Chapter 72 Chapter 72

Chapter 72 Chapter 72
Marcela
“Cavalier, sit down.”
Ethan didn’t sit. He stood in front of the old man with his dirty hands hanging at his sides and the face of a man who had already decided how he was going to take the blow.
“Tell me standing up.”
“I’ll tell you sitting down, because I’ve spent five hours watching you through that window and you’re gray. And it’s no use to me having you passed out in a hallway. Sit down.”
He sat.
“Your wife is seven centimeters dilated and progressing quickly. Faster than I’d like for a first-time mother, but fast isn’t bad. The baby is fine. Your wife is too.”
Ethan lifted his face.
“And why did you walk past me twice without looking at me?”
“Because both times I was coming to get blood and an anesthesiologist, and if I’d looked at your face, I would’ve had to explain it to you, and I didn’t have the three minutes. And because your wife has been asking about you for an hour, and I have even less desire than anyone else to tell her I wouldn’t let you in.” Vargas took off his surgical cap. “Wash your hands, Cavalier. You’re coming with me.”

A contraction hit Laura just as the door opened.
It gripped her from her belly button around to her back and folded her against the mattress, both hands clenched around the bed rail. She managed to see her husband walking in with the green scrubs over his suit, his hair wet and his hands still red from scrubbing them, and she couldn’t say anything because she was busy breathing.
He came to her left side, pried her hand off the rail with two fingers, and slipped his own into it.
Laura squeezed.
Hard. Without holding back, the way she had spent ten years watching other women squeeze and swearing she would never be one of those women who squeezed like that.
Lie. We all squeeze like that.
“I’m here.”
“You’re late, Cavalier.”
“I know.”
“And you’re wearing your mother’s shirt.”
Ethan looked down at his chest beneath the scrubs. Then he looked back at her.
“I’m not taking it off today.”
“Good.”

Vargas sat at the foot of the bed and told her to push.
And that was when the strange part began, the part Laura had known for nine months was coming and that still hadn’t prepared her for anything.
She knew this room. She knew the sound of the fetal monitor and could read the strip without turning her head. She knew the nurse on the left was counting silently, that the anesthesiologist in the corner had nothing to do yet, and that if Vargas asked for three pushes instead of two, it was because everything was progressing well.
She knew everything.
And absolutely none of it was useful, because the woman lying on that bed was her.
Ten years telling them to breathe. Ten years. And now it turns out breathing is the last thing that occurs to you.
“Mendoza, another one.”
“Vargas, tell me the number.”
“I’ll tell you the number when we’re done.”
“Tell me the number, asshole.”
Someone on the team laughed behind their mask, and it helped Laura more than the epidural would have.

Between contractions, with her face turned against the pillow and her eyes closed, the absence found its way in.
Marcela was supposed to be on the other side of that door.
She had spent eight months saying it. That she would wait outside with Gloria and Carla, that she had no intention of coming in because having a mother-in-law inside a delivery room was disrespectful, and that she would be the first one to hold the baby after her father. She had everything planned, even the hours.
And she was on a metal tray in the basement of another building, with her younger son’s bullet still inside her.
Laura opened her eyes.
“Cavalier.”
“Here.”
“Your mother was supposed to be outside.”
Something shifted in Ethan’s jaw, and he didn’t answer her. He took her hand in both of his and pressed it against his mouth, staying there.
“Mendoza,” Vargas said. “This one.”

The baby girl came out two and a half hours after they started, and she cried before she was completely out.
A thin, short cry, the kind that confirmed there was air where there needed to be.
“Mendoza, it’s a girl.”
Laura let herself fall back against the bed, and the air rushed out of her all at once, taking nine months of fear with it—the warehouse, the dress, the dust, and the blood on her sleeve.
They placed her on Laura’s chest, wrapped up, her hair still plastered to her head.
And Laura, who had spent eight months imagining that the first thing she would do was look at her face, didn’t look at her face.
She opened the blanket with two fingers, placed her open palm against the baby’s back, and searched for her heartbeat.
Fast, steady, strong. One-thirty-something.
Good. There you are.
By the time she lifted her hand, the tears had already started falling, and only then did she look at her face.
“Hello.”
The baby moved her mouth without opening her eyes.
“Hello, my darling. It’s me.”

She looked for her husband.
Ethan was standing beside the bed, his scrubs twisted, mouth open, staring at the bundle his wife held against her chest.
“Cavalier.”
Nothing.
“Cavalier, say something to her.”
His lips moved, but no sound came out. He tried again, and still nothing. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, braced both hands against the bed rail, and lowered his head between his arms.
Laura freed one hand from the baby and placed it on the back of his neck.
And that was how they stayed, neither of them speaking, until the door opened.

Manuel entered on Alonso’s arm.
He was wearing the funeral suit he hadn’t gotten the chance to use, with his cane in his right hand, and he walked more slowly than he had twelve hours earlier. Alonso released him inside the room and stayed behind, against the wall, without approaching anyone.
Manuel made it to the foot of the bed and stopped there.
He didn’t take another step. He didn’t reach out, ask permission, or ask anything. He stood gripping the footboard with both hands, looking at the bundle on the chest of his granddaughter-in-law, with the face of a seventy-five-year-old man who had buried a daughter-in-law who had cared for him and the grandson who had sent him to a basement all in one night.
“Girl.”
“Manuel.”
“She’s alive.”
“She’s alive.”
The old man nodded slowly, twice, and said nothing else.
Laura adjusted the baby higher so he could see her from where he stood.
“Come closer.”
“No, girl. From here.”
“Manuel, come closer.”
“From here is fine.”
Asshole. He’ll stand there all night before he lets anyone see him trembling.
Laura looked at his hands gripping the footboard. They were white from the force.
“Manuel, do you want to know her name?”
Alonso pushed away from the wall.
Ethan lifted his head from between his arms.
“No one told me you had a name yet,” the old man said.
“She’s had it for eight months. But until today, I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.”
Laura adjusted the blanket beneath the baby’s chin, looked at her husband, and he nodded once.
Then she said it.
“Her name is Marcela.”
Manuel released the footboard.
He reached backward with his open hand without turning his head, and Alonso pushed the chair against the backs of his knees just in time.