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St. Vincent’s makes final delivery

St. Vincent’s makes final delivery
By Anna Gustafson

As the last baby to be born in the historic St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, Forest Hills infant Abigail Yael Jancu shed some light on an institution whose impending death has cast shadows across the city it has served for 160 years.

Abigail Jancu first saw the world in a place that has provided care for Sept. 11 victims, Titanic survivors and the AIDS patients who arrived in droves in the early 1980s. The hospital, which stopped admitting patients the day before the birth, inspired Edna St. Vincent Millay’s middle name after her uncle was saved at the famed medical center in Greenwich Village, and it was there that Dylan Thomas went into the good night.

As the doctors and nurses, many of whom had spent their entire careers at the hospital that is drowning in debt, said goodbye to each other, they also doted on the newest person in the hospital: Abigail Jancu.

St. Vincent’s filed for bankruptcy last week and has said it has more than $1 billion in liabilities. Hospital officials have said they have had to rely on emergency loans from the state to make payroll. The hospital aims to close by the end of April, though that date could change.

“Seeing what was happening to the staff was heart-breaking,” said Robert Jancu, Abigail’s father and a Forest Hills resident. “People were there decades. They started their careers there, I watched them hug and say goodbye and have a good life. But people were also lavishing attention on us.”

The little girl was born at 4:58 a.m. last Thursday, about 18 hours after her mother, Forest Hills resident Anastasia Jancu, went into labor. After the Jancu family had such a positive experience with the birth of their first child, Gideon, at St. Vincent’s, they always knew they would return to have their second child — but they barely made it.

The Jancu’s midwife called the family around 8:15 a.m. April 14 morning and told them they would have to get to the hospital by 9 a.m. if they wanted to have their child at St. Vincent’s because patient admissions were to be halted.

The family immediately left their Forest Hills home and headed for the hospital they chose over somewhere in their home borough because of its midwife-friendly atmosphere that gave mothers much control over births.

“We wanted a mommy-oriented setting where people were not rushed to finish, where they didn’t push Caesarians and where you could have as natural as experience as possible,” Jancu said. “Of all the hospitals this had to happen to, given its reputation as a natural child birth center, it’s so sad it had to happen to St. Vincent’s.”

Robert Jancu, 44, who has lived his whole life in Queens, said he knew people from throughout the borough — and even as far away as New Jersey — who would travel to St. Vincent’s because of its focus on creating a warm environment for women in labor.

A recent state Department of Health analysis of St. Vincent’s admissions for residents in the 11 closest ZIP codes found 63 percent of those going to the hospital were from Queens, Brooklyn and areas of Manhattan that were further than a mile away.

A number of people from Queens also worked in the hospital, including Ozone Park resident Carmen Reyes, who worked at St. Vincent’s for 22 years and helped to deliver the Jancus’ son in 2008.

“I saw patients from Forest Hills and Richmond Hill who came here because of the nursing,” Reyes said as she cleaned out her belongings on her last day of work Tuesday. “My brother, who lives in Elmhurst, had open heart surgery here.”

Reyes, who has a 16-year-old son and a 7-year-old son, said she is not sure where she will work now.

“It’s a ghost town here,” she said of St. Vincent’s. “They don’t have many patients, and they’re transferring them all out. There’s a lot of sadness in people’s eyes. I’ve seen grown men crying. People have no jobs, nobody’s calling. It’s hard with the economy the way it is.

Queens residents face a shrinking number of hospitals. Elmhurst’s St. John’s and Jamaica’s Mary Immaculate, both of which were once owned by St. Vincent’s, closed in February 2008, while Parkway Hospital in Forest Hills closed in November 2008.

Reach reporter Anna Gustafson by e-mail at agustafson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.