Friday, June 03, 2005

Virgin Birth

MaddogMedic had me laughing out loud about Peanut butter balls. That reminded me of a time I just couldn't laugh.


The NICU was small, but crowded, with 3-4 other nurses doing patient care nearby. The baby weighed about 8 pounds, and was only in the NICU for a more-or-less routine sepsis workup due to maternal history. I wasn't particularly busy with patient care, so I had time to listen to his mom, the only visitor in the NICU that late on Christmas Eve. She told me that most people didn't want to hear her story.

Once I'd heard it, I wasn't too surprised by that. You see, she'd never had sex. Never. She explained that her father didn't believe her, but her attorney did. Her OB believed her, but the neonatologist didn't - and so on. The conception didn't require technology, and her definition of sex excluded anything that didn't involve penetration. As she went through the details of who the father was, and just how the baby had been conceived, my co-workers disappeared one by one. I could see them laughing through the nurses station window behind her. Fortunately, they regained their composure before she got up to leave.


3 years answering a suicide hotline, I thought I'd heard everything. I guess not.

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