Praying for a Second Miracle : Medicine: Parents have a baby after 12 years of trying, only to find that he needs a heart transplant in order to live.

Mary Krugler, a cardiac care nurse for 15 years, has seen patients die. But she now lives in her own personal hell: Her son, Matthew, was born two weeks ago with a fatal heart ailment. Without a transplant, he will die.

The longer he must wait, the less likely he is to live. Krugler knows the odds all too well. But she also knows this is her miracle baby, the child she conceived after 12 years of trying to get pregnant, after doctors told her that her money would be better spent vacationing in Palm Springs.

“You want to hope,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “You want to hope.”

Placing her hands through the incubator, she sat stroking Matthew on Tuesday. She patted the fuzz on his head; she stroked his arm, careful not to disturb the intravenous and respirator tubes that crisscrossed his chest as he slept at Huntington Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. And she wept: On this day, the baby in the next basinet died.

“I touch him all the time; I can’t get enough,” said Krugler, 41, of La Canada Flintridge, her blue eyes red with tears. “When he looks at me, oh my God, I melt.”

Krugler’s husband, Len, who runs a Culver City construction business, has none of his wife’s medical expertise. He knows only what he has learned about heart ventricles in two emotionally blistering weeks. He knows only that the son he longs to hold in his arms cannot be held. That the son he hoped to teach fly-fishing may never set foot near a stream.

“I’m 45 years old, I don’t have a child,” said Len Krugler, his voice breaking. “This is something I was looking forward to. It’s hard for me to put it into words--it’s something I always wanted. If you always wanted something and never got it, then it happened, it was a miracle. Now, we are looking for that second miracle.”

The second miracle would be a donor’s heart. Matthew, along with two other babies, is on a waiting list to receive a heart transplant at Loma Linda University Medical Center, where Matthew was transferred Tuesday night. But babies who need hearts outnumber healthy organs that are made available from the bodies of children who die. About 75% of those in need do get a heart in time, said Joyce Johnston, administrative director of Loma Linda’s cardiac transplant program. And 25% die waiting.

Mary Krugler wears two beepers: one so her family can contact her since she spends most of her time at Matthew’s side, the other so Loma Linda can reach her should a heart become available. Late Tuesday, Matthew was scheduled to be transferred to Loma Linda so that doctors could act quickly if a heart became available.

When Mary Krugler’s beeper rings, she jumps and looks to see which one has rung. But time after time, it’s the wrong beeper, it’s not Loma Linda. Each hour, each minute is precious. If Matthew’s condition worsens, if he gets a cold or an infection, he will be taken off the list for transplants. Hearts are so scarce that one cannot be bestowed upon an unhealthy baby.

“That’s the cold, hard fact,” said Len Krugler, a slim man who has lost so much weight since his son’s birth that his trousers must now be cinched tight with a belt to stay on. “They can’t waste a heart--if Matthew isn’t up to it, they’ll take someone else on the list.”

So the Kruglers have watched their son carefully, comparing how he looks today to the days shortly after his birth. Are his lungs getting congested? Is he sleeping fitfully? The time they spend, watching him through the plexiglass, stroking his tiny fingers, becomes more and more dear.

“That’s my little baby,” sobbed Mary Krugler. “If I lose him, this is the only memory I’ve got.”

Their lives have taken on a nightmarish hue. There is nothing they can do but wait. Food sits like sodden lumps on their plates. At night, when they finally return home from the hospital, they fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. One evening, Len Krugler almost crashed into another car as he made a left turn. He later conceded that the incident was his own fault, but at the time he flew into a rage and started yelling at the departing driver. Then he broke into tears and couldn’t stop crying.

It seemed like ages ago that the couple had been so jubilant over Mary’s unexpected pregnancy.

They had all but given up their dream of having a child when they learned that Mary was indeed pregnant. Because getting pregnant had been so difficult for Mary, and because at 41 she was considered an older, at-risk mother, the couple ran a battery of tests to make sure the child in her womb was healthy. Assured by the results, they eagerly awaited their son’s birth.

When Matthew was born, the couple was ecstatically exhausted. The very next day, a grave-faced pediatrician broke the bad news: the left side of Matthew’s heart was not pumping blood to his tiny body, an anatomical fluke and a rare, fatal condition known as Shones’ complex.

“I thought the whole world ended,” Len Krugler said. “This might be our one and only baby.”

They try not to see the other tiny babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, just down the corridor from the newborn babies’ nursery. “Every day you see those beautiful babies and dads and moms and you watch everybody go home every day, babies in their arms,” she said. “I wanted to be one of those mothers.”