Day 25. Dr. Martínez stood by my bedside. He wasn’t talking to me, but he was talking near me. He was on the phone, his voice hushed and angry.
“I cannot do that, Teresa. It is illegal.”
Pause.
“I don’t care about your ‘private adoption arrangement.’ The patient gave birth to monozygotic twins. Hidden twins. It happens, though rarely. The second child is in the NICU.”
Twins. I had two daughters.
“Mr. Molina is the father,” the doctor continued, his knuckles white as he gripped the bedrail. “He has rights.”
Pause.
“He waived them? In exchange for what? …Cash?”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush the building.
“Fine,” Martínez spat. “But I need paperwork. Proper paperwork. I will not hand a child over to a stranger in a parking lot.”
He hung up and sighed, a deep, rattling sound of a man losing his faith in humanity. He looked down at me.
“I am so sorry, Lucía,” he whispered. “I don’t know how to stop them.”
I do, I screamed in the silence of my skull. Just wake me up.
Day 29. 11:00 PM.
They were coming tomorrow at 10:00 AM. That was the deadline. The thirty-day mark where the insurance cleared and the “ethical” withdrawal of life support could be signed.
I had eleven hours to live.