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…

her exhausted lungs. I sat in a hard plastic chair in the waiting room outside the ICU, refusing the nurses’ pleas to return to my cot. I stared at the double doors until my eyes burned, bargaining with whatever forces governed the universe. Take the pain from her. Give it to me. Just let her wake up.

By dawn, the brutal machinery keeping her alive continue reading …