Night Admissions 

Shala Erlich 

Lily walks in the door without knocking and right away asks the hovering boyfriend to leave the room. “Boyfriend” is maybe not the best label; better to think of him the way the OB/GYN folks like to write in their chart notes, as the FOB. Father Of the Baby. He’s wearing dirty jeans and a dirtier yellow T-shirt, looks like he’s about nineteen, antsy and unsure of his role. A real FOB, Lily thinks. On the other hand, she sympathizes. Getting his girlfriend pregnant wasn’t the best move, but this much drama before the baby has shown up seems like extra. 

“I’ll find you when we’re done here, thirty or forty minutes,” Lily tells him, gesturing with her clipboard toward the hallway. Even though they are deep into the night, the ER is humming with voices and pagers and IV alarms. There was a quiet spell, truly like magic, around nine, but when Lily called her husband, Daniel said, “I’m trying to get Nora on a regular bedtime, and besides, what’s the point now?”  

Daniel was so loyal and sweet all through the first year, bringing Nora to Lily for breastfeeding sessions in any available interlude, day or night, and in any random call room or broom closet they could find, like a three-way love affair. But tonight there will be no sneaked visit with Nora in the ER family room.