Mary and Goldfish

Photo by Are R on Unsplash

The Thai surgeon was stuck in traffic, so I was lying in the surgical room in Bangkok wrapped in a strait-jacket-like device designed to keep my arms from flopping over the side of the surgical gurney. The sterile room and what it stood for was horrifying.

I was having an ectopic pregnancy, and the surgery would remove the baby-three months old-from my left fallopian tube. I researched, cried, and begged the doctors to do…