My husband took our daughter's birthday cake out of my hands and dropped it into a trash bin outside a Boston bakery.

The stress of the past two weeks finally took its physical toll.

At 2:00 AM on Saturday morning—exactly two weeks after June's ruined birthday—a sharp, white-hot spasm gripped my lower back, radiating across my abdomen with terrifying intensity.

I gasped, sitting up in bed, clutching the sheets.

Thirty-four weeks. It was too early.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Another contraction ripped through me, doubling me over.

"Elise!" I cried out.

Elise, who had been staying in the guest bedroom to help with June and Owen, was at my door in three seconds flat. She took one look at my pale face and the sweat beaded on my forehead and ran for the car keys.

"The hospital," Elise said, throwing a robe over my shoulders. "Right now."

Within twenty minutes, we were speeding through the empty streets toward Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Elise had called our neighbor, Mrs. Gable, to sit with June and Owen until morning.

By the time the nurses wheeled me into Labor & Delivery, the contractions were coming every three minutes.

"Her blood pressure is elevated," the resident doctor announced, checking the monitors. "The baby is in mild distress. We need an emergency C-section. Get Dr. Chen down here right now!"

The bright lights of the operating room blurred above me. Cold antiseptics, the rapid chatter of surgical nurses, the steady, frantic *beep-beep-beep* of the heart rate monitor.

Fear, cold and suffocating, gripped my chest.

*Not my baby. Please, God, not my baby.*

Elise held my hand, dressed in scrubs, tears in her eyes as she stroked my hair. "Stay with me, Mara. Breathe. You are the strongest woman on earth. Breathe."

I squeezed Elise's hand so hard my knuckles turned white.

I thought of June’s smile when she saw her real cake. I thought of Owen’s messy frosting face. I thought of the empire I had built with my bare hands. I had survived Graham’s betrayal; I had survived his lies. I was not going to let fear steal this child.