Worse than the scars was the tremor — a fine, uncontrollable shaking in his fingers, the physical ghost of nerve damage or deep, untreated trauma.

He was our newest volunteer for the infant comfort program. He’d passed the background checks, cleared the psychiatric evaluations, finished the orientation.

On paper he was qualified. Under the harsh fluorescent lights of my unit, he looked like a combat casualty waiting for a medevac.

Then the alarm on bed seven began to scream.

Her chart read simply Baby Girl Reed. A two-pound ghost of a child, born at twenty-six weeks.

She hadn’t just arrived too early and too small — she’d arrived completely alone, carrying a war she never asked to fight.

Her mother, Tessa, had disappeared into the Omaha winter hours after delivery, leaving no emergency contact, no blanket, and a catastrophic toxicology report.

Baby Girl Reed had severe Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome. She was withdrawing from a cocktail of narcotics.

Her cries weren’t normal newborn wails. They were piercing, breathless, frantic — the sound of a nervous system on fire.

Her tiny limbs thrashed, her skin mottled and tight. We’d tried the morphine weaning protocol, dimmed the lights, swaddled her into a cocoon, but nothing stopped the tremors wracking her fragile spine.

Sarge turned his head toward the sound. The muscle in his jaw feathered.

“Is that the one?” His voice was a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate in the floor. “The one they said needed a hold?”