Esteban looked at me from the stretcher.
I knew you were coming.
I looked at him.
I came to deliver your medical records. I don’t intend to return.
His expression hardened.
Brenda…
—I’ll make sure you get the care you need. I won’t be your bed, your suitcase, your nurse, or your ghost heiress.
The doctor recommended that he be admitted to the hospital for a few days.
Tomás didn’t show up.
Not even once.
Esteban asked about him.
I didn’t answer.
Sometimes life makes better confessions than we do.
When he left the hospital, he never went home again.
Rebeca had obtained measures and a temporary agreement: Esteban would be transferred to a care facility paid for with her own resources while the legal process moved forward.
It wasn’t a punishment.
It was an order.
When they told him, he screamed.
To cry.
She called me a traitor.
She called me, interested.
She called me trash.
So, when he realized that nothing was working, he lowered his voice.
Are you really going to leave me alone?
I was standing next to the private ambulance.
The afternoon smelled of rain and sweet bread from the corner bakery.
The city continued.
A lady was buying spools of thread.
A child was tugging at her mother to ask for a donut.
Life had a strange cruelty: it went on even when a woman buried a marriage.
“You’re not alone,” I said. “You’re being cared for. The difference is that they’re not obeying you anymore.”
He cried.
At that moment, it really seemed like fear.
I needed you.
No. You were using me.
I don’t know how to be any other way.
I felt an old pain.
Because maybe it was true.
But I no longer needed to pay for the emotional inadequacy of a man with my back, my hands, and my youth.
“Learn,” I told him.
The ambulance left.
I sat on the bench, not knowing what to do with my arms.
For the first time in five years, nobody was going to call me at three in the morning.
And instead of feeling freedom, I felt emptiness.
An immense void.
Like a house after removing a rotten piece of furniture that had smelled bad for years.
The house fell silent.
It’s not pretty at first glance.
A frightened silence.
On the first day, I cleaned the room.
I removed the hospital bed.
When the stretcher bearers carried her away, the wheel tracks remained on the ground.
I scrubbed the floor once.
Two.
Three.
She didn’t leave.
I sat down and cried.
Not because of Esteban.
For Brenda, twenty-nine years old, who made that bed with hope, believing that love could also rehabilitate someone’s soul.
So I opened the windows.
Air intake.
Fresh air.
No ointment smell.
Chlorine-free.
Soup should not be reheated.
Air.
That week, I went to the center of Coyoacán.
Alone.
I sat down in front of the fountain, bought an ear of corn with chili peppers, which I used to avoid because Esteban was bothered by the smell, and ended up getting some of the chili pepper on my shirt.
I laughed.
