The student took the letter in her hands and glanced at its four solid pages of Hangul. “Oh . . .” she murmured as she gave it a cursory read, lips moving silently. “Oh!”

“Why? What does it say?”

“I will write it out for you.” Cora Ahn seized the letter possessively, clearly already drawn into its internal drama. “No problem. I can do it. No problem at all.”

Kate came in the door and immediately felt woozy with cramps. Her mother bounced up from the chair by the window and began:

“So, Larry called this morning and we had a long heart-to-heart . . .”

“Mom. Not now, please.” She stood in the hallway, wondering if she should sit down. “I’m feeling a little strange.”

Mary-Sue pulled down her reading glasses and gave her daughter a good hard look—and jumped.

“No wonder. You’re standing in a puddle of water!” She grabbed the phone.

Six or eight hours later, Kate woke up in a strange bed, with a deep grogginess behind her eyes and a searing rawness between her legs. She recalled the trauma only in discrete flashes—the freezing stirrups, a cluster of shower-capped women urging her to “push!”, the odor of rubber gloves, the coppery scent of blood. She wriggled her toes and the pain sharpened. Her insides ached, deep in some pit. When her nose came to, she smelled antiseptic that made her think of embalming fluid, and this made her gag. She reached out and felt a plastic pan by her side, already the recipient of a drying heap of mush. She recognized the peas she’d had at lunch, and produced a fresh mound over the old.

The walls around her were pink vinyl, along a nursery theme—smiling ducklings bursting out of eggshells—but the good cheer seemed generic and insincere. In the far side of the room loomed a couple of bouquets and a heart-shaped foil balloon that was already drooping. Her mouth felt dry. Everything but the plastic pan was out of reach. She whimpered, suddenly overcome with the desire to have Mary-Sue by her side.

“Mom!” she wailed, from the bottom of her lungs. She was somehow too relaxed—drugs?—to be embarrassed by this. Then an awareness kicked in and she sucked in her crying before it became a full-throttle bawl.

A nurse with a springy blond ponytail opened the door. Her nametag said pearl.

“Oh, Miss Ireland! You’re awake,” she said. “Did you want me to call your mother?”

Kate nodded and looked away, mortified. The nurse came over to her bed and checked her vitals, all the while making small talk to distract her.