Yesterday in the break room my pregnant colleague clacked an acrylic on the tabletop next to my chicken wrap and said, “How come after I give birth they say I can't take my placenta with me?”

I finished chewing. “Remind me who does this.”

She said the hospital does. After they deliver the baby. “They take the placenta and then they sell that shit for the, the, the” -- dismissive handwag -- “stem cells or whatever. And then they make a tonna money off that, right? I'm like, ‘Lemme keep that and you can buy it off me. That's my fuckin placenta.’”

Another colleague looked up from her tupperware spaghetti with a hand over her mouth and wagged a finger like an injury lawyer and said you just have to notify the hospital that you need the placenta back for religious reasons and then you can sell it yourself but really what you should do is make pills with it and get those nutrients back.

She was really frazzled and I gave her some of my orange before clocking back in.