Laurie Bertram Roberts was 17 years old and 12 weeks pregnant when she noticed a pink discharge running down her leg one day. When she went to her local hospital in Michigan City, Indiana, doctors told her she may be having a miscarriage, and to go home and come back if she started to bleed.

The next day, bleeding heavily, Bertram Roberts returned to the ER, only to be sent home again because her doctors could detect a faint fetal heartbeat.

“It was kind of like, go home, you’re having a miscarriage, good luck,” said Bertram Roberts.

Later that evening, as the bleeding intensified, Bertram Roberts decided against going back to the hospital. She figured it would pass, and besides, she didn’t have the money to afford another ER visit. She visited her grandmother, who lived next door, in order to make an unrelated phone call to her mom.

“I don’t remember what my mom said, I just remember hitting the floor,” she said. In the moments that followed, Bertram Roberts said she could hear her then-husband and grandmother calling her name as if through a tunnel, but she couldn’t open her eyes. “I remember feeling like I was dying.”