Abby awoke shaking and covered in sweat. The dream had come again, that same nightmare from twenty years ago. The past swallowed her like a giant wave. “My baby!! I want my baby!! Give me my baby, I want to hold her!!” The young girl fought the nurses and her mother trying to keep her in the bed. “Take it, now!” Her mother ordered the nurse holding the small wrapped bundle. Turning the girl left, taking the child with her. As the door closed, Abby fell back on the bed, sobbing. Exhausted from the hours of labor, but unwilling to give up the fight, she sprang up again from the bed, surprising her mother and the nurse. Making it to the door she tore from the room, and raced down the hall. Looking to the left and right, she struggled to decide where her baby might be. Suddenly, arms were around her, restraining her arms. A doctor came up beside her and she felt a small prick on her upper arm. Darkness overtook her, and Abby was unable to resist. Slowly, Abby came to, surveying her surroundings, the same small hospital room where her baby had been born. Padded cuffs restrained her wrists, and ankles. The door opened and her Mother entered, carrying a steaming cup of coffee. She approached the bed, and began stroking Abby’s brow. “How are you feeling, dear?” Tears filled Abby’s eyes. “It wasn’t my fault, I just want my baby, Mom.” She pleaded. Her mother looked down at her kindly. “I know dear, but this is for the best, you’re only eighteen, too young to raise a baby. She’ll get much better care this way” “I had a little girl?” Abby asked, as she began to sob. Her mind reeled, a little girl, and she had never even seen her baby, never held her in her arms. “ I want her Mom, please get the nurse to bring her to me.” Compassion like she had never seen before in her mother filled her eyes. She didn’t speak for several moments, as if weighing exactly what she wanted to say. “Honey, the baby isn’t here anymore, her new parents already took her home.” Despair filled Abby’s heart, her baby was already gone. The child she had carried and grown to love for nine months, who had become a special part of her, was gone, and she had never even seen her, held her in her arms, or even hear her cry. She heard her mother quietly leave the room, and return in a moment a long with a nurse. The nurse carried a syringe, and before Abby could resist, she felt a prick in her arm, and darkness overtaking her again.

Abby had gone home from the hospital a few days later, but had never forgotten that baby that was taken from her that day. Part of the reason she became a doctor was to try to help other girls who were in that same situation. She didn’t want that to ever happen to one of her patients. Being a mother was something that never should be robbed from a woman.