The days after our loss dissolve into a kind of static—grief layered over numbness, hour after hour. I scroll endlessly through online forums, late into the night, searching for something solid in the voices of women who’ve been here before. Some of their stories mirror mine so closely it’s like they’ve reached across the screen just to say, me too. But even in the comfort of that recognition, I feel myself slipping further, like connection alone can’t hold me steady.
Anh does what he can. Brings me tea. Holds me without filling the silence. I see the worry in his face, the quiet question behind his eyes: How do I help her when I can’t fix this?
"Em," he murmurs one evening, "I think maybe we need to consider getting some professional help. This is more than we can handle on our own." (Anh nghĩ có lẽ chúng ta cần xem xét việc tìm sự giúp đỡ chuyên nghiệp. Chuyện này vượt ngoài khả năng của chúng ta.)
I nod, but the words won’t come. There’s too much inside—grief, yes, but also betrayal. Not just by my body, but by the system that let me suffer, that made me choose between health and legality, between care and geography.
I lie in bed with one hand over my abdomen, where there used to be a heartbeat. Now it’s just silence and scar tissue. This body—my body—feels like a battlefield. Nature, medicine, politics—they’ve all staked claims here. And I’m left somewhere in the middle, trying to make sense of who owns what.
I think of the app. The hours Anh and I spent coding, designing, believing we could build a tool to regain control of our own story. Something clear and useful and ours. But now that code feels small. Inert. Like all the tracking in the world can’t stand up to what’s happened—not just to me, but to all of us caught in this system. What’s the point of data when the law doesn’t care? When your body decides without you?
A memory floats up—something I read back in college. Donna Haraway, A Cyborg Manifesto. Her words felt abstract then, almost speculative. But now they land differently. The blurring of boundaries between human and machine, between flesh and code—that’s not theory anymore. It’s me. My body mapped in symptom logs. My cycles forecast by algorithm. My grief uploaded into apps and inboxes. Part woman, part data stream.
And still, none of it could stop what happened.
All the tracking, the tech, the meticulously coded control—it didn’t matter. My body veered off course anyway. And the law? It didn’t catch me. Didn’t hold me. It stood there, arms crossed, watching me suffer.
The irony makes me sick. We thought we could outsmart biology. Outsmart bureaucracy. But in the end, it didn’t protect me. None of it did.
I feel myself slipping—deeper into exhaustion, into grief. The depression isn’t abstract either. It’s heavy and real and everywhere. And yet... I know I can’t stay in this place forever. Not just for me, but for Anh too.
I see two paths in front of me: seek psychiatric help before trying again, or step away from fertility treatments altogether and channel everything into the app.
As I weigh them, I start to question what each path says about who I’ve become. About what I am now. Is it more honest to keep engaging with these medical interventions—these technologies that have carried us this far, despite their failures? Or do I pull back, accept the limits of what science and law can do, and rebuild something different from the wreckage?
Anh finds me deep in thought, his hand warm on my shoulder. "What are you thinking about, em?" (Em đang nghĩ gì vậy?)
I look up at him—so steady, so present. "I'm trying to decide what to do next," (Em đang cố gắng quyết định xem sẽ làm gì tiếp theo,) I say. " I know I can't continue with fertility treatments as if nothing happened, but I'm not sure what path to take." (Em biết là mình không thể tiếp tục với việc điều trị sinh sản như trước đây, như chưa có chuyện gì xảy ra, nhưng em không chắc phải chọn con đường nào.)
He sits beside me, fingers lacing through mine. "Whatever you decide, we'll face it together. Just like we always have." (Dù em quyết định như thế nào, chúng ta sẽ cùng nhau vượt qua. Như chúng ta đã luôn làm.)
His words ground me. I breathe them in, let them settle. But the choice still presses at my chest, heavy and unresolved.