In a room full of sleeping premature infants, he did not think to lower his voice, and that told me most of what I needed to know about him.

I crossed to intercept him before he could reach bed seven, my heart already going hard.

“Mr. Sterling. Please. Keep your voice down. The babies are sleeping.”

“Explain to me,” he said, only marginally quieter, leveling a manicured finger across the room at Sarge, “why there is an unvetted civilian who has been sitting in that chair for over nine hours. The volunteer limit is two hours. Two. We have liability protocols, we have infection-control mandates, we have specific and serious restrictions around patient handling. Look at him, Sarah. He’s sweating, he’s clearly exhausted, and I’m told he has a visible neurological tremor. This is an unacceptable exposure — to patient safety and to hospital property.”

“She is not property.” It came out of me before I could manage it, low and furious.

“She is a critically ill infant in severe withdrawal, and nothing we gave her today touched it. Not the morphine, not the phenobarbital, not the swaddling, none of it. That man’s heartbeat is the only thing that has kept her out of a hypertensive crisis for the last nine hours. You want to talk to me about risk? The risk is taking her off him.”