She swept her head back defiantly and motioned to the other grandmother. Together they left the NICU

Someone’s monitor was beeping. Marissa scanned the four incubators in the room. It was Ayala Weinstein, her third apnea episode tonight. Marissa briskly walked over to the incubator and gave the tiny foot a pinch. A shudder jolted through the baby’s body, and her tummy started to rise again rhythmically.

Marissa studied the monitor carefully. Ayala’s sats were rising, and her breathing seemed steady. Hopefully, she’d keep it up for the rest of the shift.

Marissa went back to her computer and checked the list she’d composed four hours earlier. The Azoulai twins – Baby A and Baby B, no names yet — would need another dose of antibiotics soon. She checked the paper on which she’d written down their weights and started the calculating process.

“Marissa?” That was Lali’s voice coming from the main desk.

“Hmmm,” she said in response, mulling over the numbers. Baby A had weighed in at 1.04 kilo at the beginning of the shift; that meant that….

“Marissa!” Lali sounded urgent now. “We have an admission. I’m sending him to your room, okay?”

“Coming,” Marissa said.

She checked Ayala’s monitor again. Everything looked steady.

At the front desk, a labor and delivery nurse was standing next to an incubator, fussing with wires. Inside the incubator was a tiny baby wearing only a diaper. Matti, one of the staff pediatricians, was busy checking the monitor. Two Arab women in long dark dresses, heads swathed in solid, severe colors, hovered anxiously at the desk. Lali had opened up a new file and was studiously entering the new patient’s information.

“Jabarin, naeam?” she asked the two women. Marissa presumed they were the grandmothers. No way was the mother of such a fresh preemie in a state to accompany him to the NICU.

The shorter woman answered curtly. “Naeam.”

Lali kept up her typing. Then she beckoned to Marissa.

“It was a C-section. Week 29. His weight is pretty good – around 1.2 kilo. They had to intubate him in the delivery room, though.” She looked knowingly at Marissa.