They left their two-month-old with me while they went shopping. But his desperate crying wouldn’t stop. I checked his diaper and what I found made my hands tremble. I grabbed him and rushed to the hospital.

His cries jolted me back into action. Without second-guessing, I bundled him in his blanket, cradled him as carefully as I could, and rushed out the door. Moments later, I was waving down a taxi.

The cab sped down the Castellana, but every traffic light felt like an eternity. I stroked his forehead, murmuring to him, trying anything to soothe the agony in his voice. The driver, hearing the desperation in his cries, accelerated on his own.

“Hang on, sir. We’re almost there,” he said softly.

At the emergency entrance of San Carlos Clinical Hospital, I pushed through the doors, nearly out of breath. A nurse hurried over, alarmed by the expression on my face.

“It’s my grandson… he’s been crying for hours… and I saw something unusual… please help him,” I pleaded.

She took the baby gently and led me to an exam room. Two pediatricians arrived within seconds. I tried to explain what I’d noticed, though my nerves barely allowed me to speak coherently. They asked me to wait outside.

Those minutes were some of the longest of my life. I paced the hallway endlessly, guilt and fear weighing heavily on me. How had I missed this earlier? How could something have gone so wrong in the short time he was in my care?

Finally, one of the doctors emerged. His expression was serious, but not alarming.

“Your grandson is stable,” he said. “You did the right thing bringing him in so quickly.”

He explained the cause: a severe diaper-area irritation, worsened by a bad fit and an allergic reaction to a new soap the parents had likely just started using. What I had seen—what had terrified me—was inflamed skin with a bit of superficial bleeding from the friction.

“It’s not dangerous, just extremely painful for a baby this small,” he reassured me.

Relief washed over me like a tide… followed by another twist of worry. Had my son and daughter-in-law noticed anything? Did they know what was happening?

When I was allowed back in, the baby was calmer, his skin treated with special cream and protected with a soft bandage. I held him close, both relieved and deeply shaken.

Moments later, my son and daughter-in-law rushed in, pale and breathless. I explained everything as calmly as I could. They felt terrible, but the doctor assured them that allergic reactions like this are unpredictable, even for the most attentive parents.

We thought the ordeal was over—until the doctor returned with another serious look.

“There’s something else we need to discuss,” he said.

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