VII. Weeks ago you were told by a grizzled veteran NICU nurse that it was going to be a rollercoaster, that you might not feel like anything is under control for quite a long while.

Since then your son has made some progress, growing in his incubator from a sickly amphibian to most definitely a baby, still smaller than a newborn. His lungs are bad; he bounces between a full ventilator and a CPAP machine, but they’re getting stronger. He looks giant to you compared to what he was.

And, a lot of times, you laugh at him. He’s smiling every now and then, especially when the ventilator’s out — he hates it, pulls at it, even successfully ripped it out of his lungs a couple times — and the more you are able to hold him, feel his mass against your own body, you start to think to yourself this isn’t so bad and hey, we’re getting through this okay! Your daughter loves the play rooms, she talks to the nurses, is deeply in love with her brother. The day you bring her in to see him for the first time, he’s still in a sealed incubator; she hangs on the plexiglass like a fan in the front row of a hockey game, smacking it, beckoning the player to drop the gloves, to fight.

Earlier today you noticed a pretty decent-sized hernia in his groin while you were changing his diaper. He wears one that could fit on a child’s doll, and his teeny poops are too hilarious to be gross — you eagerly change him when you visit. The nurse made a note of the hernia and later, after you leave, a decision came on high to move your baby from West Penn to Children’s Hospital, so they could surgically fix it. This freaks you out; your son looked great today, and the notion of him having to undergo an operation is something you just can’t process. Your wife is devastated. Hours go by, and after she gets through to Children’s, you learn that the doctors are still mulling over surgery, that they will be in touch. You tell Julia to try and get some sleep. You take turns napping on the couch, waiting for a call. Neither of you get any adequate rest. You haven’t really for quite a while.

In the morning, you are exhausted, groggy, and stressed. Your wife calls, trying to figure out what’s going on. They still haven’t operated, and she’s agitated. She heads into the hospital to get to the bottom of whatever is going on. Later, she calls you. One day, a phone call from your wife or from an unknown number won’t trigger your anxiety, but that day is still a long way’s off. You answer, and her voice is shaky. “I have some bad news, Mar.”

Your wife tells you that Michael has something abbreviated as N.E.C. She can’t remember what it stands for, except the first part: necrotic. You look it up on Google and immediately regret it; it is a horrific infection which leads to — more or less — a rotting bowel system. You make a mental note to never look it up again, but you’ll remember those three letters until you’re dead, probably.

It’s nobody’s fault, but they had been giving Michael a steroid to strengthen his lungs, and the steroid hypothetically dropped his immune system enough to allow safe passage for the infection into his body. It’s rare: if they hadn’t been scanning that region to prep for hernia surgery, they wouldn’t have even noticed the infection. You can’t help but laugh thinking that your son’s balls might have saved his life.

Your family, so used to making emergency trips to your house, relieves you from your parental duties so you can get to the hospital. Your daughter loves all four of her grandparents with a territorial fierceness that can make saying goodbye painful and brutal; so when one of them walks through the door, it is like she is overdosing on joy. This takes a little of the sting out of the fact that you’re spending less and less time with her outside of hospital trips.

At the hospital a justifiably cocky and good-looking surgeon is standing at the foot of your son’s incubator. Your wife is behind a curtain, using a breast pump. The purring whoosh sound of the machine is a constant in your life, another routine, a rhythm played every three hours. It can’t be comfortable for your wife, but she does it regardless. With everything going on, she hasn’t even been able to nurse her own newborn son once in the month or so he’s been alive. She aches for him, and this gives her some relief, and in the end, your son gets the precious milk from his mother anyways.

The surgeon tells you that he was able to somehow push the hernia back into your son’s abdomen from his scrotum. You wince at that thought. A preliminary x-ray showed that the intestine was crimped, and now is clear. He says that this could help with the antibiotics, and that they’ll blast your son with them to rid him of the N.E.C. before they consider surgically removing the parts of his intestines that may waste away during the course of the infection. He smiles; “none of this you have to worry about now, though,” he says, “he’s all clear for now, so the infection could go away without doing any damage. We’ll know in a few days.” More doctors, more nurses, and more conversations later, and you’re back out the door with your wife wondering when exactly your lives are going to go back to normal. Still not for a long while, seems like.

Your phone rings; it’s your sister Vicki. “I can’t focus on anything and I am freaking out about you guys,” she says. “Are you at Children’s?”

Ten minutes later the big automatic doors to the NICU open and you greet your sister. She immediately bursts into tears. You try to hold it together so there aren’t two soggy Greek criers in the hallway, but it’s almost impossible, so you lead her to Michael’s room while trying to explain that it all might still be okay. After a while, your wife mentions that she’s hungry. “Let’s go get her something,” Vicki says. You both head out, leaving Julia with Michael.

It’s snowing outside, and the wind is beating against your faces as you walk down Penn Avenue. Your sister laughs. “This is ridiculous,” she says. You both can’t help but laugh at the silliness of it. “I need a drink,” she says, half kidding.

“That is actually a great idea,” you say. You stop at a pizza shop and order a large cheese, and on your way out you ask the guy at the counter if there’s a place nearby you can grab a drink while you wait. He points past the 40th Street Bridge. “It’s my girlfriend’s parents’ bar,” he says in a thick Pittsburgh accent. “It’s real nice.”

The bar is not nice; it’s a dive, and you love it. Vicki looks horrified but she’s still laughing at the ridiculousness of it all, of life. You both order a shot and a drink; a beer for you, a mixed drink for her. You guzzle them down, trying to talk about anything but Michael. After about 30 minutes, you stumble back out into Lawrenceville in the winter. You and your sister are drunk while it’s still light out, clutching a pizza and plodding through snow, trying to get back to the hospital as quickly as possible, laughing uncontrollably. For a moment, you’re both free of it all, delirious in the blitheness of life without the stress of All Of This. You are so damn thankful for your sister in this moment. When you get back, the three of you sit in the cafeteria and methodically stress-eat the entire pizza.

Three long days pass. Your son is back on the ventilator. He can’t eat while they monitor the infection, so he’s on an IV drip of ‘baby Gatorade’ consisting of lipids, amino acids, and all the good stuff you need to stay alive. The vent and the hunger make him irritable and feisty when you see him. A doctor arrives with a chart in his hand and you freeze and pray and tense up and expect the worst, because of course he’s going to need to be fiddled with some more, some strange exotic disease has gripped him and you are all due for more drama. Why not?

The doctor smiles. “Somehow, the N.E.C. is all gone,” you hear him say. “The antibiotics worked beautifully.” You are shown a black-and-white photo of an intestine with a split-log pattern of dark-looking lesions, and another that is crystal clear; the before-and-after.

“We won’t be perfectly happy until he has a successful bowel movement, but we’re quite pleased with these results. After he moves his bowels we can proceed to feed him milk again.” And just like that, he’s back out the door, into the next room, solving someone else’s problems. You are awestruck at the talents of these amazing people who keep bringing your son back from the brink. But mainly you’re surprised — and oddly proud — of the toughness of Michael, the tiniest badass you’ve ever met.