I was already at the wall, already pulling the tubing, and I had the tiny prongs seated under her nose while she lay flat against him.

“Stimulate her back,” he ordered Evans, not even looking at Sterling, who was sputtering somewhere behind us.

“Rub her spine. Harder, Doc — she needs the input. Keep her here. Keep her with us.”

And Evans — a physician with more years than Sarge had, taking orders from a volunteer in a paper gown — began firmly rubbing the baby’s back where she lay against the veteran’s chest, because the force of the command left no room to do anything else.

Ten seconds. It felt like an hour.

Then she coughed — a huge, wet, sputtering gasp — and dragged in a breath on her own, and the blue drained out of her lips and came back red, angry, furious red, and she began, gloriously, to cry.