Searching For An Answer

Lane DeGregory: TAMPA — She took her baby to Target that morning. He was happy and alert, wide-eyed as she pushed him through the food aisles. Graham was 3 months old, just starting to grasp his stuffed bunny with both hands. The date was April 1, 2005. That afternoon, Susan Martin Warren handed off Graham and her older son to their father, Tom. Susan, now 36, had to work that evening; she was a family resource coordinator at University Community Hospital, talking to new parents about raising healthy children. Tom had quit his job as a financial analyst at Coca-Cola when Graham was born. Now he had an office in the family's home in Wesley Chapel, where he did accounting for private clients and looked after the boys. Just before 9 p.m., Tom called Susan's office. "Don't come home," she remembers him telling her. "The paramedics are here. We're on our way to the hospital. Something's wrong with Graham."

She met the ambulance outside the emergency room and lifted her pale son from his car seat. His legs seemed rigid, Susan said. His eyes were glassy.

"He wasn't crying," she said. "It was more of a moan." In more than a decade working with babies, Susan had never heard an infant moan.

She kept asking Tom, "What happened?" He didn't know. He had no idea.