When the wealthy couple saw their newborn’s face, the mother gasped, “Take him away, he’s a monster.” They abandoned him at the hospital. A kind nurse raised him. Twenty years later, the couple desperately needed a rare surgery. The world-famous surgeon walked in, revealed his birthmark, and…

sprawling, deep-crimson port-wine stain. In the harsh fluorescent lighting of the neonatal ward, it looked like a map of a violent, newly discovered continent. To Celeste Sterling and her husband, Graham Sterling, it looked like a localized apocalypse.

The Sterlings were not merely wealthy; they were the undisputed architects of Connecticut’s high-end continue reading …