Unearthing Haunting Secrets: Erica Stern’s Frontier Blends Memoir and Ghost Story in Chilling Harmony
Here, she writes, is ‘a serene emergency.’ More specifically, “His nose is mercifully spared; a perfect set of nostrils, flattened by gestation and compression and descent, dot both sides of a cartilaginous ridge. Wires measuring his oxygen saturation and heart rate and electrodes charting brain misfirings must remain slack and unkinked, and bags connected to his respirator must remain flat, for the smallest fold could disturb the flow of medication or oxygen in or the flow of toxins and information out, setting off beeps and alarms that populate the NICU halls, lulling its inhabitants.”
