We check every baby every five minutes, besides constantly checking the monitors, but every moment counts. This one is so small we have a very hard time finding a vein, don't we Marisha? And when she makes some sudden movement, out it comes."
"She's so tiny," said Vette.
"Yes," said Dana. "We're probably going to lose her. She's not getting any better, and sometimes she's a bit worse."
"Her poor parents," said DeAnne, thinking of the anguish she'd feel if someone had just said that about Jeremy.
"I don't know," said Dana. "If Marisha lives, she'll be severely brain damaged. Not much of a life.
Sometimes God is merciful and lets them come home without going through this vale of tears."
It was at that moment that Step came into the ICU. "Oh, good," he said. "I hoped you'd still be here."
"Is Mary Anne still with the children?" DeAnne asked.
"When I got home, her husband was there and he offered to come up and help me give Zap a blessing."
She saw now that Harv Lowe was walking with awe among the incubators. "These must be some tough kids," said Harv, "if they had to stick 'em with all these needles just to keep 'em quiet."
Dana laughed. "Oh, they're the toughest."
Step asked the nurse, "Do we have to use these gloves with Zap? He's not got a contagious disease or anything, and he's a fullweight baby. We don't absolutely have to touch him with our hands, but it would be better."
"You'll have to clear this with Dr. Torwaldson if you're going to break open the box," said Dana.
At that moment Dr. Greenwald came back with, apparently, Dr. Yont, who immediately started giving orders and working on the baby whose needle had come loose. It seemed that more than a loose needle was going wrong, and all the medical people were quite intense about what they were doing. DeAnne was content to wait. There was no emergency for Jeremy, and that was good.
A few moments later, Dr. Torwaldson came in, and at that point Dr. Greenwald withdrew and came over to the Fletchers. "Not my baby," he said, "and I'm not a neonate, so I'm one pair of hands too many, now that Toes here."
"Is she going to be all right?" asked Vette. "The little one?"
"Doesn't look like it to me," said Dr. Greenwald. "But sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they really want to live."
"Do you think they really have desires? When they're so small?"
"It all depends," said Dr. Greenwald, "on whether you think of them as having a soul or not. I happen to think they do, and so I think that yes, that soul can have desires even if the body isn't yet ready to put them into words. I've seen babies hold on to life with all their might, and I've seen others just give up and slip away. They don't talk about it, but that's how it feels to me."
"And is that what Jeremy is doing? Slipping away?"
"Why don't we wait to answer that," said Dr. Greenwald, "until we see what he's like when he's conscious?"
"Dr. Greenwald," said Step. "I think you'll understand-we want to give a blessing to my son, and we'd like to be able to lay our hands directly on him. We also anoint him with a single drop of pure olive oil, on the brow or the crown of his head. Would that be all right?"
Greenwald glanced over at Torwaldson. "Oh, I can't see why not. Zap is really a husky little kid. Compared to these others, he's a regular Larry Holmes."
Dr. Greenwald opened the incubator, and Harv took the oil, anointed Jeremy's forehead with a drop of it, and then said the short prayer that went with it. DeAnne noticed that Dr. Greenwald watched, bowing his head respectfully. Then both Step and Harv touched the baby gently, and Step sealed the anointing, which was the longer prayer, the one that changed according to the needs of the person receiving the blessing, and according to what Step felt impressed to say.
Only a couple of mont hs ago, thought DeAnne, Step was confirming Stevie, and now he's giving his newest son a different kind of blessing. It felt good to know that her husband was able to do this, was able to call on the powers of heaven on her children's behalf. I can give him milk from my body I nurtured him inside me for nine months, and Step couldn't really share in any of that. But he can give this to our baby.
The blessing felt powerful to DeAnne as it was going on, and yet when it was done she realized that Step had said nothing about healing. He only blessed Jeremy that the doctors would recognize their own limitations and make no mistakes with him, and that he would soon be home with his mother and father and sister and brothers.