Cradle to Grave

Except for a stuffy nose and two normal regurgitations after feeding, the baby was fine. Chest and head X-rays were all normal. The only thing abnormal noted on the chart was the number of times the parents visited their only child. It said the mother showed up once in 19 days — when the administrator asked her to come in to discuss a bill — and the father didn’t visit at all.

Five weeks after discharge, the baby was rushed to the emergency room at St. Christopher’s, this time by police. According to the chart, Mrs. Noe explained that “the family cat laid across the baby’s face this morning and when [she] found it, the baby was crying and blue.” Little Arty was promptly revived with oxygen. The E.R. doctor’s assessment was that this was a “possible attempted suffocation.” Still, the baby was sent home, to be seen by Gangemi in the afternoon.

Christmas came four days later. Little Arty’s stocking was hung on the living room wall under a carved wooden cross a family friend had made to memorialize Cathy. The baby was showered with stuffed animals — two big teddy bears, a giraffe and a cow.

When he was later brought to the Roundhouse for questioning, Mr. Noe told police it was the best Christmas he ever had.

Eight days later, just after 4 p.m., the rescue squad took Little Arty to the St. Christopher’s emergency room, DOA. He had been found by his mother. Within hours, police and medical examiner investigators were at the Noe home, reading the couple their rights. This time they did not have an attorney present. Mrs. Noe said she did not feel she needed one.

”I have nothing to hide,” she said, “... [and] I will tell you everything I can possibly remember.”

She told investigators about the baby’s earlier hospitalizations and the incident with the cat, which she described this time as, “The cat was trying to get something from the playpen and scratched the baby on the head.” (There is no mention of a scratch in the E.R. report.)

She went on to explain that the baby had had a cold the week before and had been taken to Gangemi with a fever. The day before Little Arty died, he was, as she recalled, “quite cranky” as a result of teething, and her husband got some Orajel, which seemed to help. The next day was uneventful until just after 2:30 p.m. The baby was upstairs napping, and Mrs. Noe was down in the kitchen starting the chicken for dinner.

That’s when she said she heard the “crib rattling.”

According to her statement to police, the baby “didn’t cry out.” Yet she decided to take his shoes up to him. When she entered the room, the baby was “face up, gasping for breath and turning blue,” she recalled. “I immediately lowered the side of the crib and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. This did not appear to be doing any good and I ... called the rescue squad ... and came downstairs with the baby. ... I placed him on the kitchen table and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation again and tried to help it. ... I called my husband and he started home. The rescue arrived but the child was DOA.”

When questioned, Mr. Noe had little to add, except to say, “I have no idea why this is always happening to us. I wish to God I did.”

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