I collapsed from overwork and woke up in the ICU, and while my family used my money to fly to the Bahamas to scout my sister’s wedding venue, a stranger stood outside my glass door every night until the nurse handed my mother the visitor log and I watched the color drain out of her face.

I set the phone down. I tried to stand up to walk to the kitchen to grab a fresh bottle of water, desperate to clear my head.

But as I pushed my chair back, my legs simply ceased to function.

My knees buckled instantly, as if the bones had turned to water. A sudden, blinding, excruciating pain exploded behind my left eye, dropping me heavily onto the expensive, low-pile corporate carpet. My laptop slid off the desk, crashing onto the floor beside me.

I lay on my side, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. The left side of my body felt entirely paralyzed, numb and heavy. The darkness began to rapidly close in, tunneling my vision.

I recognized the symptoms. My brain was bleeding.

I desperately reached for my phone with my right hand, my fingers trembling and uncoordinated, trying to dial 911. But my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. The phone slipped from my grasp, skittering just out of reach under the mahogany conference table.

As the automated, robotic vacuum cleaners on the 32nd floor silently hummed to life, beginning their midnight cleaning cycle around my dying body, my mother was currently walking into the lobby of a five-star oceanfront resort in the Bahamas, complaining about the humidity, completely, blissfully unaware that her eldest daughter’s heart was about to stop.