By Nici Holt Cline

Last Wednesday night Ruby woke with a familiar cry. I didn’t know I remembered it until I heard it. She was distressed and uncomfortable. She was squirming and gasping. I stumbled from a deep sleep, begging the universe, shit NO.

Before I could find the light, I had begun counting her breaths. I could tell right away her respiratory rate was at least 75 breaths per minute. I was right. Andy and I stirred, dug for the thermometer, saline and bulb suction. 100 and then 101.7 a half hour later. Just like last time, she wouldn’t nurse. She was tired, didn’t open her eyes, laid like a beetle on her back in the hot sun.

I unzipped her soft, cotton pjs, separating the little pastel lambs that decorate the fabric and held her body to mine. I sat on my knees on my side of the bed in the middle of the night and I rhythmically rocked and hummed the mantra from my prenatal yoga class. She settled, her chest rising and falling too fast, the tiny holes in her nose encumbered, forcing her dry mouth open, her hot flesh reminding me. I didn’t want to be reminded. That it could happen again.

She’s bigger now. She stronger. She has more hair and it’s red. I wondered if the virus and two bacterias that imprisoned her last December had shoved flame into her hair. Or, if she had willed it to turn the color of her name to let us know she was going to survive. Ruby.
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