Held

My second night on call I received a page from one of the floors I was cross-covering. The nurse said that she had some questions about a patient who was just admitted to her floor from the intensive care unit.

I quickly scoured the notes my compadre (home in his nice warm bed, jerk) had left me to find out the quick and dirty on this baby before I went down there.

She was almost two years old and had suffered a brain injury after her babysitter had shaken her around a bit, smashed her head into the kitchen counter and kicked in her left chest to collapse her lung, ultimately stopping her heart for a few agonizing moments, before her rescuer arrived. She was in the intensive care unit for a long time, but was stable now and transferred to the floor so she could undergo intensive physical therapy, to re-learn all the 2 year old skills that had been beaten out of her.

When I arrived to her room, she was crying softly, because while she needed to cry, the crying just made her head bulge and throb and hurt. I took one look at the huge scar on her round head and I wondered what questions I could possibly answer about this broken baby.

"Poor baby. Mom just has some questions she wants to ask you."

"Hi. Are you mom?"

"Yes. I was just wondering...Well, now that she isn't hooked up to all those monitors and tubes..I was just wondering if I could hold her?"

And more out of instinct than knowledge, I said "Of course. Bring that rocking chair over by her crib and we will make it happen."

So she was held.

And the nurses were happy because the baby wasn't crying.

The mama was happy because the baby wasn't crying.

And the baby. wasn't. crying.

So I wrote in the chart 'patient may be out of bed in mom's arms,' which was a flimsy, ridiculous order, but the only order I have written in the past two weeks that's actually been worth a damn.

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