“The Dark Face in the Window” by Leslie Contreras Schwartz

A personal essay entitled “The Dark Face in the Window” by alumna Leslie Contreras Schwartz (poetry, ’11) appears at the Houston Chronicle:

For the three months I lay in a hospital bed, I was surrounded by hands. I was at the Women’s Hospital of Texas for a pregnancy that involved preterm contractions and a baby’s faltering heartbeat. There was my hand under my head, growing numb and uncomfortable. There were hands of nurses, plunging needles of hormones into my arms, pricking my fingers for blood, moving my legs and arms, strapping my pregnant stomach with monitors. Doctors’ hands, searching for the baby’s heartbeat with a stethoscope. Hands quickly and with efficiency examining the tenderness of my cervix to determine my readiness to deliver.

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