Leave Me by Gayle Forman

One of my friends was visiting recently and left me a big bag of books to read. The one I grabbed first was Leave Me--and I couldn't put it down. Maribeth is a busy editor, mother of young twins, and wife in NYC. She's also the main breadwinner of the family and the one who keeps everything in motion. When she starts having chest pains, she doesn't have time to consider that it may be a heart attack and just keeps slogging along. But when she mentions her symptoms to her OB/GYN, that doctor immediately sends her to the ER, where it turns out that she had indeed had a heart attack and needs bypass surgery.

When she gets home from the hospital, her adoptive mother is there "to help"--which mostly consists of playing with the kids and leaving all the housework and laundry to the still recuperating Maribeth. Since he feels everything is under control, her husband heads back to his office. Her boss (and best friend) has taken her off the company email so she can rest, but that's only increasing her stress level because now she's worried about job security too.

Maribeth finally reaches the breaking point when both of her kids come home from school with head lice and she is the one who has to go to the drugstore in a pouring rainstorm. The next day, she packs a bag, grabs some money, leaves her husband a note and heads to parts unknown--which turns out to be Pittsburgh, where she starts a low-stress new life under a different name and begins the search for her biological mother. The rest of the book is about her journey to return to physical and mental health with the help of some new friends and a doctor with secrets of his own.