Her own leap of faith

THE baby's chest was heaving as he gasped, struggling mightily for each breath. Two months old, he lay splayed on the bed in the neonatal intensive-care unit, the tubing and wires to his IV and monitors forming a spider web of filaments around his tiny body. His respirations were becoming more labored by the minute; we would soon be adding a ventilator to his bedside.

In my first night on hospital duty as a pediatric intern, I had hoped for a gentle transition into the role as soldier against disease and death. Instead, I had been thrown into the proverbial river without a life preserver -- to learn how to \o7be \f7a life preserver.

With the heady confidence of young adulthood, I had long since relegated my faith to a dusty shelf, but I found myself jokingly asking the "man upstairs" for a little bit of luck through the night for us all.

Under the supervision of the pediatric resident, I inserted a breathing tube into the baby's tiny throat and guided it down the windpipe. His color improved with the assisted ventilation and oxygen, and his condition stabilized enough for us to try to determine the cause of his distress. The baby's parents, a young couple no older than me, insisted that he had been fine until the last week, when he had developed "a slight cold." The chest X-ray gave us our likely answer. Instead of the pneumonia we had feared, we saw that the young patient had a severely enlarged heart, the cardiac muscle thinned and weakened so that it was unable to pump blood and oxygen effectively. A diuretic relieved some of the resulting fluid in the chest, but medicines to strengthen the affected muscle were ineffective. The baby continued to worsen through the night.

Our pediatric cardiology consultant advised us that, barring a spontaneous recovery of the heart muscle or a heart transplant, both essentially impossible in that era and within that timeframe, the infant's prognosis was extremely poor. Trembling, I gently tried to inform the boy's parents of the gravity of his condition. They responded with a sober maturity, reaching tearfully for each other and their son. I did not dare allow myself to share their tears.

After a few moments, the parents turned to me and asked for my hand. Uncertain, I extended my fingers to touch the mother's. "Please pray with us" was the request, and, following their suit, I bowed my head. Their moving prayers sought God's help in curing the boy and pledged their acceptance of his decision.