You Don't Know Her Name But She Mattered

It was a normal day. As normal as life in the intensive care unit can be.

I was holding my precious baby with half a heart and telling him stories about how I fell in love with his daddy walking the streets of Manhattan. We had been in the unit for months now. I lost track of time and I had to look outside to see if it were day or night. By this point I could speak the language of acronyms thrown around by doctors and confirm dosing on medications for my son like a seasoned pharmacist. I knew what every beep meant and which ones shouldn’t make me tremble and which called the cavalry.

I had so many days like this one watching his numbers rise and fall, conversations with the new fellow who knew less about my son medically than I did and hearing about life outside these walls from what the nurses did on their shifts away from the chaos. Those medical warriors could be saving a life and at the same time talking about their favorite restaurant. It was a normal day for them too.

Normal became unimaginable as I picked out phrases being
said across the room. The specialist and his fellow were with Baby Girl in bed one. We were bed four. We had come to know Baby Girl after months of rooming together. We didn’t know her specific heart challenges but we knew her cries and that she loved to sit in her swing.

Life in the hospital is really never normal but a routine is built. I learned that I would have to step out of the unit when certain alarms sounded, a child was being admitted or coming back from surgery. On this particular day, I was tucked away rocking our boy and no one asked me to step out. I could hear the doctor answer the parents’ questions, “We could operate but we know it won’t work. She will require the same surgery again and again for it simply not to work in the end. We shouldn't put her through that. Of course, you can seek a second opinion but they will say the same.” Baby Girl’s mom pleads, “But, I read something online. Can’t you try that?” The conversation continued for around twenty minutes and the questions became more desperate. A mama and a daddy’s heart pleading for solution.

The last thing I overheard was the doctor saying, “There is simply no more we can do but make sure she is as comfortable as possible.”

Her stunned daddy just stood there over Baby Girl’s bed. No outward emotion. Just stunned. Lost. Her mama kept tearfully asking unanswerable questions.

The best of the best had nothing to offer.

I don’t know what happened with Baby Girl after she left our unit. I think about her often. She was just under two years old. She was a foster child with a severe heart defect. She was loved by her birth parents and her foster parents. Her short life was more complicated than it should have been. She didn’t have hundreds following her story or t-shirts made in her honor. No 5k’s were run in her name. No newspaper articles printed celebrating her fight.

But, I’ll never forget her.

She mattered.

She fought.

She is loved.

For whoever touches you, touches the apple of His eye.
Zechariah 2:8b

Baby Girl, your hips don’t lie J. (A little inside joke between us girls.)