Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love

by Bret Baier

  Amy was now completely in tears. I tried my best to conjure up some method-acting bravado and transform myself into a confidence-inspiring in-control husband, not to mention the grizzled, unflappable journalist who has seen everything under the sun. Indeed, I had done several stories in and around hospitals, battlefield and otherwise, over the past several years. With one eye constantly on the clock and the other on the script, I always knew how to shut it down emotionally in order to shoot the video or conduct an interview without becoming personally involved in the story. But now, seeing my own son in this fragile, helpless condition, my papier-maché facade instantly melted away and I, too, started losing it, just like Amy.

  I so wanted to be the man—the stoic leader—for Amy at that moment, the smart, in control, resourceful guy who could figure this all out, save the day for my son, and bring a smile back to my wife’s face. But it was all getting away from me, and I knew it. Despite my professional experiences and all my training, at that moment, I realized beneath it all, I was no longer the hotshot reporter with the great job and the A-list connections who could always get it together. I was just another terrified parent worried sick about his child. I was in no position to inspire Amy or anyone else at that particular moment. Breathing in and out and simply trying to survive to the next minute was about all I could manage.

  Even with all the tubes and wires that prevented us from holding him, being reunited with Paulie there in the NICU was still pretty wonderful. Despite my sour attitude and lingering concerns about being blindsided with the news about Paulie’s heart, I could clearly see with my own eyes that the Sibley nurses and the transport team knew what they were doing and were working well together. They also seemed as if they really cared about Paulie, which meant a lot.

  Before long, however, another wave of anxiety swept over me as I thought about Paulie having to leave us for another hospital across town. I had just met this little guy for the first time yesterday, and already I was experiencing the human magnet pull to be with him nonstop. I couldn’t imagine what Amy was feeling or what her stress level was like as she watched the paramedics prepare to take Paul not only away from Sibley but farther away from her.

  Being separated from Paulie while he was having tests done down the hall was tough enough. But Amy and Paulie had been physically connected for nine full months. All of his twists, turns, kicks, and anything else he had going on in there were shared experiences, the profound depths of which only she and Paulie could comprehend. And tonight would be the first time they would be apart after more than nine months together.

  Although Children’s was less than seven miles from Sibley, if those transport team paramedics actually were NASA engineers and they came over to tell us they were strapping Paulie on the top of a rocket for a trip to the moon, the emotional impact on Amy could not have been any worse. Seven miles or a quarter million, it was all the same for her. Her son was being taken from her and that was all that mattered.

  The specific plan we came up with for the rest of the night was for Amy to stay at Sibley to continue recovering while I would go to Children’s to be with Paulie. Thankfully, Amy’s folks and her brother raced back to be with us. In between filling them in on the details of Paulie’s heart condition, we decided Amy’s dad would drive with me to Children’s while her mom and brother would stay with her at Sibley.

  Amy was still physically hurting, and as much as she wanted to ride with Paulie in the ambulance, she was in no condition to be racing through the streets of D.C. to Children’s or anywhere else for that matter. By now the paramedics had placed Paulie into a specialized, space-age-looking hard plastic bassinet contraption with openings for all the wires and tubes that needed to stay connected during the trip. As she stroked Paulie’s tiny hand through the wires for the last time before they sealed up the plastic box around him, I could see Amy was devastated. The instant that ambulance door slammed shut, the God-sent infusion of sunshine that filled Amy’s soul whenever she was near Paulie completely vanished.

  The transport team leader had me sign the release forms so they could legally transfer Paulie, and then they were gone. Probably because of all the emotion and pain of seeing Paulie lifted into that ambulance, rationality went out the window, and Amy began to openly worry that something horrible might happen during the trip. Also, seeing them pull away with Paulie while I was still standing there beside her, Amy immediately started screaming at me to hurry up and follow the ambulance. Amy simply had to know that one of us was with Paulie, even if it was in a car trailing behind. Although a professional and highly trained medical transport team, operating at its highest level, was providing Paulie with the best care he could possibly receive, for Amy and her fragile state of mind the entire operation must have seemed just a few clicks away from a kidnapping.

  Since I was totally clueless about what part of town they were taking Paulie to, the Sibley nurses quickly came up with a map for me so I could find Children’s in case we lost sight of the ambulance. Amy’s mother and her brother J.P. tried to comfort her as Big Paul and I rushed to the parking lot to find my car. By the time the two of us found my car and plopped into the seats, I was emotionally tapped out. Having Amy’s dad along for the ride to help me think, let alone keep me from driving through stoplights, was helpful. It also gave me some time to decompress a little bit and talk things through with someone who had tons of experience in dealing with hospitals and doctors. A highly successful medical device manufacturer in Chicago, Paul Hills really knew his way around the medical world, and I was extremely glad to have him as a resource.

  Not having our own flashing red lights or siren, I, of course, could not keep up with the ambulance, so when we arrived at Children’s, Paulie was already up in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit on the hospital’s second floor. I checked in at the Visitors Desk, and after we received our passes the front desk staff directed me to a side room where I had to fill out a bunch of medical forms so I could get Paulie officially admitted. After I was done with the paperwork, Paul and I headed straight for the elevators so we could get to the CICU and Paulie. When we arrived on the second floor, we checked in at the nurse’s station, and I was immediately taken over to be with Paulie.

  Children’s CICU was a good-size open area with about twelve or fourteen beds separated by sliding curtains. Not much privacy for families visiting their children, but the configuration allowed the entire room to be monitored in one visual sweep from the nurses’ station. I could see a few other parents huddled around their babies, but most of the sound in the room came from any number of high-tech monitoring and oxygen machines that whirred everywhere and constantly.

  When I first approached Paulie’s area in the CICU, a couple of nurses were having a difficult time trying to locate the artery in his arm, which they needed to hook him up to his permanent IV. Finding an artery in a full-grown adult can sometimes be a challenge, so hitting an artery smaller than angel hair pasta must be a daunting task, even for a well-trained pediatric nurse.

  Needle stick. Miss. Cry. Needle stick. Miss. Cry. Watching all this, I had one very specific thought: “Thank God Amy isn’t around to see this.” The most heartbreaking part was that it seemed as if each time they stuck Paulie’s arm his cry got weaker, not the kind of tantrum you would expect from a healthy baby who was constantly being pricked with a needle. The entire episode probably didn’t take longer than fifteen minutes, but to me and my worried-sick mind it seemed like hours. Obviously not able to be of assistance helping the nurses get an IV into Paulie’s arm, I distracted myself by studying the machine monitoring all his vital signs.

  Thankfully, the nurses eventually got Paulie’s A-line in, so I took the opportunity to jump in to ask one of them to give me a quick tutorial on what all the monitor readings meant.

  “Which one of these numbers do I need to worry about the most?” I asked.

  I knew I was probably being a nuisance, but I simply had to know how everything worked. I needed to know the si
gnificance of every beep and buzz the machines made. The numbers. The ranges. I needed to know everything there was to know. Patiently, one of the nurses went through everything that was going on with Paulie and the machines he was hooked up to. If it wasn’t for the fact that my one-day-old son was lying there hooked up, you might have thought I was producing a medical documentary or preparing for a live shot on the latest in pediatric cardiology.

  I am sure my behavior was an emotional dodge on one level, caused by all the pent-up insecurity of knowing I had zero control over anything that was going on. But somehow I believed if I could ask just the right, journalistic question or make a brilliant observation everyone else in the room had missed, I might be able to help my son. Even with an entire medical unit filled with highly trained doctors and nurses, if I was vigilant enough maybe I would catch Paul’s numbers declining at the precise moment they began to drop and save the day. Turn this thing around.

  Breaths per minute. Heartbeats. Oxygen in the blood. Blood pressure. My eyes were in constant motion darting from one set of numbers to the next.

  If I could just figure out which one of the readings was most critical, I might be in a better position to do something to help my son. I am sure the nurses had me pegged as a high-maintenance type who was going to be a problem for them, but I simply had to be involved in some way—any way.

  Talking with the nurse assigned to Paulie, I learned that because his heart was not pumping in the correct direction, he was having an extremely difficult time getting oxygen to flow from his lungs to his heart. I decided to concentrate on the oxygen level reading on the monitor. When Paulie’s oxygen level started to dip, that would be a warning sign that he was about to go into a decline. From that moment forward I had a death-match, no-blink staring contest with the numbers on Paul’s oxygen level gauge.

  After about an hour of monitoring the monitor, I left Paulie’s side so I could call Amy at Sibley to see how she was doing. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the difficulty they had finding his artery. I also didn’t tell her what I had learned about the oxygen levels in Paulie’s blood. Amy was worrying enough for both of us, and I didn’t think I had to share every minute detail I had learned while standing guard at my command post, especially now that I was officially part of the medical team minus the scrubs and a stethoscope. All Amy needed to know was that Paul was being well cared for—and he was.

  After a little prodding I discovered Amy was holding out on me, too.

  Since Paulie and I were both gone, she decided to check out of Sibley. I really discouraged Amy from coming to Children’s. After much discussion I was able to prevail upon her to let her mother and brother take her back home so she could rest and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a huge day for us because we would be having an early-morning meeting with Dr. Martin to discuss specific options for Paulie following the results of some overnight tests.

  In reality, despite my self-anointed bedside vigil, there was nothing either of us could do for Paulie that night, and we both needed to be clearheaded for the morning meeting with Dr. Martin. I told Amy I would come home to be with her, and we would go together to Children’s the first thing in the morning.

  “First thing?” she asked.

  Not as much a question as it was a nonnegotiable clause in a lawyered-up contract, I replied, “Yes, first thing.”

  Deal cut; Amy was on board. After checking in on Paulie one last time, Big Paul and I headed for the car so we could meet up with everyone else back at the condo.

  As Paul Hills and I drove toward Georgetown, I silently reflected on the day’s events and everything Amy and I had experienced over the past fifteen hours. I had never been to Children’s National Medical Center until that night, and as I continued driving I realized I had gotten a little lost. Even though Children’s is not that far from the U.S. Capitol or even the D.C. bureau of Fox News, it was in a section of the city I seldom visited. It took me a little while to find an identifiable street so I could get oriented and headed in the right direction toward home.

  I chuckled to myself, thinking, even with all the heartache and mind-smashing pressure the day had brought, that I was still worried about embarrassing myself in front of my father-in-law by getting lost in my hometown. I mean, after all, I had lived in Washington for six years now; I should know these streets like the back of my hand.

  But given everything we had been through that day, I could have probably driven in circles for the next hour and a half and I don’t think Big Paul would have noticed—or cared if he did. We were both drained and eager to change the topic to anything other than doctors and hospitals, if even for a few minutes. Needing a cathartic release, Big Paul and I talked about whatever popped into our heads.

  With me still searching for a familiar street to drive down, Paul turned to me and said, “How about a see-through when we get back?”

  “You bet. Belvedere on the rocks for me!” I responded. Belvedere vodka, that is.

  Back in Paul and Barbie Hill’s upscale Barrington Hills neighborhood outside Chicago, “see-through” is a slang phrase for any cocktail someone can literally see through, usually a clear liquor drink, straight or on the rocks. More times than not, a martini. One of Big Paul’s friends back home employed the phrase frequently, and we had joked about it often, adopting it as our own shorthand code.

  I was happy to be talking about anything other than heart disease, if even for a short while. With the two of us laughing and conspiring about something as silly as our see-throughs, I realized how negative and sad I had been all day. As I continued to talk with Paul, I was reminded that Amy has some of his best qualities, not least of which are her drive and determination. Reflecting on Amy’s obsessive need to get to Paulie in Sibley’s NICU earlier in the day, I remembered an encounter she’d had just a few weeks before when we went to see a movie not far from our condo in Georgetown.

  I should say, of all the beautiful inner and outer qualities Amy possesses, she is an amazingly strong, disciplined, hardworking, straightforward, bold, and honest person. She also has a heart of gold and is incredibly generous, just like Big Paul and her entire family. But, I should add, Amy is also a very security conscious, streetwise, city girl from Chicago, who is wicked smart and very aware of her surroundings. She is not about to let anyone con her, walk over her, or rip her off in any way.

  After we watched our movie, Amy went into the restroom at the theater and encountered a homeless woman who was washing her hands. Upon seeing Amy in her extremely pregnant state, the woman smiled and said, “So, you’re going to have a boy?” A little thrown, Amy smiled back and said, “Yes, how did you know that?” The woman proceeded to give Amy a hug and said, “That’s my gift, honey.” The woman went on to whisper to Amy, “I just want you to know there is going to be something very special about your son. I don’t know exactly what it is, but he is going to be very, very special.”

  Amy hugged the woman back and she immediately came out to me in the theater lobby. Not having her purse, Amy asked me if I had any cash on me. I reached into my pocket for a twenty-dollar bill, and Amy went back into the restroom and gave it to the woman she had been speaking to.

  Later, telling me about the encounter, Amy said for some reason she felt a strong spiritual connection to the woman, almost like they had met somewhere before. I had forgotten all about the homeless woman until now. That woman was right. Master’s champion or not, God had, indeed, blessed us with a very special child. And even though his journey on this planet, however long or short, was starting out rough, if Paulie somehow survived the challenges confronting him, surely he would be equipped to handle just about anything else life ever tossed his way.

  A chance encounter with a homeless woman who knew how to coax a twenty-dollar bill from a gullible participant? An angel sent down from heaven to tip us off about what was to come? I have no idea. I have even less of an idea if God still sends angels down to earth to help us out of scrapes of on
e kind or another. But I am continually amazed how certain people—winged or otherwise—sometimes seem to appear in our lives at precisely the moment we need them there.

  Reflecting on Amy’s encounter with that woman, I immediately thought about the circumstances that first brought Nurse Beth Kennedy into our hospital room. The fickle finger of fate? The luck of the draw with the Sibley nursing schedule? A well-trained nurse who took her job extremely seriously? Divinely sent by God? I had no idea how Beth Kennedy came into our lives. In many ways it didn’t matter. I thanked God for her, whatever her mode of transportation. In fact, earlier in the day, Amy and I both started referring to Beth as Our Angel for her persistence in trying to figure out why Paulie’s color was off.

  Throughout that meeting in our room with Dr. Martin, the entire time I was thinking we needed to have an expert come in and give us a second opinion on Paulie’s condition. We were just being hit with too much life-and-death medical information at once, especially from a random, on-call doctor who happened to respond to a page while driving to a completely different hospital on a different case.

  What I didn’t realize at the time was that Dr. Martin was not just a random on-call doctor who happened to be driving past Sibley responding to a page. He was a world-recognized cardiologist who headed up the Cardiology Department at Children’s National Medical Center, the very place where Paul was now being cared for. Dr. Martin’s particular expertise is performing echocardiograms, diagnosing pediatric heart disease, and teaching other doctors how to do the same. He was one of the best people in the world we could have been talking to about Paulie’s situation, and we didn’t even know it.

  Thinking back about the day, I realized how fortunate we were that our new nurse happened to notice Paulie’s color the first time she saw him, and one of the world’s top cardiologists happened to be driving past Sibley at the precise moment the page went out.