I have been asked, since, how a person survives hearing a thing like that in a moment like that, and the honest answer is that the labor almost saved me.

There was so much happening in my body, so much pure animal work of staying alive and bringing another life through, that his words could not land with their full weight all at once; they had to wait their turn behind the contractions.

And in the small clear spaces between the waves of it, I did a strange thing.

I did not fall apart.

I began, instead, to think — the way I used to think in a boardroom when a deal turned against me without warning, when the only move left was to go very still and very cold and very fast.