MountainMornings

Last weekend my stepbrother Eric and his wife Bev, from St Louis, were visiting their daughter’s family here in California. We have a history of missed opportunities to see each other whenever we overlap on the West Coast but this time I was determined to make it happen. We made a reservation at a French restaurant near the hospital, we would sit out on the terrace to avoid germs.

Then this happened:

Aunt Kiki and I left Bob and our son in the hospital’s cafeteria – they were headed into the Starbucks cafe near the gift shop while we wanted to get back to the NICU. Only when we got to the locked door leading into the maternity ward, a spot where I would pick up the wall mounted phone and announce myself and the name of the babies I was visiting, we met an armed policewoman.

She said the hospital was on LOCKDOWN and we couldn’t get back into the NICU and we couldn’t go outside! We made her say it again.

All of a sudden a fairy godmother holding her dinner plate looked at us and said, “She’s one of our mothers, follow me!” It was the NICU charge nurse sweeping us through maternity’s locked doors and into the nursery where we learned there’d been an incident in the ER. I asked our fairy/nurse if this was a drill, she said no. Kiki quickly texted the Rocker to tell him he should abandon his coffee run and meet us in the NICU pronto.

Without knowing anything – was there an armed shooter in the building, had a car crashed into the ER, or was the next plague contained behind locked doors – we settled into our little room with the twins. I told Kiki we were in the safest place imaginable, behind multiple layers of security. The Rocker texted back he heard helicopters outside while Bob was using his doctor bona fides to reach us.

We were the only visitors in our “twin room.” At one time we had three sets of twins with three nurses each but on that day we were down to two sets and the remaining two nurses were trying to put us at ease. “There’s plenty of breast milk to keep us hydrated,” one said. The baby girls slept peacefully all swaddled up in their bassinets and I hugged Kiki. The boys arrived.

For over three hours it was business as usual, kind of – Kiki was nursing the twins and I was tentatively texting with Bev. They were at the restaurant holding our table and enjoying some French onion soup. We learned that someone had left the ER unhappy with their treatment, threatening to return and, “Shoot up the place.” The LAPD were looking for him (I’m assuming their gender) and until he was arrested we were held captive, obliged to miss yet another attempt to see Eric and Bev!

Once the threat was over and we were driving back to our AirBnB, I was slowly aware of my suppressed rage. When Bob worked in a hospital, there were no metal detectors. Today we must present our drivers license, stand in front of a camera and have a badge made every day we visit the twins. Every baby has some sort of security band on their foot. And yet

These babies, my brand new grandbabies, have already experienced their first distinctly American terrorist threat… their first active shooter drill. They were not even a month old. Even if this disgruntled patient was at home having his dinner, we were watching the NICU door, listening for gunfire. I was terrified. He was arrested, we got the all clear and picked up dinner – cookies – from the hospital’s vending machine.

But do I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country with 125 guns for every 100 people? Here is a screen shot of that night.