Her name was Elena Robles Vargas, she was 31 years old, and she taught second grade at the Vicente Guerrero Federal School in a neighborhood where the children arrived in faded uniforms, but with a tremendous desire for their teacher to read them stories. Her students called her “Teacher Eli,” and on Mondays they would leave crayon drawings on her desk. She made a lemon cake that everyone on her street looked forward to for birthdays, and even if Mauricio came home late, she always left the porch light on because she was anxious about someone arriving home and finding the door dark. She had wanted children ever since she was a skinny girl who played at naming her dolls. The day the gynecologist told her she was having twins, two boys, she cried right there in the office, with that tearful laugh that comes when life finally grants you something you’ve dreamed of for years. Mauricio kissed her hand, smiled, and for a few minutes everything seemed clean, simple, real.
That had been 8 months ago.
The labor became complicated early on. Elena’s blood pressure began to rise so high that the nurses exchanged furtive glances. She noticed. Pregnant women notice everything, even when you speak to them in hushed tones. By mid-afternoon, she had been moved to a high-risk area. As night fell, Dr. Patricia Olvera began to speak in that measured tone doctors use when they haven’t yet said, “This could get very bad,” but are already thinking it. Mauricio was pacing in and out of the room. His face was pale. His cell phone vibrated three times in the hallway, and he clenched it in his fist, as if it were burning him.
Lying in that bed, her back broken and her body struggling to sustain three lives at once, Elena didn’t think about herself. She thought about two little faces she hadn’t met yet.
“Please,” she murmured through dry lips, unsure whether she was speaking to God, the Virgin Mary, or pure despair. “Let me see them just once.”
At 7:43 p.m., everything collapsed. There were stifled screams, hurried footsteps, orders echoing across the room. Her blood pressure plummeted, then rose, then the hemorrhage transformed fear into a real emergency. Elena could no longer understand complete words. It seemed to her that the ceiling was receding. It seemed to her that someone was calling her name from far away. Then she heard a long, clear, unbearable beep. After that, she heard nothing.
