At 2 A.M., Trapped in the Office, I Checked the Hidden Baby Monitor I’d Installed to See Why Our Newborn Was Still Crying—And My Blood Ran Cold. On the Screen, My Mother Stormed Into the Baby’s Room, Hissed, “You Live Off My Child and You Still Complain?”

At 2:03 a.m., I was still sitting in my office.

The quarterly audit had turned into a disaster.

Half the accounting team was home sick, several reports were overdue, and my supervisor had made it painfully clear that leaving before the work was finished wasn’t an option.