Dax walks toward me and hands me a business card. The words ‘Epic Fail’ pop from the front. They look like they were spray-painted onto the card over a deep gray background. These look professional, and I can’t believe these guys are about my age.
“Call me on Friday to confirm. I’ll add you to the gig for Saturday night. We’ll be playing all of the songs we covered today, so you’re good.”
I swipe the card from his hands and nod. “Yeah, I guess I’m good.”
“Later,” Tristan says, putting his bass back on its stand.
“Later,” I respond and look up the street past the corner. I see a few cabs passing on the main road about a quarter of a mile away. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch one of them and jump on the Main Line before it gets dark.
“Epic Fail!” they yell in unison behind me as I jog toward the intersection.
I throw up my right hand in a backwards wave.
I like the sound of that.
Sam
Present
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Age 23
ROUNDS ARE OVER, and Cassie and I settle into our daily routine. Today’s scrubs are baby monkeys. Monkeys swinging from vines. Monkeys eating bananas. Monkeys hugging each other. Cassie hates these particular scrubs because the background color is beige. And she hates beige.
“Ugh, I can’t do anything right today,” she exclaims as she tosses a feeding tube into the garbage. Beige also makes her pissy. I look around the room and it’s filled with babies. Very sick babies. Two monitors go off at the same time, and we both rush to opposite ends of the room to check the vitals of the babies causing the alarms.
Suddenly, the door flies open and yet another baby is brought into the already crowded room. “Suction,” Dr. Hagan directs Becky as they work on this new baby. Cassie closes Baby Grace’s incubator.
She walks back over to Ben to begin his feeding tube again and gets flustered. “There are too many babies in here,” she says, dropping the tube onto the floor. Her reaction is surprising to me since she usually remains so calm under pressure.
“Here, let me.” I grab a new, sterile tube and begin prepping it for Ben. “Cassie!” Dr. Hagan calls as she’s working on the new baby. “Get Terry on the phone, please. We need to make sure transport is ready to send this little guy over to CHOP once he’s stable.” Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia is another level 4 NICU in the city, and since ours is now beyond capacity, we need to make sure space is available elsewhere. This happens from time to time, and we do the same when other hospitals are over capacity. Baby Grace’s monitor alarms again while Cassie is quickly talking to the NICU at CHOP. Becky details the new baby’s situation. “Baby boy, full term. Hypertonic, exposed to various drugs. Mother tested positive for benzodiazepine, anti-depressants, and marijuana. Infant tox screen is pending. Mother is refusing transport.”
Great. A drug addict mom who doesn’t want to be with her sick baby. It never ceases to amaze me what some mothers will do to themselves, knowingly. I look around the room at all of the sick babies whose mothers did everything right, but they were all dealt a challenging hand. Two more monitors sound and I look down at Ben, who we’ve been trying to feed for the past hour. He’s miraculously off the breathing tube, for now, but this guy needs to eat.
Cassie makes the arrangements for transport while Dr. Hagan continues to work on the new baby boy. His screams are sharp and shallow and tear through my heart. The cries of drug-exposed infants are unique and heart wrenching. “Becky, we’ll need a tox screen on him. Cassie, please let social services know what’s happening. They’re going to want to speak with the mother.”
Cassie relays information to Heather, the hospital social worker, and quickly hangs up the phone, rushing to another monitor alarm. When it rains, it pours in here.