Amanda reached into her diaper bag and pulled out a hospital discharge folder, and Rachel said, Patricia, since you mentioned my little job, Amanda wanted everyone here to know about a night in February.
Patricia, who sits on three charity boards and has never worked a night in her life, had just called her daughter-in-laws NICU nursing a silly little job she should quit.
Amanda, Patricias own daughter, opened the folder with shaking hands. Last February, Amandas baby had come nine weeks early, three pounds, blue, fighting for every breath, in the same NICU in Lexington where Rachel works nights.
Rachel was the nurse on duty. She held that tiny baby through the worst night of his life, adjusted every wire, caught the moment his breathing faltered and called the team that saved him, and then she sat with Amanda until dawn when Amanda could not stop shaking.
The baby Amanda was holding a little too tight at that christening, the healthy four-year-old, was that February baby. Alive because of the silly little job.
Patricia said Rachel should stay home where a mother belongs. Rachel stayed up all night so that Patricia could have a grandchild to belong to at all.
Amanda told the whole room. Rachel never had, because NICU nurses do not talk about the babies they save. She had held her own niece through that night and never once mentioned it to Patricia, who went on thinking the job was beneath the family.
Patricia set down her iced tea. The ladies who had laughed with her stopped laughing.
Rachel handed me the baby, her own newborn, and went and sat beside her sister-in-law Amanda, and the two of them held the February baby between them.
Rachel still works the night shift in the NICU. She still holds babies who weigh less than a can of soda. It is not a silly little job. It is the reason a four-year-old was at that christening at all, and now his whole family knows it.