I turned my head, sweat stinging my eyes, searching for the one thing that was supposed to anchor me. My husband, Andrés Molina. We had been married for five years. We had built a home, a life, a future. I needed his hand. I needed his eyes on mine. I needed him to say the words that justify the pain.

But Andrés wasn’t looking at me.

He was standing in the far corner of the room, his face illuminated by the pale, sickly glow of his smartphone. His thumbs moved across the screen with a manic, rhythmic intensity. Swipe. Tap. Swipe. Tap.

He wasn’t pacing. He wasn’t wringing his hands in anxiety. He was texting.

Maybe he’s updating my parents, I told myself, the excuse tasting like ash in my mouth. Maybe he’s terrified and distracting himself. Men handle fear differently.

But even through the haze of agony, my gut twisted. There was no fear in his posture. There was only calculation.

Suddenly, the pressure in my chest changed. It wasn’t the baby. It was me. A sharp, icy claw gripped my heart and squeezed. The steady beep of the monitor stumbled, skipped a beat, and then accelerated into a frantic, high-pitched warning.

“BP is crashing!” a nurse shouted. The calm shattered.