It was my first day in pediatrics internship after a relaxing month at ENT. The day had gone by pretty smoothly till the emergency call came to the department around 1.30 pm in the afternoon. There had been a premature delivery in the obstetric theater and the resulting baby weighed a mere 900 grams; just a third of what an ideal baby should weigh at birth. The chances of the child surviving were meager but we still knew that we had to do what we could.
A tube was placed into the respiratory tract to assist his breathing and he was shifted to the ICU. Sadly, back then there were no ventilator facilities available which meant the baby's breaths were in our hands, literally. Being the junior most in the department as of that day, the task of manually ventilating the newborn under the supervision of a senior fell to me. Minutes turned to hours, afternoon to twilight as I continued…
