No Longer His Wife, His Mother

As the building crumbled around us, my husband, a paramedic, held the only oxygen mask.

He gave it to his high school sweetheart, not to me, his wife who was struggling to breathe.

Pinned under a beam, I gasped that I was pregnant. He told me to stop being dramatic and left me to die, taking our son with him. My own son agreed, telling his father I always "bounce back."

I lost our baby, alone in a hospital room, while they fussed over her "anxiety attack" across the hall. They had chosen her, leaving me and our child in the rubble without a second thought.