At the clinic gate, a 7-year-old collapsed, crying, “Mommy has been sleeping for three days, please save them.” The doctor rushed to help the newborn twins, but as he lifted them, his hands shook. Underneath the babies was a handwritten note from the mother that made the doctor freeze in terror…

relentless buzzing the only sound cutting through the suffocating silence.

My mother, Delfina, lay in the center of the warped wooden floor. Her body rested on a flattened, stained mattress that had long ago lost its shape. She had given birth in the dark hours of the early morning, entirely alone save for me. There was no midwife, no doctor, no neighbor continue reading …