“So,” she said. Her voice wasn’t hushed. It was loud, echoing off the walls. “She’s a vegetable.”
“Call it what you want, Doctor. She’s a husk,” Teresa snapped. “My son is devastated. He has a newborn to raise alone. We need to be practical. How long do we have to keep this… charade going before we can stop bleeding money?”
I felt a phantom tear try to form in my eye, but my tear ducts wouldn’t obey. I am right here, Teresa. I am the mother of your grandchild.
“Legal protocol and hospital ethics require a waiting period,” the doctor explained stiffly. “Thirty days is the standard observation window for this level of trauma.”
“Thirty days,” Teresa repeated. I could practically hear her doing the math in her head. “That brings us to the 24th. Fine. That is manageable.”
She moved closer to the bed. I felt her hand brush my hair—not affectionately, but examining the texture, like checking the upholstery on a sofa she planned to sell.
“Rest now, Lucía,” she whispered, her voice dripping with venomous sweetness. “Don’t worry about anything. We’ll take care of… everything.”
She walked out, and the air in the room felt lighter, cleaner, without her in it. But her words remained, hanging over me like a guillotine blade.
Thirty days.
It was Day 12. A nurse had left a baby monitor on the counter near my bed. It was intended to let me hear my daughter in the nursery, a kindness I cherished. But someone had moved the other receiver. It wasn’t in the nursery. It was in the private family waiting room down the hall.
Static crackled, and then, voices drifted in. Crystal clear.
“This is actually perfect, Andrés. Stop looking so morose,” Teresa’s voice cut through the static.
“She’s my wife, mother. It feels… wrong,” Andrés said. But he sounded bored, not guilty.
“She is a line item on an expense report now,” Teresa retorted. “Look at the numbers. With her out of the picture, the life insurance policy triggers. The double indemnity clause because it was a ‘medical accident.’ That’s three million pesos, Andrés.”
“And the house?”
“Yours. Fully. We transfer the deed the day after the funeral. And Karla can finally move in properly. She’s been waiting in the wings long enough.”
Karla Ramírez. Andrés’s executive assistant. The woman who brought me soup when I had the flu. The woman who smiled too wide and laughed too loud at Andrés’s jokes. The woman I had defended when my friends called her “shady.”
“Karla is already asking about redecorating the nursery,” Andrés said, a smile audible in his voice now. “She hates Lucía’s taste. Too… rustic.”
“See?” Teresa purred. “It’s a fresh start. A clean slate. We just wait out the clock. Eighteen more days. We do a small service. Closed casket. We tell her parents it was quick and merciful. No drama.”
“And her parents?”
“I’ve handled them,” Teresa said dismissively. “They are simple people from Guadalajara. They are intimidated by the city, by the hospital. I told them visiting hours are restricted. They won’t know a thing until we send them the ashes.”
Then, a third voice joined them. Soft. Sugary.
“Baby? Are you done with the witch?”
Karla.
“Almost,” Andrés said. I heard the rustle of fabric, the sound of a kiss. “Just discussing the timeline.”
“Good,” Karla giggled. “Because I really don’t want to wait to be a mother to that baby. My baby.”
Rage is a powerful fuel. If I could have moved, I would have torn the IVs from my arms and strangled them all. But I couldn’t. I lay there, forcing my heart to keep beating, forcing my brain to record every word.
Reflex, the nurse had said when she wiped a tear from my eye later that day.
It wasn’t a reflex. It was a promise.
Day 20. The nurses were my spies, though they didn’t know it. They gossiped while they changed my sheets, assuming I was deaf to the world.
“Did you see the Instagram post?” Nurse Elena whispered to Nurse Sofia.
“The one from the ‘family friend’?” Sofia snorted. “Disgusting.”
“She’s wearing the patient’s wedding dress, Sofia. I swear to God. She posted a story captioned ‘Welcome Home Celebration’ and she’s spinning around in the living room… in Lucía’s dress.”
“And the husband?”
“He’s filming it. You can see him in the mirror reflection. Laughing.”
My wedding dress. The lace imported from Spain. The dress I wore when I promised to love him until death parted us. Now, it was a costume for his mistress, worn in my home, while I lay rotting in a hospital bed.
“And the baby?” Sofia asked.
“The grandma already changed the registration,” Elena whispered, her voice dropping lower. “Lucía wanted ‘Esperanza.’ Hope. The grandmother filed the papers yesterday. The baby is ‘Mía’ now.”
Mía. Mine. Possessive.
They weren’t just killing me. They were erasing me. They were overwriting my life with a new version where I never existed.
But then, Elena said something that stopped my heart.
“What about the other one?”
“Shh,” Sofia hissed. “We aren’t supposed to know about that. Dr. Martínez is keeping it off the main chart to protect the child.”
The other one?
My mind raced. The ultrasound had always shown one baby. One heartbeat. Had I missed something?
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.
I focused everything—every memory, every ounce of rage, every spark of love for my stolen daughters—into my right index finger.
Move, I commanded.
Nothing. Continue reading…
