The alarms were blaring and the baby was screaming and the red lights were pulsing, and all of it hit him at the same instant, and I saw the moment it took him under.

He was not in Willow Creek anymore. He was not in Omaha. Wherever he had gone, it was loud and it was dangerous and it was a long time ago, and the shrill of the monitors had become something else in his ears — I would understand later that it sounded to him like incoming, like the warning sirens that mean the sky is about to fall on you — and the baby’s cries had become the cries of people he had not been able to save.

“Mr. Ransom,” I said, already moving, already reaching for the drawer. “Step back. She’s too overstimulated. I’m going to give her a dose of phenobarbital — step back and let me get to her.”

He didn’t move. He was locked in place, his huge chest heaving under the paper gown, his eyes fixed on the thrashing baby but plainly seeing something laid over her, something the rest of us couldn’t see.

His hands were still inside the isolette. They had gone rigid.

“Sarge.” I put a hand on his forearm and made my voice sharp, the voice you use to reach someone through a wall.