“Thanks, but, um…I don’t live around here.”

“Who cares!” Dax says. “You need to get back here next week.”

I nod and try to figure out what lie I’m going to tell my mother.

Hanging with these dudes was the most comfortable I’ve been in a long time. Playing music with them felt so natural. Melodic.

I look over at my father’s house again.

“How do you know that dude?” Alex asks.

“I had the wrong address. I don’t know him at all,” I lie and crumble the paper that’s in my pocket with my father’s name and address, tossing it into the trashcan at the curb.

Alex raises his eyebrow but seems to accept my fib.

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.

I get Ben’s feeding tube in place and turn on the drip. Dr. Hagan is finished examining the baby boy, and Becky wipes his foot clean of blood from the tests she just administered. Dr. Hagan leaves the room and sinks into a chair in the outer office. She looks exhausted.

Finally, the monitors have silenced, and Cassie, Becky and I all return to our standard routines.

“Where’s Olivia?” I ask, looking at the empty chair next to Ben’s incubator.

Cassie is pale and seems really off now. “I’m not sure. Her mother came to get her about ten minutes ago. There are some other people here to see her.” Cassie walks over to Mikey and turns on the lights above him. He’s here because he has severe jaundice and the lights help lower his bilirubin counts. Mikey’s large belly spills over his infant diaper. He’s huge. Well, huge for a baby in the NICU. Weighing in at almost eleven pounds, he’s the largest baby I’ve ever seen in this hospital. He’s perfect and fat and already has thighs that any mother would brag about. But since he has jaundice, he needs our help. He sleeps peacefully, full, content and looking so out of place here in the NICU. He’s been doing well, and if that continues, he should be going home by tomorrow. She adjusts the light above him and looks over at Ben.

“The bleed on the left side remains a grade three. Not good,” Cassie mumbles and sits on the stool in front of her computer.

“No, not good at all,” I say quietly, looking away from Mikey. It’s amazing how this room can go from frantic to quiet in a matter of minutes. “Cassie, are you okay?” I ask, concerned as to why she’s so off today.

“Yeah, it’s just…”

She stops talking as we hear a woman scream from the hallway, “No! No! No!”

Cassie and I turn our heads and see Olivia outside the NICU window, throwing herself into a large man, punching his chest. My heart grabs in my chest when I see another man next to him wearing similar clothes. Military.

“Oh no,” Cassie exhales and stands up.

Olivia’s wails turn to sobs, and her mother pulls her off of the Marine. She holds her daughter tight against her chest as the two Marines stand quiet and respectful.

“That can’t be good,” Cassie says. “When my cousin was visited by two Marines, she found out her husband was killed in Iraq. It’s never good when there are two of them. Never.” Her voice trails off as she moves to the window and peers out at them.

Olivia is shaking her head and then collapses onto the floor. One of the Marines bends down to a knee and scoops her into his arms, carrying her over to the couch in the lounge area. She doesn’t look conscious, and I call out to Dr. Hagan, who lifts her head from the desk. “Can you help? Olivia just passed out in the hallway.” She grabs smelling salt taped to the cabinet door and rushes out.

As soon as Dr. Hagan swipes the salts under Olivia’s nose, she opens her eyes and immediately begins to sob and wail. Her mother slides on the couch next to her, cradling her head in her lap. I can’t bear to watch this any longer.

“I hope to God she didn’t just hear what I think she did, but my instinct tells me she just found out her husband is gone.” Cassie pulls the blinds shut, giving Olivia privacy from our curious eyes. My chest tightens, and I try to fight the grief I feel for this young mother and her new family.