A few months ago, I worked my final night as an OB-GYN on labor and delivery at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital in the Los Angeles County city of Glendale. I wanted my team of doctors, nurses, and other staff to get together one last time and connect before we shut down the unit.
There were no patients in the labor rooms, no newborns in the nursery, and the halls were silent. So different from the nights when we pulled together to help so many, and were proud every time we assisted a new mother going home with her baby. The ambulances had already been told to take pregnant patients elsewhere. Patients had been rescheduled at other hospitals.
In the quiet of the postpartum unit, some staff shared that they had been born here; others told stories of celebrating the births of friends and family members. Many talked about how meaningful it was to be able to show their children the cribs they had been warmed in after birth. It reminded me how, when I was a child, each time we drove past the hospital where I was born, I waved, believing the bricks remembered me, too…