Tag: drug addiction

Jessica Bloom-Foster

From the moment I walk into the room, she breaks my heart. She has just been sent to obstetrical triage from the ER, where an ultrasound has revealed a twenty-two-week pregnancy and a cervix dilated to four centimeters–halfway to delivery stage. She is moaning from her labor pains and moving restlessly on the narrow cot.

I am a second-year family medicine resident in a Midwestern hospital, and well past halfway through a busy call night. She is a thin, dusky-skinned woman, and she looks at me with wide, dark eyes full of sadness and pain. Her hair is pulled back with a nylon rag, and most of her front teeth are missing. Her face seems long and gaunt.

I take a rapid history