The girl looked at the cardboard box and then at the ambulance.
Her face said the impossible: she wanted to run with her mother, but she couldn’t abandon the babies.
Alejandro made a decision without thinking twice.
—I’ll take the children. You get in with her.
Lucia looked at him suspiciously, terrified, as if even the help had a hidden price.
It was logical.
By that age he had already learned that he had almost everything in the world.
“I give you my word,” he said. “I’m not going to separate you from them.”
The girl swallowed.
He nodded.
The paramedics received Lucia in the ambulance.
Alejandro wrapped the babies in the least damp blankets he could find, picked up the box, and went out into the storm.
As he passed by the man, the man murmured:
—He doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.
Alejandro barely stopped.
—I know it better than you can imagine.
He left it behind.
In the private hospital, the speed of money did what misery never allows: open doors, doctors running, operating room ready, incubators, tests, antibiotics, blood.
The woman was admitted as an emergency patient.
Lucia stayed in a white room, sitting in a chair that was too big for her body, her hands reddened by the cold and her clothes still wet.
The twins, finally fed, slept nearby.
Alejandro watched the girl for several minutes without speaking.
She didn’t speak either.
He just stared at the door through which his mother had been taken away.
Finally, he sat down opposite her.
—What’s your mom’s name?
—Mariana.
—And that man?
Lucia took a while to respond.
As if saying his name could summon him.
—Ramiro.
—Is he your dad?
The girl denied it.
-No.
—The one for babies?
He nodded.
She remained silent again.
Alejandro waited.
I had learned years ago that sometimes silence asks more questions than words.
“My mom worked cleaning houses,” she finally said. “When she got sick, he said he was going to take care of her. Then he said he couldn’t work anymore because he had to be with the babies. After that, he started selling things. The stove. The fan. The working phone.”
-And you?
—I used to take care of my little brothers.
She said it with a nonchalance that broke your heart.
Did Ramiro hit you?
Lucia lowered her gaze.
He didn’t answer.
