Nine months pregnant, Natasha Spencer watched anxiously from her eighth-floor window as the abandoned cars and buses piled up on South Shore Drive.
One of the worst blizzards in Chicago history gripped the city in the winter of 2011, and Spencer was past her due date. Her obstetrician had offered to induce labor before the storm hit, but Spencer declined. As she watched the snowdrifts devour the vehicles on the road below, Spencer wondered if she should have listened.
Spencer was nearing 40, so she was keenly aware that her pregnancy was high-risk by medical standards. Throughout her pregnancy, she hadn’t been able to shake a foreboding that was so intense and so out of character she didn’t even tell her husband about it.