It was a very helpless situation when Martin was working the night shift in the NICU and an infant was born prematurely and they couldn’t do anything to save his life. The infant’s young mother was stoic throughout the whole experience and she said that she wanted to have her baby baptized before he was gone.

Martin ran to the charge nurse with the request, thankful to finally feel like he could do something. He called every chaplain on the list only to discover that there was no one to be found in the middle of the night.

There was nothing they could do and, in that situation, Martin ended up being the one who was going to do it as he was the nurse there. So, after taking permission from the infant’s mother, he took a small baby bottle of sterile water in one hand and held the infant in the other. He asked the mom the baby’s name and recited some words he must have learned in Sunday school. Then he poured a bit of water on that dying baby, dried him off and handed him back to his mother.

The mother held the baby for a little while, and placed him back on the bed. Then she hugged Martin and cried. He hugged her back and cried, too. In that moment, He understood what it meant to be ‘the nurse’.

—Martin Schiavenato, associate professor at Washington State University College of Nursing