Austin’s premature birth and Sanquita’s death

Austin Elizabeth’s premature birth and Sanquita Bell’s death bring the risks of Sanquita’s pregnancy to a devastating conclusion and transform Brett Bohlinger’s role as her teacher and friend into a question of responsibility for her child. A two-pound, four-ounce girl survives the delivery in critical condition; Sanquita does not. The event moves from urgent clinical warnings to a birth described as miraculous, then to death, burial, and uncertainty about the last request Brett says Sanquita made of her.

Causes and Background

Sanquita’s pregnancy is already medically dangerous when Brett takes her to see Dr. Chan. The doctor explains that Sanquita’s kidneys are tenuous and further compromised by pregnancy. If her kidneys fail to function properly, potassium can rise to a level that risks cardiac arrest. With time pressing, Dr. Chan recommends that Sanquita end the pregnancy. Sanquita rejects that recommendation, turning the medical crisis into a conflict between a grave prognosis and her determination to continue the pregnancy.

The danger becomes immediate when Jean Anderson tells Brett that doctors are performing an emergency C-section. Sanquita’s potassium is too high, and the team fears she may go into cardiac arrest. The baby is also in distress. Jean’s distress reflects the stakes in plain terms: Sanquita has too much life in her, and the baby has made it too far for Jean to accept that she might die. The operation is not a planned resolution to the pregnancy but an urgent attempt to save both patients amid escalating risk.

Birth and Critical Care

Dr. O’Connor gives Brett and Jean the first news: Sanquita has delivered a baby girl weighing two pounds, four ounces. The birth is a reprieve, not an all-clear. The infant is extremely malnourished, and her lungs are not fully developed. Dr. O’Connor orders CPAP support until she can breathe on her own and says she has been taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. The doctor calls her a miracle, a word that registers the fact of her survival without concealing how precarious it remains.

Sanquita, meanwhile, is being transferred to the intensive care unit. The simultaneous destinations divide the aftermath of delivery: the newborn needs specialist respiratory care, while her mother remains critically ill. In the elevator, Jean tells Brett directly that Sanquita is dying and that the baby is likely to die, too. Brett whispers that perhaps the baby will survive. Jean then shares Sanquita’s wish that, if she dies, Brett keep the child. That request gives the emergency an enduring consequence beyond the hospital crisis: Brett is being asked to take on the care of a baby whose survival is still uncertain.

Sanquita’s Death and Funeral

Before leaving Sanquita’s bedside, Jean leans in, rubs her cheek against Sanquita’s, and asks her to hold on. She tells Brett to call as soon as Sanquita wakes and warns that the baby may need her. The tenderness of the farewell sits beside the bluntness of the prognosis; neither care nor hope can make the danger disappear.

Sanquita dies after giving birth. Three days later, she is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in her gold cap and gown. Her funeral is attended by friends from Joshua House, Jean Anderson, two teachers, Herbert Moyer, and Brett. Jean’s pastor prays over the coffin and gives an impersonal eulogy to a young woman he never met. Afterward the mourners disperse: Jean returns to Joshua House, the teachers go back to their jobs, and Tanya and Julonia walk with the other women toward East 67th Street to catch the bus. Tanya lights a cigarette and passes it to Julonia. These ordinary departures sharpen Brett’s sense of the funeral’s finality: Sanquita’s eighteen years have become memory, and Brett fears that the memory will fade.

The Request and Its Aftermath

The request that Brett raise the baby is also complicated by what happens after the delivery. During a later account of the events, Kirsten Schertzing consults Sanquita’s medical chart, which says that Sanquita lapsed into a coma following the C-section and that nobody reported her conscious during the thirteen hours before her death—except Brett. Brett says that Sanquita woke that evening, the same day she delivered the baby, and confirms that the brief awakening was when Sanquita asked her to keep the child. The chart and Brett’s account leave the request under scrutiny; the discrepancy does not erase its emotional or practical significance, but it makes the circumstances of Sanquita’s final wish part of the aftermath.

Caregiving in the Wider Story

The episode extends a recurring concern with care as work, choice, and obligation. Brett has accepted a six-week substitute-teaching commitment despite wanting to flee the school, reasoning that completing the term will fulfill a goal on her life list. Elsewhere, Shelley leaves her speech-pathology position at Saint Francis Hospital to stay home with her children, describing the change as a family decision made possible by an inheritance. She later recognizes that full-time motherhood does not suit her and arranges to return to work in May, while Jay takes a year’s leave after finishing the semester. These different arrangements do not equate paid employment with caregiving, but they place Brett’s impending responsibility for Austin Elizabeth in a story already attentive to how people negotiate work, family, and care.

Brett’s own memories of tending her mother through chemotherapy also give this crisis a personal echo. At her mother’s bedside, a champagne cork knocks over a bottle of Kytril, bringing back the night Brett cared for her after her first treatment and prayed for her recovery. That earlier experience cannot prepare Brett for Sanquita’s death or guarantee the premature baby’s survival. Instead, it underscores the limits of care: loved ones can stay close, respond to suffering, and make promises, but they cannot control what illness will take.