Hi gang! It took a while, but I finally got a song out of my job. This is based on an incident a few months ago, when I went to pick up a baby born to a homeless, drug-using woman who relinquished all claim to the child. The baby was basically fine but had to go through withdrawal in the nursery before going into the CAS system.

Baby Girl Josephs - Marion Parsons, 2008

Got a call there's one for NICU, just delivered in room nine
Doctor says, "She doesn't want it," he's not one for wasting time
The mother cries and shivers as the blood pools at her ass
"Just tell me what it was you took and when you took it last"
And all around the warmer there's a wall of gowns and scrubs
To weigh and score the infant, do the bracelets, give the drugs.

Doctor threads a careful suture and the forms are signed and filed
Mom is dazed with pain and wonder, cut in two by the living child
A perfect little peanut with no bedbug bites or burns
She steals a glance at baby's face and to the wall she turns
Then just an hour later and she's gone out AMA
To find the mercy to forget what happened here today.

So welcome to the outside, kid, we've both got work to do
I don't have what you're needing but I'll help to get you through
Let you suck my latex finger, cut your hair and bag your pee
Give you half a mg of comfort in a world of tubes and beeps
And when you've beat the jones and you're in one piece more or less
I'll see you off along the road that's anybody's guess.

Footnotes:
- Josephs is a pseudonym
- bracelets = ID bands
- AMA = against medical advice
- cut your hair and bag your pee, i.e., toxicology screen for drug exposure
- half a mg of comfort, i.e., morphine; pronounced "mig" here