Pulse Red

In the neo-natal intensive care unit of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children, there are the babies born too soon, the families who love them, and the doctors and the nurses who fight the daily battle, not just for survival but for quality of life.

Last week while there taking photographs on behalf of St. Christopher's Foundation for Children, I met a young man and his girlfriend, high school age. Their baby had been born at just 27 weeks six days before, and now inside the warming bed he lay, scarred by surgery, linked into life by machines.

"Look at this," the young father gestured, and he began to introduce me to his child. "He got his ears from my girlfriend, see?" he said. "He got his chin from me. I cut off my dreadlocks when he was born. I want to be a respectable dad." Then this young man—charismatic, beautiful, his smile like a tilted crescent moon—slipped his hand inside the circle opening of the covered warming bed and fit it upon his baby's tiny head—big as an oversized cap, and gentle. "Take our picture," he said, and through the thick plastic, past all those tubes, I did.

It will be late January, at the earliest, before this baby goes home. Between now and then, his parents will be driven to the hospital every day after school by his great-grandfather on his mother's side.

The future must be imagined every day. It must be hoped for.