Mercedes Wells’ water had already broken when a nurse at Indiana's Franciscan Health Crown Point hospital checked on her in triage, a room typically designated for women in earlier trimesters of pregnancy.

Wells, already a mother of three, knew the baby could come at any minute. The nurse did not believe she was going into labor, Wells recalled.

“She was like, yeah, we have to follow policy. When the doctor discharges, you have to leave but you can come back if your labor progresses or when you become an active labor. I'm like, I'm an active labor now. I'm about to have this baby now. She didn't really, she didn't hear me,’” Wells, 38, told The Associated Press from her Chicago area home in Dolton, Illinois.

But she was out of time. Wells felt the baby coming.

Her husband, Leon, loaded her into their car and sped away hoping to reach another hospital. Thereafter, in the early morning hours of Nov. 16, he pulled over on a Lake County highway and delivered their daughter.

Wells said the nurses she saw were all white, and all assured her that concerns were relayed to the attending physician.

“It was just like a nightmare. Something I would have never imagined. They knew all the information, my history, my fourth baby, they knew a lot and still disregarded all the facts,” said Wells.

Franciscan Health Crown Point said in a statement that both the nurse and physician involved in Wells’ ordeal were fired and that the hospital has mandated cultural competency training for all labor and delivery staff.

Well’s experience highlights the long-standing and rising disparities in health outcomes for Black women, who die at a rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women around the time of childbirth, according to a 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.

While maternal mortality rates for white, Hispanic and Asian women fell in 2023, according to the CDC report, the rate for Black women barely budged.

Now, the women’s families, health organizations and civil rights advocates are urging the medical profession to address systemic racism that they say perpetuates Black women's experiences.

Following her experience, Wells says she distrusts the health care system. Both she and her husband say they now plan to do more research when going to a hospital to ensure nothing similar happens again

“I still have thoughts like, wow. I couldn't imagine this happening, but it happened to me. It happened to us,” said Wells.