As the darkness pulled at the edges of my vision, I watched him step delicately over my convulsing body.

He didn’t drop to his knees. He didn’t frantically reach for a phone to call for help. Instead, he let out a heavy sigh of pure annoyance, reaching down with a linen napkin to meticulously wipe a splatter of grease off the toe of his bespoke Italian loafers.

My final, crystallized thought before the pain swallowed my consciousness whole was a terrifying one: neither my husband nor my mother-in-law looked remotely frightened by the atrocity that had just happened.

They only looked inconvenienced.

When the world finally swam back into focus, I found myself surrounded by the sterile, blinding whiteness of hospital privacy curtains.