Indelible Image

I had trouble sleeping last night. A "video clip" created by my brain kept replaying in my mind.

Several months ago in the late afternoon, I had just arrived home from work when I heard sirens converging on our neighborhood.

I live in a section of the city which has many Victorian style homes. Some are still owner occupied properties, but a few have been split up into apartments. I know most of the neighbors who own their homes, but the apartment dwellers tend to be shorter term occupants, so over the years, I have only known those who had children who were playmates of my children.

As the sirens stopped, rescue vehicles cluttered the intersection nearest my home. The house they entered was only three houses away, but on the opposite side of the intersection. I knew no one in that apartment building. I went out on the sidewalk wondering what could be going on that merited so many rescue vehicles....police, an ambulance and the fire department rescue truck had all arrived. A neighbor came and stood with me.

The rescue workers had been in the home only a very brief period of time when a uniformed man ran from the house. My impression was that he was one of the firemen, because he wore dark slacks with a light blue shirt. The police have dark blue shirts and the EMTs in our city seem to wear white shirts. He rushed across the porch, bounded down the steps and sprinted toward the back of the ambulance which waited with door flung open. On his forearm was draped the limp form of a baby. The child's head was cradled in his hand. The body was prone on the length of his forearm with small limbs dangling on either side. As the man's body moved with his strides, the arms and legs of the child swayed...there was no muscle tone, no resistance to his movements.

I murmured to my neighbor and to myself, "Oh, God....it's a baby."

But in my mind, I said, "Oh, God...it's a dead baby."

The man leaped into the back of the ambulance. The doors were scarcely closed when the ambulance raced away with sirens screaming.

The next day I read in the paper that the baby had drowned in the bathtub. The mother had placed the child in the tub with an older sibling and apparently had left them unattended. If the age of the sibling recorded in the paper was correct, the older child was not old enough to be supervising a baby in a tub.

What would cause a mother to do this? Was she sick and in need of lying down? Was a pot on the stove boiling over? Did she receive a terribly important phone call? Was her favorite soap opera on? Was she in the middle of an online chat? What could have caused her to take this risk?

As the indelible image of the sprinting rescue worker and lifeless form kept replaying in my mind, I wondered what images replay in the mother's mind. What images replay in the mind of the sibling? Will this horrible moment define that child's life?

I tossed and turned last night thinking, "Oh, God...it was a baby."