Blood Money Burns Them All

My husband had just been promoted to regional managing director when the eighty-hour workweeks finally caught up to his heart. He collapsed face-down at his desk, his screen still glowing with unread emails.

I was barely three weeks postpartum. With an infant strapped to my chest and an employment lawyer at my side, I staked out the firm’s downtown office tower for three grueling days. Four hostile mediation sessions later, the executive board broke under the threat of a wrongful-death suit, reluctantly agreeing to a four-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement.