I asked my husband to carry the grocery bags because my ankles were swollen and my back ached with every step. I was eight months pregnant, and the walk from the car to the apartment felt like crossing a desert. He hesitated, glancing at his phone, and before he could answer, my mother-in-law snapped from the kitchen doorway, “The world doesn’t spin around your belly. Pregnancy isn’t sickness.”

Her words landed like a slap.

My husband shrugged and nodded at her, the way he always did—quick, obedient, thoughtless. He handed the bags back to me. The plastic cut into my palms as I dragged them across the threshold. No one helped. I remember thinking that the baby kicked right then, a small, indignant flutter, as if even she knew the moment wasn’t right.
For illustrative purposes only

That night, I barely slept. My hands throbbed, my pride hurt worse, and my mind kept replaying that nod. It wasn’t the bags that broke me—it was the silence that followed, the way my discomfort was dismissed as inconvenience.

At dawn the next morning, a violent knock shook the door. Not a polite tap. Not a neighbor’s mistake. This was urgent, angry, heavy.