Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult Page A

sure that he’s not bleeding. With both Marie and Corinne in the thick of a stat C-section, there is literally no one else to do it.
    I step into the nursery, where Davis is sleeping off the morning trauma.
    It will only be twenty minutes till Corinne comes back, I tell myself, or until Marie relieves me.
    I fold my arms and stare down at the newborn. Babies are such blank slates. They don’t come into this world with the assumptions their parents have made, or the promises their church will give, or the ability to sort people into groups they like and don’t like. They don’t come into this world with anything, really, except a need for comfort. And they will take it from anyone, without judging the giver.
    I wonder how long it takes before the polish given by nature gets worn off by nurture.
    When I look down at the bassinet again, Davis Bauer has stopped breathing.
    I lean closer, certain that I’m just missing the rise and fall of his tiny chest. But from this angle, I can see how his skin is tinged blue.
    Immediately I reach for him, pressing my stethoscope against his heart, tapping his heels, unwrapping his swaddling blanket. Lots of babies have sleep apnea, but if you move them around a bit, change the position from the back to the belly or the side, respiration begins again automatically.
    Then my head catches up to my hands:
No African American personnel to care for this patient.
    Glancing over my shoulder at the door of the nursery, I angle my body so that if someone were to come inside, they’d only see my back. They wouldn’t see what I’m doing.
    Is stimulating the baby the same as resuscitating him? Is touching the baby technically caring for him?
    Could I lose my job over this?
    Does it matter if I’m splitting hairs?
    Does anything matter if this baby starts breathing again?
    My thoughts whip quickly into a hurricane: it has to be a respiratory arrest; newborns never have cardiac events. A baby might not breathe for three to four minutes, and still have a heart rate of 100, because its normal heart rate is 150…which means even if blood isn’t reaching the brain, it’s perfusing the rest of the body and as soon as you can get the baby oxygenated that heart rate will come up. For this reason, it’s less important to do chest compressions on an infant than to breathe for them. In this, it’s the opposite of the way you’d care for an adult patient.
    But even when I shove aside my doubts and try everything short of medical interaction, he doesn’t resume breathing. Normally, I’d grab a pulse ox probe to get a monitor on his oxygenation and heart rate. I’d find an oxygen mask. I’d make calls.
    What am I supposed to do?
    What am I
not
supposed to do?
    Any moment now, Corinne or Marie might walk into the nursery. They’d see me interfering with this infant, and then what?
    Sweat runs down my spine as I hastily wrap the baby up in his swaddling blanket again. I stare at his tiny body. My pulse throbs in my eardrums, a metronome of failure.
    I’m not sure if three minutes have passed, or only thirty seconds, when I hear Marie’s voice behind me. “Ruth,” she says, “what are you doing?”
    “Nothing,” I respond, paralyzed. “I’m doing nothing.”
    She looks over my shoulder, sees the blue skin of the baby’s cheek, and for a hot beat meets my gaze. “Get me an Ambu bag,” Marie orders. She unwraps the baby, taps his little feet, turns him over.
    Does exactly what I did.
    Marie fits the pediatric face mask over Davis’s nose and mouth and starts to squeeze the bag, inflating his lungs. “Call the code…”
    I follow her order; dial 1500 into the nursery phone. “Code blue in the neonatal nursery,” I say, and I imagine the team being pulled from their regular jobs in the hospital—an anesthesiologist, an intensive care nurse, a recording nurse, a nursing assistant from a different floor. And Dr. Atkins, the pediatrician who saw this baby only minutes ago.
    “Start