People say that hearing is the last sense to leave you before you die. They say it like it’s a comfort, a final tether to the world you’re leaving behind.
They are wrong. It is not a comfort. It is a curse.
It started in a delivery room at the Santa Maria Medical Center in Mexico City. The room was aggressive in its whiteness—blinding tiles, stainless steel that gleamed like teeth, and lights that left no shadow where a fear could hide. I had been in labor for fourteen hours. The pain wasn’t a wave anymore; it was an ocean, dark and crushing, pulling me under every time I tried to gasp for air.
“Breathe, Lucía. Stay with the rhythm,” Dr. Rivas said. Her voice was firm, professional, the voice of a woman who had seen life enter the world a thousand times. “You are doing perfectly.”
I wasn’t doing perfectly. I was disintegrating.
I turned my head, sweat stinging my eyes, searching for the one thing that was supposed to anchor me. My husband, Andrés Molina. We had been married for five years. We had built a home, a life, a future. I needed his hand. I needed his eyes on mine. I needed him to say the words that justify the pain.
But Andrés wasn’t looking at me.
He was standing in the far corner of the room, his face illuminated by the pale, sickly glow of his smartphone. His thumbs moved across the screen with a manic, rhythmic intensity. Swipe. Tap. Swipe. Tap.
He wasn’t pacing. He wasn’t wringing his hands in anxiety. He was texting.
Maybe he’s updating my parents, I told myself, the excuse tasting like ash in my mouth. Maybe he’s terrified and distracting himself. Men handle fear differently.
Suddenly, the pressure in my chest changed. It wasn’t the baby. It was me. A sharp, icy claw gripped my heart and squeezed. The steady beep of the monitor stumbled, skipped a beat, and then accelerated into a frantic, high-pitched warning.
“BP is crashing!” a nurse shouted. The calm shattered.
“Lucía, stay with me!” Dr. Rivas commanded, her face suddenly looming over mine, her eyes wide and serious. “We’re losing pressure. Get the crash cart!”
The room dissolved into a blur of motion. Colors bled together. The roar of blood in my ears sounded like a freight train. I felt myself slipping, sliding down a long, dark tunnel. I tried to reach out, to grab the bedrail, but my hands were lead.
And in that final second, before the darkness swallowed me whole, the sounds of the room crystallized. I heard the metal clatter of instruments. I heard the rip of Velcro.
And I heard Andrés.
He didn’t scream my name. He didn’t drop the phone. He asked a question, his voice flat, cold, and utterly devoid of panic.
Not Is my wife okay?
Not Save her.
Just the baby. The heir. The asset.
Then, the world snapped shut.
I don’t know how long I floated in the void. Time doesn’t exist when you aren’t really there. It could have been minutes; it could have been years. It was a black, silent ocean.
Then, sound returned.
It started as a dull hum, vibrating through the floorboards of my mind. Then, the squeak of rubber wheels on linoleum. The distant, rhythmic whoosh of a ventilator.
I tried to open my eyes. Nothing happened.
I tried to twitch a finger. Nothing.
I tried to scream. I’m here! I’m here!
The scream echoed inside my skull, loud and desperate, but my lips didn’t move. My lungs didn’t expand on my command. I was a prisoner in a bone cage.
“Time of death…” a weary voice began.
No! I screamed internally. I am not dead!
Then, a cold sensation on my chest. A stethoscope? No, something colder. A silence in the room that felt heavy, respectful, and terrifying.
“Wait,” a second voice cut in. Sharp. Urgent. “I have a flutter. Here. Look at the monitor.”
“It’s residual,” the first voice dismissed.
“No. It’s a rhythm. She’s not gone. She’s locked in.”
Chaos returned, but distant this time. Orders barked. Fluids pushed. The sensation of life support machinery being hooked up—tubes invading my throat, needles piercing my veins. I felt it all. Every pinch, every invasion. But I could not flinch.
Hours later, the room settled into the quiet hum of the ICU. The air smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee.
“Lucía, if you can hear me,” a male voice said—Dr. Martínez, the neurologist. “You are in a deep coma, potentially a locked-in state. We are doing everything we can.”
I can hear you, I thought, projecting the words with all my might. Please, tell Andrés I’m here.
As if summoned, the heavy door swooshed open. Footsteps approached. Heavy, confident footsteps.
“Mr. Molina,” Dr. Martínez said. “She is stable on life support. But her brain activity is… minimal. She cannot respond.”
“How long?” Andrés asked.
There was no tremor in his voice. No tears choking his words. It was the tone he used when asking a contractor how long a kitchen renovation would take.
“It is impossible to predict,” the doctor replied. “Could be days. Could be years.”
“And the cost?” Andrés asked immediately.
A pause. A heavy, judgmental silence from the doctor.
“ICU care is significant, Mr. Molina. However, usually, after thirty days of non-responsiveness, the family discusses long-term care facilities or… other options.”
Andrés exhaled. A long, releasing breath.
“Thirty days,” he muttered. “Okay. I need to make some calls.”
He didn’t touch my hand. He didn’t kiss my forehead. He turned and walked out, leaving me alone with the terrifying rhythm of the machine breathing for me.
The next visitor brought a scent I knew too well—Chanel No. 5 and judgment.
Teresa Molina. My mother-in-law. The woman who wore piety like a costume but possessed the soul of a shark. She didn’t walk; she marched. I heard her heels clicking on the floor, a countdown clock ticking toward my doom. Continue reading…
