Coach's preemie story

This is a pretty rough first draft that will go through a series of edits before it prints on Sunday. But don't let that keep you from criticizing. Here are a couple of things I'm particularly concerned with:

-Improving the ending. That part was the most rushed. It will probably change by the end of all this.
-Connecting the opening and closing of the story somehow.
-Finding spots to include more detail, especially about the parents.
-Adding more parts about the impact the kid had on everyone.

I didn't change any of the names, so this might out me a little, which I really don't mind. I appreaciate everyone's feedback. While there is none of my blood in it, this story certainly has my sweat and tears.


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Life with Zach was never easy for Kyle and Jessica Kirk, but they miss it.

They miss the daily struggle to stretch every minute from every hour from every day. They miss the daily battle to keep their emotions in check. They miss the moments where they were able to let their emotions take over.

The couple misses the dark room in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital. Kyle and Jessica miss being surrounded by machines, nurses and doctors, all of which were more likely to give them bad news than good.

They miss never knowing if it was going to be a good day or a bad day.

They miss the wide, blue eyes. They miss the tiny, fragile body. They miss the weak whimpers.

But most of all, they miss their son.

Four months early
The details of Halloween night were burnt into Clarke Central baseball coach Kyle Kirk’s memory by a combination of pain, panic and confusion.

“I could tell you the exact minute, what we were wearing, just everything,” he said.

His wife, Jessica, was five months pregnant and feeling minor pain and pressure in her abdomen. Their doctor at St. Mary’s Hospital, Dr. Victor Morales, told them to keep an eye on it, but no one seemed overly concerned.

Those pains grew more intense while the couple took their four-year old daughter, Maddie Grace, trick-or-treating through Stone Shoals in Watkinsville. Jessica did her best to put the pain in the back of her mind, not wanting to ruin her elephant-dressed daughter’s good time.

She didn’t want to consider the worst-case scenario.

“They (the contractions) kept getting closer. I just thought ‘This can’t be happening,’” she said. “I tried to put it out of my head.”

When her water broke, Jessica could no longer ignore what was happening.

Kyle raced his wife and daughter to St. Mary’s. He couldn’t help but think of all the similar movie scenes he had seen. He did his best to put on a brave face, mostly to keep Maddie calm, while panic and fear raced through his thoughts.

“But it is four months early,” he thought.

By the time they reached the hospital, Jessica was in labor worry turned into fear.

“I was scared,” she said. “I was scared I was going to lose him.”

Once the news spread, the couples’ families raced to be there. Jessica’s mother, Deborah Brim, made the three-hour drive from Tifton to see her daughter and her newest grandchild.

“It was terrifying,” Brim said. “We knew he was born, but that was about all we knew. Before we could get in the car, he was there.”

About an hour and a half after arriving at the hospital, Jessica went through an emergency C-section and, at 9:15 p.m., gave birth to William Zachary Kirk, or Zach for short.

He weighed one pound, six ounces. He was no bigger than a 20-ounce bottle of soda. Kyle’s wedding ring fit snug around his son’s thigh.

Jessica and Kyle spent the rest of the night in the hospital with their new son and Kyle’s parents took Maddie home around 11 p.m.

“It was a huge rollercoaster that night,” Jessica said. “We just wanted everybody to be healthy. We just wanted Zach to be healthy.”

Second family
But Zach wasn’t healthy. No baby born four months premature is healthy.

Premature babies, commonly known as preemies, run a gauntlet of health problems, most of which stem from the fact that their organs have not been given enough time to develop.

Zach’s first home became the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Mary’s, where nurses, doctors and a collection of medical machines became his extended family.

“They have pretty much been our second family,” Kyle said.

Zach also spent a large portion of his young life at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, where he received three surgeries in a four-month span. He had to take a helicopter to and from Athens for each of his surgeries.

All three of his surgeries involved placement of a mechanical “shunt” that helped alleviate fluid pressure on the child’s brain. Zach’s third surgery also included treatment for retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP.

ROP is a common occurrence in preemies in which blood vessels and scar tissue grow over the child’s retina.

“It has been a huge battle for him,” Jessica said. “We almost lost him a couple of times. It has been such a rough road. You don’t want to set yourself up for a fall.”

I was a rough road for Kyle and Jessica, also.

Jessica spent most of her days and nights at St. Mary’s. She put her job as the benefits coordinator in the College of Agriculture at Georgia on hold. She briefly tried to return to work, but left again when Zach got sick.

“It has been like a job. I’m here all day,” Jessica said. “I’ve been watching over him, learning how to take care of him.”

Luckily, several of her colleagues donated leave to help out.

On top of being Clarke Central’s baseball coach, Kyle is a fifth-grade teacher at Whitehead Elementary School. While Zach was in St. Mary’s, he would try to visit his son in the morning before going to teach, see him in the afternoon before practice or a game and then again at night.

“It comes to the point where you wonder, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing justice to my family?’” he said. “I constantly ask the doctors and nurses ‘Do I need to do more?’”

The nurses in the NICU said Kyle had nothing to worry about.

“They have done wonderful through this whole thing,” Jennifer Garlin said. “It is very hard on the parents and the siblings because you’ve got a baby here that is your heart. But you’ve also have to have a life outside of this unit when you are going to have a baby in here for months. They have found a way to balance it wonderfully.”

Kyle found his outlet on the baseball field. He was able to put his concerns for Zach in the back of his mind and focus on coaching a struggling Gladiators team.

“I don’t think a lot of people could do what he did,” said Chaz Crumpton, the lone senior on Clarke Central’s roster. “I don’t think a lot of coaches could do that. He’s always done the best he could.”

Before Clarke Central’s game against Cedar Shoals at Foley Field on March 10, Zach came down with a virus. Kyle didn’t think there was any way he could coach that night.

His wife practically ordered him to go to the game. The Gladiators won 7-0 and Kyle’s players signed a game ball for Zach.

“It’s the greatest game ever invented,” Kyle said. “You get to totally get lost in it for that hour, two hours. It always creeps back into your mind, but you can get lost in the game. It’s been a welcome escape, but it’s still hard.”

Jessica had her own outlet, too. She set up a Web site on carepages.com dedicated to Zach. She would post updates, good or bad, about Zach’s condition. The site had over 700 visitors from all over the southeast.

She also used the site to raise more than $5,000 for the March of Dimes. For those close to the Kirk’s, the site became a part of their normal internet routine.

“When I got up in the morning, that would be the first place I would go,” said Sevelda Crumpton, mother of Chaz Crumpton. “Every night before I would go to bed, that would be the last place I would go. Jessica is one of the strongest people I have ever seen to bear her soul on that care page.”

Even Cedar Shoals coach Bret Greene called Kyle on a regular basis for progress reports on Zach.

Many of Zach’s updates focused on his lung strength. He was born with bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a lung condition that forced Zach to live off a ventilator.

But his condition was improving, nonetheless. In five months, he had recovered from his three surgeries, grew to nine times his size at birth and his lungs were getting stronger.

Like Zach, the possibility of leaving the NICU and finally going home was growing by the day.

Going home
It was like the NICU’s form of graduation.

On April 12, the pictures and drawings that were on Zach’s door at St. Mary’s came down. His grandparents were there. All the nurses came by to see him one last time. His parents were the happiest and proudest people in the room.

Zach, known as the rock star of the NICU, was going home.

“It’s remarkable,” Zach’s grandmother, Deborah Brim, said while unsuccessfully trying to hold back tears. “Such faith, such confidence through the ups and downs of it. It’s been a blessing for the whole family.”

Zach’s new extended family was also anticipating his move home.

“This is a day that all of us are excited about,” Garlin said. “It’ll probably be a little bit tearful. Everyday, we come in here and love on him and rock him.”

Most preemies stay in the NICU until close to their due date. Zach stayed a month and a half longer. When his lungs became strong enough to survive on the home equipment the Kirks would have, it was determined that home is where he needed to be.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Kyle said. “You are scared. You are overjoyed. I don’t know. I’m having a hard time holding it together. It’s probably up there in the top three days of my life. It’s pretty awesome.”

Kyle and Jessica brought a buffet of fried chicken, pork, macaroni and cheese and rolls from Weaver D’s to celebrate. Anyone in the NICU was invited to partake.

Even Zach was able to make an appearance at the table. There was no shortage of nurses volunteering to hold him while Jessica and Kyle ate.

Kyle didn’t each much, though. Instead he sat silently at the corner of the table, holding his son and staring at him like he was an M.C. Esher drawing.

He was trying to see the future in his young son’s blue eyes.

“All this happened for a reason and we’ll find out one day why,” Kyle said. “I have my reasons, like any other father. I think something really special is going to happen with this child.”

It was Jessica’s turn to hold Zach when it was time to calm him down for his first ride home. Getting him to lie calmly in the car seat took as long as lunch did.

As usual, dad did the heavy lifting. It took two trips with a cart to get all of Zach’s stuff out of his St. Mary’s dorm room and into Kyle’s car. On the way down, he started to grasp the responsibility he was bringing home.

“Bringing Maddie home was terrifying,” Kyle said. “With this one, you have no clue.”

Zach brought him with him a laundry list of medications that must be administered every 12 hours. Organization, Jessica said, is the key. She already had a checklist and spreadsheet ready that contained everything they needed to know.

All that was left was walking out the glass door at the front of the NICU.

Kyle carried the car seat that held a sleeping Zach slowly down the hallway, as if his son was coated in nitro glycerin. Jessica kept an eye out for any germ-ridden stranger, guarding her son like a secret service agent.

After some tearful goodbyes with nurses, the complete Kirk family piled into their black SUV and headed home.

“Ready to get him home and watch him grow,” Kyle said.

Later that evening, Zach fell asleep in his father’s arms as Kyle watched a movie on the couch. It was the moment Kyle had wanted for five and a half months and it is still the one he recalls when thinking about his son.

‘My moment with him’
Kyle didn’t get the chance to create more moments with his son at home.

Six hours after Zach arrived home, he stopped breathing.

His parents performed CPR on him before rushing him back to St. Mary’s. Afterwards, Zach wasn’t the same smiling, responsive baby that Jessica and Kyle had brought home.

“There was a huge difference,” Jessica said. “He was paralyzed from the medication. He was really swollen. It was rough to watch him. … The anxiety of watching him struggle, we had already started our grieving process.”

Kyle and Jessica spent the rest of the week fighting with a parent’s worst nightmare and praying for a miracle to save their son.

The Clarke Central baseball team held a candlelight vigil outside the hospital on April 18. All of Kyle’s players, and many players’ parents, were there to show their support of Zach, holding candles covered by protective red plastic up to the large window on the side of St. Mary’s.

“We all kind of felt like he was a part of us through the whole season,” Chaz Crumpton said.

After five days without improvement, the Kirks had to make the toughest decision of their lives.

On the morning of April 19, Jessica sat with her son in a rocking chair in Zach’s dark room in the NICU. Kyle knelt next to his wife and put his hand on Zach and bowed his head in prayer.

One by one, doctors and nurses removed the machines keeping Zach alive. Not long thereafter, William Zachary Kirk took his last breath.

“For me, that was my moment with him,” Jessica said. “We knew we were going to lose him. It was a relief to know that he didn’t have to struggle and hurt anymore.”

Kyle, who struggled to stay composed through the whole ordeal, went through myriad emotions after seeing his son die.

“You could say it was the worst day of my life,” he said. “But then there’s a sense of relief. It’s just the pain of that entire week and I knew it was just the machines that were keeping him alive. It was just letting him go and letting him be at peace. It was kind of relieving, but you know you hurt at the same time. You go through the five stages of grieving in a 10-minute span.”

Kyle and Jessica bathed Zach one last time and then wrapped him in a blanket. He was buried in Tifton on April 22.

In Kyle’s first game back at the helm of the Gladiators, Zach was honored with a moment of silence before the game. A small jersey with Zach’s name on it was put up on the right-field fence. His initials were spray-painted in foul territory.

The coaches from Salem and Heritage high schools presented Kyle with baseballs signed by both teams and a donation to the March of Dimes.

Similar ceremonies were planned for the remainder of the Gladiators’ games.

“It’s been the whole region, all the way down to south Georgia and up to north Georgia,” Sevelda Crumpton said. “I believe he (Zach) has touched thousands and thousands of people.”

Life after death
Kyle and Jessica Kirk’s house has a room full of baby clothes, toys and other infant necessities that were never used by Zach.

Zach may have only been home for six hours, he may have never said a word to his mother, father and sister, but he was and always will be a part of the Kirk family.

“I was with him literally every day,” Jessica said. “He was my child just the same. Even though we got to take him home for one day, he’s still ours.”

Kyle will have the image of Zach’s big blue eyes staring back at him in his memory forever.

“Once you got to hold him and once his eyes opened up and he looked at you and he smiled at you,” he said, “that will be with me the rest of my life. He’ll never be forgotten.”

Zach had a profound effect on the Kirks. His trials in the NICU put Zach and Jessica’s faith and bond to the test. Ultimately, it was their faith and bond that kept them going through the worst.

When Kyle has a bad day, Jessica toughens up. When Jessica is in tears, Kyle’s dry shoulder is waiting. The comfort of knowing they would see Zach again one day was the biggest relief they could have.

“It’s our faith in God,” Jessica said. “We are both Christians and we are very lucky to have a very supportive church. We know that without our faith, we would not have made it through any of this.

“We know he’s better off and we know we’ll see him again. It gives us something to look forward to.”

Until then, they both live daily with the inspiration Zach gave them.

“We’ll be a much closer family,” Jessica said “We’ll be much more appreciative of what we have. It makes us hold each other a little bit tighter.”

Written above Kyle’s desk at Whitehead Elementary is a question that he tries to answer everyday: Did I do a good job today?

He saw a day-to-day example of how to answer that question positively in Zach.

“He did a good job every day,” he said.

 

Absolutely amazing.

Wow.

you did a wonderful, wonderful job, Ty. The narrative really made the ending that much more powerful...by remaining in the present tense, even when talking about events that occurred several weeks ago, you felt the optimism of the Kirks and got the reader hoping, even though he knew the ending, that there would be a happy ending.

It got a little dusty in here.

The Kirks will read this and take solace in the fact a talented, sensitive writer chronicled their son's valiant life.

See you in the 2009 BASW.

 

Lede:
- I don't like the second sentence at all - "daily struggle ... day to day" - it slowed me down, but the rest of it was magnificent. "But most of all, they miss their son." Awesome. Fix that second sentence and you're perfect.

Second part:
Jessica did her best to put the pain in the back of her mind, not wanting to ruin her elephant-dressed daughter’s good time.

Picking nits here, but I don't like elephant dressed. I'm glad you put in what the daughter was wearing. Can you say something about not wanting to ruin her daughter's good time waddling door to door in her elephant costume?

More nits:
When her water broke, Jessica could no longer ignore what was happening.

Happening is repetitive with the quote above it. I would just put "ignore it."


By the time they reached the hospital, Jessica was in labor worry turned into fear.
- put a period after labor. Worry turned to fear.

"Raced" twice to describe the same action. Replace one with rushed.

He was no bigger than a 20-ounce bottle of soda. Kyle’s wedding ring fit snug around his son’s thigh. - Very nice.

Jessica and Kyle spent the rest of the night in the hospital with their new son and Kyle’s parents took Maddie home around 11 p.m. - Put a period after son. Start a new sentence with Kyle's ...

To be continued. Very good so far. Still reading. Sorry, for the little suggestions but I think they'll help keep your flow.

 

Second family

You don't need the 'but' in the first graph.

Missing the word trip in the third sentence. 'Zach's first TRIP home ...'

Kyle's 'second family' quote is redundant and unnecessary, to me.

"I was a rough road for Kyle and Jessica, also." Please take this out. Story is too good for this. It flows better without it.

Same with "luckily". Delete it. Just put 'several of her colleagues ... '

"On top of being Clarke Central’s baseball coach, Kyle is a fifth-grade teacher at Whitehead Elementary School. While Zach was in St. Mary’s, he would try to visit his son in the morning before going to teach, see him in the afternoon before practice or a game and then again at night."

- this paragraph slows things down. Try to continue with your same voice. Just start with "Kyle would try to visit his son in the morning before teaching at Whitehead Elementary and then in the afternoon before practice or a night game."

Quotes, especially Garlin's (too long) and Crumpton's, are bogging this section down. They're not advancing the story, though I do like the player's mom quote about checking the website.

"But his condition was improving, nonetheless." - Get that nonetheless out of there.

I like how you ended that graph. Very nice.

To be continued.

 

Going home

April 12 - remind the reader how long it's been since he's been hospitalized. Six months, right?

How big is he now?



My first real issue:

Zach, known as the rock star of the NICU, was going home.

Zach’s new extended family was also anticipating his move home.

“This is a day that all of us are excited about,” Garlin said. “It’ll probably be a little bit tearful. Everyday, we come in here and love on him and rock him.”
“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Kyle said. “You are scared. You are overjoyed. I don’t know. I’m having a hard time holding it together. It’s probably up there in the top three days of my life. It’s pretty awesome.”

- I'm stuck on these quotes. Quotes are good but they're in the present tense, which you haven't been in since the lede. If you're going to use this, set the scene for me. Where was the dad when he said this? The story gives no indication until now that you were there before the baby died. This is an opportunity to do that, though you may want to consider explaining that earlier.

Maybe even consider writing the whole thing in present tense ... just a thought.

I don't know who M.C. Esher is, but I like the imagery anyway, if that makes sense.

More present tense quotes with past tense transitions.

Seriously think about writing the entire thing in the present tense ...

To be continued.

 

"Kyle didn’t get the chance to create more moments with his son at home."

- I would take the above sentence out and just start with the next sentence:

"Six hours after Zach arrived home, he stopped breathing."


"The Clarke Central baseball team held a candlelight vigil outside the hospital on April 18. All of Kyle’s players, and many players’ parents, were there to show their support of Zach, holding candles covered by protective red plastic up to the large window on the side of St. Mary’s."

- Can you describe this scene better to include emotions? Were you there? I don't understand the relevance of "protective red plastic".

"Not long thereafter," - thereafter is not the best word here.


One by one, doctors and nurses removed the machines keeping Zach alive. Not long thereafter, William Zachary Kirk took his last breath.

- More description of this little baby in the big bed, surrounded by the family - if you have it.

“For me, that was my moment with him,” Jessica said. “We knew we were going to lose him. It was a relief to know that he didn’t have to struggle and hurt anymore.”

Kyle, who struggled to stay composed through the whole ordeal, went through myriad emotions after seeing his son die.
- this last sentence just sounds like you were tired when you wrote it. That's OK. Find better words than ordeal and myriad.

one more to go ...

 

I don't mind the end quote. I got bored of all the quotes beforehand.

Summary:

Seriously think about writing this in present tense. I'm curious to see what the others would say about that, but I think it would allow you to better take advantage of the access you had.

Overall, very good story. Very crisp and elegant in parts. A little wordy in others, but that's all very fixable. You got the words on the page. Good job. Now for the hard part, living through the edit.

That's my two cents. Hope it helps a bit.

 

Overall, a very, very good story. A lot of outstanding descriptive detail, and the emotion doesn't overwhelm the story.

As WB suggested, I'd go through and try to straighten out the tenses, for consistency. You might pick the moment of Zach's death as the point to shift from past tense into present tense. Also in keeping with WB's suggestion, maybe clean out a couple of the redundant quotes.

But don't go overboard in cutting out quotes. This story affected a lot of people; you want the story to reflect that. There are a handful of typos, minor misspellings, which I think you and the editors will grab after you sleep on it overnight.

As far as providing thematic unity between the opening and the ending, phrase repetition is a device sometimes overused to the moon, but sometimes it can be very effective (if kept to a economic minimum). For the Kirks, Kyle and Jessica and Maddie, life is going to go on. But most of all, they just miss their son. And they always will.




P.S.: In the interest of full disclosure, a year and a half before I was born, my mother had a son (about as far along as Zach was), who died at birth. My father was called off his job at the newspaper and arrived at the hospital in the middle of the operation. Of course in those days, a four-month-early preemie had little or no chance.

My mother lived the rest of her life, nearly 40 more years, and never forgot him. Once in a while, she'd tell me about the older brother I'd never know. And we made sure, when we had to write her obit, that he was listed among the predeceased. A couple papers gave us noise about it, "our policy is not to list stillborn infants," but we put the hammer down. She never forgot him, so we didn't either.

 

Mr Webb,

Story material = strong. Lede less so. Let me suggest something to do with the lead and don't dismiss it out of hand.

You're putting two contradicting thoughts -- it was hard and they miss something that was hard -- butt up against each other. Then you have to explain one, then the other. Knowing the outcome (they-miss-it: tips us to the outcome) distracts us from the detail in the it-was-hard.

I say tell us it-was-hard in the lede, detail the difficulties (could actually use more scenic detail, maybe how everyday stuff would be crushing crisis to others) ... then give us the payoff: they-miss-it, the-fear-in-the-backs-of-their-minds-came-true-namely-this-is-all-they-know-of-their-son.

Alternative: Don't even mention that it was hard in the lede. I tried playing this out. Simply put, they-miss-him as the lead. Then establish a contrast: a cascade of the difficulties, seemingly something that people would be glad to get through, yet they miss it because it was the only way they knew their son, in the bad times there was still irrational hope-vs-hope.

YD&OHS, etc

 

As the father of a little girl who will be three months old in about a week, this is a tough one to read.

The opening graphs are just fine. They sucked me right into the story.

There are people far, far better at editing on this board, so I am not going to attempt to do that.

I will tell you a couple of questions I have after reading the story.

1. How old are the parents? If this is awkward to put in the story, maybe write how long he has been teaching or some other details that will clue the reader to the ages. I am 38 and my wife is 35, so stories about birth problems make us look for the age right away.

2. Not about the writing, but will you run a picture of the child with the story? That may make some people uncomfortable, but will add to the emotion of the package. I honestly don't know if I would or would not include a picture, I was just curious.

Oh, hell of a story.

 

Ty,

I read the other thread and now this one. Very tough situation and you really handled it well. I am sure this is exactly what the Kirks hoped it would be and that is an important consideration here. Excellent read.

I agree that the tenses need work. It was a little distracting through the middle part of the story.

You mentioned looking for a spot to get in more information about the parents. Perhaps after this quote “I don’t think a lot of people could do what he did,” said Chaz Crumpton, the lone senior on Clarke Central’s roster. “I don’t think a lot of coaches could do that. He’s always done the best he could.” .... and before you go into the story about Jessica ordering her husband to go coach a game when the baby came down with a virus.

Also, did you identify Jennifer Garlin? You quoted her a couple of times and from the context I'm assuming she was a nurse in the NICU, but I can't find where you identify her. Something to double-check.

 

The one question I had while or after reading this story was the part about the moment Kyle had with his son. This particular "moment" is played up but never really explained what it really meant to the father. This thought needs to be expanded on. Pull the emotion out of the father here and pour it on to the page. Give it 8 or 10 inches of depth. I think that single moment could be vividy accounted for and bring tears to they eyes of readers.

It was sort of like you jumped from him being home and falling asleep in his Dad's arms to going right back to the hospital. Expand on those six hours and what they meant. Definitely expand on the "moment" Kyle had with his son. I felt like this was the peak of the story but it left me with more questions than answers.

The story is fantastic. The detail in the begining is marvelous. Try to keep that kind of detail flowing from "the moment" part of the story to the end.

As far as the little typos and things, I'm sure the other guys here or your editors will clean it up.

Also you said you wanted to tie the beginning with the ending. That's easy. All you have to do is say something like Zach worked for every breath he took iduring his life. It needs to be said very high in the story in your introduction. That ties the beginning end ending together.

Finally, you did one hell of a job. Very, very nice work. Clean it up some with the comments these guys are making, expand that one part and I think you have got GOLD with this one. This will definitely win some awards.