The river of violence that flows through Chicago takes not only the dead and the hearts of their loved ones, but it also takes something from those who witness the death day after day: the paramedics and the patrol officers, the detectives, the ER nurses and the doctors.

Death grabs at their souls too and tries to break them.

But not the other day in at Norwegian American Hospital, in the ER, with a baby found abandoned in an alley on top of a garbage can, clinging to life, and a crowd around the baby, begging that little boy to keep fighting and live.

“I was in the middle of it and I didn’t have a camera, so I’ll describe it for you,” Dr. Nida Blankas-Hernaez told me in an interview Wednesday.

It was Blankas-Hernaez who led the resuscitation unit that helped push life back into that boy.

She had multiple teams of professionals around from Norwegian American: the neonatal group, respiratory therapy, anesthesiology, emergency room docs, labor and delivery nurses, pharmacy. Everyone who had to be there was there. But there was an outer ring around the child too.

Chicago Fire Department paramedics and firefighters, from Engine 76 and Truck 35 and Ambulance 3, and Chicago police detectives and officers. They formed a second ring around the infant. Tough men and women. Yelling “Fight, kid! Fight!” and offering advice and biting their lips and bargaining with God.

“The baby was such a fighter. And these are tough people, too, they are fighters,” Blankas-Hernaez said. “And I told them, as soon as the baby moved, open-eyed, turning pink, I asked them, ‘Come and see, you did...READ MORE