I wished for a way to communicate pain more precisely than on a scale of one to ten. This was the worst pain I’d ever felt, but I had never had my arm cut off. That was what I always imagined to be the worst pain: having a limb chopped off. I saved ten for that, out of respect. I wanted to keep nine for the moment the baby tore his way out of my vagina. That left eight. I wanted to seem brave, so at first I said seven, but then, worried they wouldn’t understand the urgency of the situation, I came back with eight. I tried to communicate in a gesture that I didn’t agree with their method,
