Palms of My Hands

On July 22, 1989, Kaye, an infant died in a neonatal intensive-care unit where doctors, nurses and machines had kept her alive for two months. Hers was a death her parents had prayed for. She was full-term and physically exquisite, but her brain, deprived of oxygen in the womb just prior to her delivery by emergency C-section, had been destroyed. At birth, her skin was blue; she had no respiration, movement, pulse or reflexes, and her pupils were dilated. While the conditions that caused her asphyxia have never been determined for certain, the severe extent of Kaye’s brain damage - and its irreversibility - was established within days of her birth. A CT scan showed severe destruction to both hemispheres, and an electroencephalogram (EEG) was profoundly abnormal.