The anesthesiologist came over, looking grave. “The hemoglobin’s down to 2,” he said. “We’ve been giving her fluids, and she’s not in shock yet. But somebody’s got to do something.”

“So transfuse her,” I suggested.

The obstetrician winced. “She won’t accept blood of any kind,” he said.

That was a frightening twist: A normal hemoglobin count is 12 to 14. Our patient had lost more than three-fourths of her blood volume. In the modern era of medicine, hemorrhage is one of the few remaining causes of maternal death, but surgery can usually stop it. In some cases, however, the blood loss is so profound that blood pressure falls to an impossible level. With no blood in the veins, flow to the brain, heart, liver, and kidneys drops off, causing irreparable damage. In some cases, components that regulate coagulation are so depleted that the remaining blood cannot clot, so suturing bleeding points to stem blood loss only causes more bleeding where the needle punctures tissue.

Transfusion can correct the blood loss, but the patient was a Honduran immigrant and a devout Pentecostalist who refused to accept blood in any form. When she came in for labor, she’d told her care team that she’d prefer death in this life to damnation in the next. The anesthesiologists had managed to stave off complications by administering intravenous salt and water. At this point, she had no reserve.

I looked at the anxious resident. She was trying to hold back the bleeding with one hand on the woman’s abdomen and another inside the vagina in order to compress the uterus and stop the flow of blood. The maneuver wasn’t working: The blood that seeped around the resident’s gloves was as thin as water.

“You have to open her,” I told the obstetrician. “If her uterus won’t clamp down, you have to take it out.”

“She’s only 26,” he objected. “She’s had four children, but she’s so young, and she hasn’t consented to surgery.”

“She can’t,” the anesthesiologist pointed out. “She’s arousable, but she slips in and out of consciousness. She wouldn’t understand anything you explain. You’ve got to do something.”

The obstetrician looked at me. “You have nothing to lose,” I pointed out. “If we operate, she might die. If we don’t operate, she will die.”

So the anesthesiology team put her to sleep. Then we splashed a sterilizing iodine solution on her abdomen and went in. The uterus was as soft as an underinflated water balloon. I pulled it out of the pelvis and held it in my fists, squeezing on the blood supply like a tourniquet while the obstetrician injected agents directly into the muscle to promote contraction. While I held the uterus, the anesthesiology team stabilized the woman’s blood pressure, which had dropped. Meanwhile, I laid out the options.

“We can try to tie off the arteries that flow into the uterus in an effort to save it,” I said. “But the uterus isn’t contracting, and unless it contracts, ligation will only slow the bleeding, not stop it. If she goes into shock while we’re doing that, she may never come back. I think we have to go ahead with hysterectomy.”

The obstetrician nodded. “And if anything goes wrong with the hysterectomy,” he said, “she’ll die.”

Cesarean hysterectomy is a dreaded operation, because the vessels to the recently pregnant uterus are engorged. Any slipped clamp or slight tear can result in torrential bleeding.

We did it anyway. Every vessel had to be tied twice; every knot had to hold. They did. She survived.

Actually, she did better than that. Within two days, she was walking. We watched her for signs of brain injury from prolonged blood loss, but aside from a little postpartum crankiness, she was fine. When we told her we’d removed her uterus, she was grateful: She said she had four children at home, another in the bassinet beside her, and she didn’t want more. When she came back for her six-week checkup, iron supplements had nearly boosted her hemoglobin level to normal. Meanwhile, the resident who had pulled on the placenta is graduating in June. She is now the epitome of patience in deliveries and aware of the place of surgery when the natural processes of delivery go awry.