No response.

I fired off a couple more messages, but still nothing. She was probably swamped-again. And yep, nailed it. Turns out the mom of the 1,385th baby had a serious postpartum bleed, so Lena had to ditch her phone and bolt back into the OR.

***

By the time Lena finally stepped out of the OR, the sun was up, and she was still wearing the chaos of the night-scrubs streaked with blood, hands showing traces of the battle. But the mother had made it.

“Have the family meet me in my office,” she told a nurse on her way to the locker room.

During the surgery, Lena found out the real reason for the mother’s bleeding: stress. And not just any stress.

Turns out, the husband had completely lost it over the baby being a girl. He’d spewed garbage about how they’d “wasted ten months on her, pampering her with good food and care, just for her to pop out something “worthless.” Oh, and the cherry on top? He casually mentioned selling the baby-apparently, someone out there would cough up one grand for a girl.