On Loving Lucy

i of ii

On a Saturday morning, her fifth day of life, Lucy was transferred from Hometown Hospital to its parent hospital in downtown Austin.  In a way it felt abrupt.  It felt abrupt because, for one, it was a Saturday, and all the week long, since the day of her birth, doctors rarely mentioned the likelihood of a transfer.  If a transfer was brought up it was dismissed as a distant possibility, something that “might maybe” happen if her oxygen saturation didn’t pick up on its own, which everyone seemed certain that it would.  By everyone, I mean, primarily, whichever neonatologist happened to be seeing us on a given day.  The group of at least a dozen doctors was based in Austin, and they would take turns rotating to our hospital for 24-hour shifts.  So it’s no exaggeration to say that Lucy had a different doctor each day of…