The doctor trying to save my life in the delivery room was my ex-husband—the same man who left me pregnant in the rain. What I told him made him stumble back.

under is not just exhaustion. It is the end.

Inside Operating Room Two, the world dissolves into a blinding, sterile white and the sharp clatter of surgical steel.

Someone forces a plastic mask over my nose and mouth. The air smells heavily of chemicals and sweet, artificial oxygen. A voice tells me to breathe deep, that I am going under, that they have continue reading …