—Of course it can —I told him—. Mateo gets worse every time they come. Every time they bring him food. I didn’t want to see it, but now I heard it with my own ears.
Daniel covered his face with his hands. He took so long to speak that I started to hate him too.
When he finally lifted his head, his eyes were filled with something worse than fear.
Guilt.
And what he told me next was so brutal that for a moment I even forgot to breathe.
I couldn’t believe what I was about to discover.
PART 2
Daniel took me to an empty room in the hospital and closed the door.
—Your father didn’t die because of bad luck —he told me in a broken voice—. And I’ve carried that all these years.
I felt the floor open up beneath my feet.
Ten years earlier, my father had gone into surgery because of a heart complication. Daniel, who at that time was still building his career to become the brilliant specialist everyone admired, took part in that operation. According to what he told me, there was a critical moment. He hesitated. He didn’t react in time. His mistake was not the only factor, but it changed the outcome. The hospital protected its own, doctored the file, and buried the truth.
My father died on that table.
I started crying in rage before he even finished. Daniel didn’t try to stop me.
Then came the second blow.
Paola’s fiancé, Iván, was a nurse in that operating room. He knew what had happened. He knew they were covering it up. The pressure, the silence, and the threats of losing everything destroyed him. Months later, he took his own life.
—Your mother blamed me from then on —Daniel said—. I knew she hated me, but I thought it was directed at me. I never imagined she would touch Mateo.
I looked at him with a disgust I didn’t know whether it came from my father, from my years of lies, or from my son fighting to stay alive while we lived surrounded by secrets.
Before I could answer, Mateo’s room alarms went off.
We ran.
