Chapter 3 Asha #2
Asha replaced the hatch on the isolette and straightened, finding Max at her shoulder, holding a printout of the latest labs.
“Vitals for two,” Max said, holding out the slip of paper. Her face was unreadable: all business, the prior levity reduced to a low, background hum. “Labs came up. No change on the CBC.”
Asha glanced at the sheet, flicking through the numbers with speed. “Keep him at baseline, then. We can reassess at shift change.”
“Already set.” Max’s eyes darted to the parents, then back to Asha. “Mom’s asking if she can hold him. She says it calms the baby.”
“It also tanks his sats,” Asha said, though her tone was softer than she intended. “Let’s stabilize a few more hours, then we can try again.”
Max nodded, no argument, but there was something in her mouth—a hint of resistance or disappointment—that made Asha want to explain herself, even as she quashed the urge.
The resident hovered, awaiting further instruction. Asha fixed him with a look. “Check the lines every hour. Let me know at once if he spikes a temp.”
“Of course, Doctor,” he said, eager to please. He sidled off to the next pod, leaving the two women in a strange, humming silence.
Max stood close enough that their shoulders nearly touched, the glow from the isolette painting both their faces a sickly yellow. “You ever go home on holidays?” she asked, voice pitched low, somewhere between curiosity and accusation.
Asha bristled, surprised. “Why does it matter?”
Max didn’t retreat. “Just wondering if you ever take the night off. You know—traditions, family, all that.”
Asha stared at her, flat and direct. “The only tradition I care about is keeping these babies alive.”
For a moment, Max’s eyes widened. Then she laughed—quietly, with a twist of sadness in it. “Of course. Should’ve known.”
She turned, moving to adjust a monitor, and for the first time since the start of shift, Asha noticed how tired Max looked: the blue smudges under her eyes, the knuckle swollen from an old, half-healed cut.
She wanted to say something—an apology, maybe, or commiseration—but the words felt brittle on her tongue. She couldn’t make the words come out.
Max finished her task, then turned back, all business again. “If you need me, I’m on med cart.”
Asha nodded. “Thank you, Nurse Benson.”
Max hesitated. “Merry Christmas, Doctor Patel.”
The words were so unexpected, so gentle, that Asha almost flinched. She watched Max walk away, shoulders set, head high, every motion a study in stubborn care.
For a long minute, Asha stood in the half-dark, unable to move, replaying the brief exchange with forensic detail.
The data, the rules, the discipline—these were safe, immutable.
What she didn’t understand was why it suddenly mattered so much, the look on Max’s face, the way her voice softened around the word home.
She turned back to the isolette. The baby slept, skin the color of a promise, machines breathing for him in the hush.
Asha placed her palm flat on the side of the incubator. For warmth or for reassurance, she wasn’t sure.
But it lingered there, even after the plastic began to fog.
The first alarm came at 2:04 a.m., slicing the soft hum of the unit with a shrill, clinical certainty that made even the night-shift janitor look up from his slow pilgrimage down the hall.
Asha was four pods away, reviewing a chart with the new resident, when the red light flicked on above Baby Rodriguez’s isolette.
She was moving before the data could fully register, her shoes nearly silent, but the clip of her steps enough to signal everyone within earshot: something was wrong, and it was very wrong right now.
Inside the pod, the baby’s chest had gone slack, lips already purple. The parents, jolted awake by the noise, clung to each other, eyes wide and white against the blue shadows.
Asha snapped on gloves and called over her shoulder, “Suction and bag, now.”
The resident fumbled for the airway kit, hands shaking so badly the suction canister nearly clattered to the floor.
But Max was already there, materializing from the dark with the ambu bag in one hand and the suction catheter in the other, both prepped and ready.
She handed Asha the bag and attached the mask in a single, practiced gesture.
“Pulse ox?” Asha barked, voice sharp.
“Sixty-eight and dropping,” Max said, eyes never leaving the baby’s face. “He’s not moving air.”
“Switch me.” Asha pressed two fingers to the baby’s sternum and counted off compressions, the heel of her hand no bigger than a coin. She glanced at the clock. “We’re at twenty seconds. Let’s go.”
Max pivoted, clearing the airway with a sweep of the suction, then repositioned the mask for a better seal. “Clear,” she said, and Asha hit the bag again, willing the baby’s chest to rise.
The monitors screamed, insistent. The father moaned, a sound of such raw, animal terror it threatened to crowd out everything else.
“Epi ready,” Max announced, already tearing the packaging with her teeth. She held out the microdose syringe. Asha hesitated, recalculated the risks, then nodded. “Give it.”
Max injected into the line, steady as a metronome. “O2 still dropping,” she said, but softer, as if for Asha alone.
Asha could feel her own pulse in her teeth. She switched to mouth-to-tube, forcing each breath with the precision of a machine, counting under her breath. The numbers didn’t change, didn’t improve, and for the first time in months she felt her hands start to shake.
“Come on,” she whispered, and it was a prayer, not a command.
“Doctor—” Max’s voice cut through the panic, clear and warm. She reached for the stethoscope, set it on the tiny chest, and then, very gently, her other hand came up and closed over Asha’s wrist, stopping the tremor.
Their eyes met. Max’s gaze was unflinching, calm, and in that instant Asha understood the unspoken message: You are not alone. We have him. We have each other.
She drew a breath, recalibrated, and resumed compressions.
“Sats rising,” Max reported. “Seventy-four. Seventy-eight.” She smiled, and it was all the reward Asha needed.
After two more cycles, the monitors relented. The baby’s chest moved, shallow but determined, and the color returned to his lips. The father sobbed, the mother collapsed in the chair, and Max released Asha’s wrist only when she was sure the emergency had passed.
“Keep him on the vent,” Asha ordered, voice raw. “Run another blood gas in fifteen. Prep for possible intubation.”
“On it,” Max replied, already moving.
The pod flooded with light and personnel—RTs, the charge nurse, the resident blinking in useless awe—but none of them mattered. Not in that moment.
Asha stepped back, the sudden adrenaline drop making her vision swim. She braced herself on the side of the isolette, acutely aware of the thin sheen of sweat on her palms, the lingering imprint of Max’s hand on her wrist.
She watched as Max bent to reassure the parents, her touch light, her words an anchor in an ocean of panic.
The mother clung to Max’s arm, shaking, and Max knelt beside her, speaking quietly until the storm of sobs gave way to shuddering breaths.
Max was so able to dish out her affection like a soft warm blanket.
Asha admired it and felt slightly jealous as she never had the ability to do the same.
Instead, her words often stabbed like a cold knife, never received with much warmth,
For a minute after, Asha just watched. The data had stabilized. The machines were silent. Life—so stubborn, so unpredictable—had clawed its way back.
She turned away before she could be seen, retreated to the staff sink and washed her hands, over and over, even after the gloves were long gone.
She stared at her reflection in the stainless steel panel above the sink, searching for signs of fracture, of failure.
There was nothing but her own face, pale and drawn, the eyes too bright, almost feverish.
She dried her hands on a paper towel, then returned to the pod. Max stood at the bedside, charting the event. When she saw Asha, she offered a nod. It was nothing, but it felt like everything.
Asha cleared her throat. “Good work, Nurse Benson. You were—”
“Just doing my job, Doc,” Max said, but the softness in her voice thickened the words.
There was a pause, and in it, the crackle of everything unsaid. She knew she’d taken it too far before.
Asha tried to leave but stopped. “Earlier,” she said, voice thin, “when you asked about holidays—I never had any. I mean, not real ones. So, I don’t—” She faltered, unable to finish.
Max regarded her for a long moment, then smiled. “There’s always a first time.”
Asha nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
Behind them, the monitors settled into their old, reliable rhythm. In the hallway, the Christmas lights blinked and blinked, refusing to be put out.
For the rest of the hour, Asha carried on her rounds, but the feeling lingered: the strange certainty that, in the moment of greatest crisis, it wasn’t just the baby they’d saved, but some fragile thing between them, too. And an attraction she could not ignore.
And every time her hand trembled, she remembered the warmth of Max’s fingers, and how, for a few seconds, the world had narrowed to just the two of them—and she wanted to feel it again.