In a plot twist that would make even the most jaded telly writer blush, a newborn baby has been yanked from the wreckage of a collapsed building in Venezuela, and British medics on the scene have dared to utter the M-word. Miracle. Yes, that tiresome, overused term that usually gets wheeled out when a politician’s smile is merely less terrifying than his policies. But here we are, elbow-deep in the absurdity of the 21st century, where a tiny, screaming, mucus-covered human emerges from a pile of concrete and twisted metal, and the only thing more shocking than the survival is that the story hasn’t been interrupted by a breaking news alert about a celebrity’s vegan diet.
The details, as they stand, are deliciously vague. We know the building was in a state of advanced decrepitude, which is to say it looked like most Venezuelan infrastructure these days. We know a rescue team, including a contingent of British medics who were presumably in the area to treat the locals for chronic optimism, heard a faint wail. They dug. They found. They labelled it a miracle. Because God forbid we call it what it really is: a random, statistical fluke that a human embryo survived a drop of several storeys, a fall that would have shattered a bottle of fine gin into a thousand shards of broken dreams. But no, the word miracle is more marketable. It sells newspapers and assuages the guilt of the comfortable.
Let’s be clear: I’m not implying that a British medic hasn’t seen a few things in their time. They’ve probably dealt with more drunken rugby injuries than the NHS can shake a bedpan at. But pulling a live newborn from a corpse of a building? That’s a headline that writes itself. It’s the kind of event that makes you believe in either a benevolent deity or a deeply ironic one, because what kind of God allows a building to collapse but then ensures the smallest, most fragile passenger walks away? The same God, I suspect, who lets politicians lie with impunity but ensures your morning toast always lands butter-side down.
The response from the British government has been predictably tepid. A spokesperson, no doubt chosen for their ability to say nothing with maximum pomposity, expressed ‘admiration for the bravery of the rescue teams’ and ‘hope for the child’s future’. This is the same hope they extend to a failing economy or a World Cup campaign. Meanwhile, the child is being whisked away to a hospital, where it will be poked, prodded, and probably photographed for a million Instagram posts before being returned to a country that can’t seem to decide whether it’s a nation or a soap opera.
What truly grinds my gears is the language. The medics didn’t just save a baby; they ‘described a miracle’. As if the survival was so improbable that only a supernatural explanation will do. Why can’t we just say ‘they did their job with competence and a bit of luck’? Because that doesn’t sell papers. That doesn’t make people feel warm and fuzzy when they read it over their morning coffee. No, we need a miracle to reassure us that the world isn’t entirely going to hell in a handbasket. And yet, while the cameras flash and the keyboards clatter, somewhere in Venezuela, another building is cracking, another family is weeping, and the only miracle is that we still expect a different outcome.
In conclusion, bravo to the medics. Bravo to the baby. But let’s save the word ‘miracle’ for something truly unprecedented, like a politician telling the truth or a news cycle without a celebrity fart scandal. Until then, pass the gin.
