And when I started the engine, I heard Isabel say my name.
I didn’t let her finish.
—If anything happens to my wife or my son, I will never speak to them again in my life.
I started before I heard the answer.
The journey to the hospital was a nightmare.
Lucia clenched her teeth.
Sometimes he would close his eyes.
Sometimes he would look at me as if he wanted to tell me something important but couldn’t find the strength.
I was driving while trembling.
I was talking to him all the time.
I kept telling him that we were almost there.
That it would hold up.
That he wouldn’t leave me alone in that.
She was just breathing.
Again and again.
As if every breath were a battle.
She was taken to the emergency room immediately.
A nurse asked me questions that I could barely answer.
Weeks of pregnancy.
If you had experienced bleeding before.
If there was pain.
If there was a fall.
And then I was speechless.
Because I didn’t know.
I, her husband, didn’t know.
I didn’t know if he had been feeling unwell for days.
I didn’t know if I had been dizzy.
I didn’t know if he’d been pretending to be okay for weeks.
I didn’t know anything.
Because he had been in the same house… but far away from her.
My mother arrived fifteen minutes later.
She came alone.
That surprised me.
I thought she would come escorted by my sisters, with explanations, with pride, with anger.
But not.
He sat next to me in the waiting room.
And for the first time in many years I saw her old.
Not authoritarian.
Not imposing.
Old.
Tired.
Scared.
“Where are they?” I asked without looking at her.
“I didn’t let them come,” he replied.
I turned my head.
—And now it turns out you care?
My mother swallowed hard.
He took a while to reply.
—It matters to me more than you think.
I wanted to give him a harsh answer.
Something that would hurt him.
But at that moment the doctor came out.
