This is a story of a very odd event that happened to me about 2 months ago. Even though it makes quite the story I never told it before here on SDMB, simply because I’ve been too lazy to write a post this long. Now that I have been creeping around MMP here and there I might as well take the time to share.
I work an overnight shift in a lab in one of the biggest hospitals in Boston. Although my coworkers enjoy naps for breaks, I am a borderline insomniac, and a curious one at that. So I take the time to simply walk around and explore the hospital and sometimes go for walks outside. Sometimes just to my car, or even visits to the 24 hour CVS across the way. This particular morning (3AM) I was standing next to the hospital garage smoking a cigarette and watching all the patients who have been woken for early tests smoke their cigarettes. Now, I rarely smoke. I’ve smoked only one pack in the past three months. It’s just that at these hours in the morning, sometimes I just need something to do instead of just people watching.
I was almost finished so I began walking back to the hospital main entrance. Just at that same moment a security guard was walking down the sidewalk at the opposite side of the open lot from me, heading to the main entrance at the same time. All of a sudden we both seem to simultaneously hear a sound and it stops us both. We both swivel our heads and look to see if there was anything happening, then he looks up to me and asks “Did you hear that too?” As I tell him “Yes,” still just standing there wondering what that was. Then we hear it again, this time our brains tuned to listen to the slightest pin drop.
Very audibly this time we both hear, from the distance of Beacon hill, someone was yelling, “Help!”
I take off running. I tend to be a very reactive person even in the smallest emergency. If we were at a party together and someone spilled something I would be halfway to be bringing back paper towels the moment the spill occurred, rather than seeing how bad it is or asking how it happened. So even though I read in the Boston Herald every week about some good Samaritan who inevitably ends up as the victim because they tried to intervene in a dangerous situation, I still never stopped running.
The security guard, hearing the same thing I did, was following close behind me. Already reporting that “something” was going on outside even though neither of us. A thought crosses my mind, out hospital security guards don’t carry firearms.
The cries for help are getting louder as I head in the right direction. I am all of a sudden figuring out that it is not one, but two voices. That of a man and a woman. As I near Cambridge St. I begin yelling back to the voices, “Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’re coming!” I get to Cambridge St., and as I looked across the way down one of the narrow roads in Beacon hill I believe to make out what looks like the shape of two bodies. Still, I cannot tell what kind of danger I may be in. I continue to run.
I run up to the end of the street and I see them, it was a man standing over a woman who was on the ground. I still can’t see what was going on, but as my eyes fought to adjust to the dark of night I heard two words that scared me to death. The woman said, “my baby…” and I looked down to barely see that she was holding something small in her arms. Once again reaction kicks in, and without even knowing what had happened I yelled back to the guard, “Call an ambulance!” I didn’t know why this woman was on the ground, but I knew that people yelling help in the middle of the night clutching newborns need some sort of medical intervention. The security guard did something odd, he never actually approached the people (well, I guess that is kind of smart too, until you figure out the situation). Instead he stayed on Cambridge St. I don’t know if it was due to liability issues of him working but not on hospital property, or if he wanted to stay in the street to flag an ambulance. One of many things that are still a mystery from that night.
I turned back around, to see if there was anything I could do to help, and that’s when things became clearer. As soon as I arrived the guy, whom I didn’t know his relation to the girl, turned to run back up the street now that she wasn’t alone. I had no idea where he went at the time, and I hardly even noticed at first because all of a sudden my eyes began to adjust to the dark and I could see the reason she needed aid. She had no pants on, rather, they were pulled around her ankles; and then it all became clear. No farther than 400 yards from the main entrance of the hospital this baby refused to wait. She had given birth right there on the cool street.
The mother, in the plainest voices just kept saying in a tired way, “I can’t believe I just had my baby. I can’t believe it.” I didn’t blame her. The child, not even crying, was cradled in her arms making soft breathing and baby noises. As far as I could tell, they were both fine except for the whole givingbirthinthemiddleoftheroadat3inthemmorning thing. A woman yelled from a house, “Do you need any help?” Thinking that help was on the way I thought of the only thing I could, “Could you please bring out a blanket or something.” A man walked by, his attention also called by the cries for help. “What happened?” he asked. The new mother replied, “I just had my baby.” And without missing a beat (I will never forget this as long as I live), he said “Congratulations.”
Quicker than I expected, even though next to a hospital, an ambulance rolled down the hill towards us being guided by that same man who had left minutes earlier. The woman came out with a towel for the baby, and the EMT’s and paramedics emerged to care for the woman and newborn. I am a firm believer in not getting in the way when a situation is over my head, so I decided not to stick around to find out how things went. I sure they checked the vitals, I’m sure they got her in a stretcher, and I’m sure they were brought swiftly to the hospital.
As I slowly walked back to the main entrance I smiled a bit, how many times in a lifetime would I be part of something like this? A man was on the sidewalk watching the ambulance activity and asked me, “Hey what’s going on over there?”
“A woman just gave birth.”
“Oh wow, my wife gave birth here yesterday.”
“Congratulations.”
except the handful of other females, all of which are bundled up in not-businessy-warm-clothes. Apparently 0ºC is warm for the date, but us females of the species still consider it too darn cold for pantyhose. Since this is a factory and not an office building, the heating is not on at full blast (at the office building last week, it sure was). Having examined what the other women on the team wear, I think I can safely bring out my knit sweaters and bundle up, which is good because all my suits are pretty summer-y.