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Quaid Moved by Smart People's Twins

Thu., Jan. 24, 2008 6:37 PM PST by Natalie Finn

Dennis Quaid will never take the idea of a pair of healthy babies for granted.

The actor, who along with his wife was put through the emotional wringer last year when their newborn twins were given an overdose of blood thinners at a Los Angeles hospital, got a little misty-eyed this week during the premiere of his Smart People at the Sundance Film Festival.

"It actually really gets me when I see this," Quaid said, his voice cracking with emotion, referring to a scene near the end of the romantic dramedy in which his character, a curmudgeonly college professor with a new lease on life, holds his healthy infant twins.

"The character came to have hope for himself, but in a sense it came true for me."

English professor Lawrence Wetherhold is a cranky widower who slowly allows himself to fall for an ER doctor, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, who treats him after he suffers a seizure. Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church also star in the film, which is due in theaters Apr. 11.

"Kimberly and I weren't even pregnant when we shot," Quaid said. "We'd been trying for three years. When I read the script a couple years ago, the end scene always got me emotionally. It made me well up. And of course, having our own twins now, it really gets me verklempt.

"It's a wonderful thing. For me, it's just life imitating art."

Dennis and Kimberly Quaid's eight-day-old twins, Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone, were accidentally administered 1,000 times the recommended dose of heparin, an anticlotting drug regularly used to flush intravenous lines, on Nov. 18 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

A report issued by the California Department of Public Health earlier this month detailed the various breakdowns that occurred en route to the mixup, in which employees apparently failed to double-check which dosages they were giving, and the hospital has admitted its procedural mistakes and assured that internal steps have been taken to prevent similar incidents.

The Quaids have sued heparin manufacturer Baxter Healthcare Corp. for negligence, contending that the company has put people at risk by using nearly identical labels to mark 10-unit and 10,000-unit dosages.

The family has not gone after Cedars-Sinai as yet, but in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Quaid said he and Kimberly weren't told of their babies' condition until the following morning.

"Our kids could have been dying, and we wouldn't have been able to come down to the hospital to say goodbye," adding that the hospital told them the kids were "just fine" when they called to check up on them the evening of Nov. 18. The infants had been hospitalized with treatable staph infections.

"We were told it was not a big deal," Kimberly Quaid said. "We figured we'd be home in a couple days, and nobody would know any different. That wasn't the case."

The doting parents said they would like to give Cedars-Sinai a chance to "right a wrong" before possibly taking legal action.

Luckily, Zoe and Thomas appear to have fully recovered from their ordeal.

"We have our babies back, and they seem to be doing great, and they're just a lot of fun to be with," Quaid said.