Chapter 148

Chapter 148

POV Lucía
The first thing I saw when we came out of the woods were the lights.
Red and blue spinning between the trees, as if someone had set up a macabre fair in the middle of the Connecticut night. Patrol cars. Ambulances. FBI SUVs that must have arrived sometime in the last twenty minutes while I was still in the basement with a knife at my throat, waiting to die.
Gabriel had an arm around my waist. Matías asleep against my chest. Behind us, Alejandro limped, leaning heavily on Mateo, who was practically carrying him because his leg could no longer hold.
We crossed the last stretch of grass where paramedics had already set up a perimeter—stretchers, emergency equipment, harsh white portable lights that made everything look like an operating room out in the open.
Two paramedics ran toward us.
“Ma’am, we need to check you. There’s blood on your neck and chest.”
“It’s not deep. I’m fine. Check the baby.”
“Ma’am, we need to—”
“Check the baby.”
I said it in a voice that left no room for argument. I had spent thirty-six hours unable to protect my son, and now that he was back in my arms, no one in this world was going to touch him without me watching.
The younger paramedic stepped closer, gloves on, a small flashlight in hand.
“May I examine him, ma’am?”
“Here. In my arms. Don’t take him from me.”
“We won’t take him. I just need to see him.”
I pulled back the blanket. Matías was still asleep, but his breathing had changed in the last few minutes. It was no longer that soft, steady rhythm of an exhausted baby. It was faster. Shorter. With a faint wheeze at the end of each exhale that made the skin at the back of my neck prickle.
The paramedic placed a hand on his forehead.
“He’s feverish. How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had him with me since yesterday morning. They took him when we were kidnapped.”
“Do you know if he’s eaten? If he’s been exposed to temperature changes?”
“They brought him in a small plane from Quebec. Eleven hours sedated. Probably exposed to cold during the transfer. And a nanny I don’t know gave him milk I have no idea where it came from.”
The paramedic checked his temperature with an ear thermometer. Looked at the reading. His expression changed.
“Thirty-nine point four. Ma’am, we need to get him to a hospital. Now.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“The wheezing plus high fever in a baby this age suggests a respiratory infection. Could be bronchiolitis, could be early pneumonia. I can’t determine it here. We need a chest X-ray, blood work, and oxygen saturation monitoring.”
“Let’s go. Now. Where’s the ambulance?”
“Over there, ma’am. Second one on the left.”
I walked toward it without waiting. Matías stirred in my arms. Opened his eyes for a second and looked at me with that feverish confusion babies get when their bodies hurt and they have no way of saying where.
“It’s okay, my love. It’s okay. We’re going to the hospital. The doctors are going to make you better.”
I climbed into the ambulance. A paramedic followed and began hooking up monitors.
Gabriel appeared at the rear doors before they could close.
“Lucía.”
“Matías has a fever, Gabriel. A high fever. They’re taking him to the hospital.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“Sir, you also need treatment,” the paramedic said, looking at Gabriel’s arm—no longer just bandaged, but stained with fresh blood that had spread over the last two hours. “You need to go to the ER.”
“I’m going in this ambulance. With them. My arm can wait.”
“Sir—”
“I’m going in this ambulance.”
The paramedic didn’t argue.
Gabriel climbed in and sat across from me. The ambulance started moving. Sirens on.
And I stared at the monitor clipped to Matías’s finger, the oxygen saturation numbers glowing green.
Ninety-two percent.
“Is that normal?” I asked.
“For a baby his age, it should be above ninety-five,” the paramedic replied, adjusting something. “It’s not critical, but it’s low. He needs supplemental oxygen.”
He placed a tiny mask near Matías’s face—not pressed against it, because babies don’t tolerate that. Matías whimpered. A weak sound that broke something inside me, because I had spent eleven months learning every one of his sounds—and that one was pain. Not hunger. Not sleep. Pain.
“Gabriel.”
“I’m here.”
“He has a fever. He’s struggling to breathe. And I don’t know what they fed him or how long he was without me or if that woman did something I didn’t see.”
“Lucía, we’ll be at the hospital in fifteen minutes. They’ll examine him. They’ll find out what’s wrong. And they’ll fix it.”
“If something happens to him, Gabriel. If something happens because of me—because I took him to Quebec, because I hid him, because I didn’t ask for help when I should have—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“If something happens—”
“Lucía. Look at me.”
I did.
His face was gaunt. His arm bloodstained. His eyes red from two sleepless days. But he looked at me with a steadiness I hadn’t seen even that last afternoon at the café when he said goodbye.
“Our son is going to be okay. Do you hear me? Our son is going to be okay because he has a mother who crossed a border carrying him as a newborn to protect him, who has spent eleven months taking care of him alone without ever failing him. And now he has his father too. Late—but here for everything that comes next. Everything, Lucía. The fevers. The hospitals. The sleepless nights. Everything. You’re not alone anymore.”
“Gabriel.”
“What?”
“He has your face.”
“I know.”
“And your jaw.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”
“And when he gets mad, he clenches his fists exactly like you.”
“God help us, then.”
I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t. But something loosened a fraction in my chest, because Gabriel was sitting across from me, looking at his son for the first time in his life—and despite the fever, the ambulance, the blood—something about that image felt right.
The way it should have felt from the beginning, if the world hadn’t conspired to complicate everything.

Greenwich Hospital was small, but efficient.
We entered the ER at eleven forty at night. A pediatric team was already waiting—someone had called ahead from the ambulance.
They took Matías from my arms.
It was the hardest moment of the night. Worse than the knife. Worse than the basement. Worse than the thirty-six hours of captivity. Because a nurse took him with that professional firmness I knew so well—because I had used it myself hundreds of times with desperate mothers at Mount Sinai—and now it was killing me from the other side.
“Ma’am, we need space to work. He’ll be right here. Three meters. We’re not taking him far.”
“Don’t separate me from him.”
“Ma’am—”
“I’m a nurse. Pediatric nurse. I can stay without interfering. Let me stay.”
The attending physician looked at me. Took in my face, my bloodstained clothes, my trembling hands—and made the decision I would have made.
“You stay—but you don’t touch anything. Understood?”
“Understood.”
They placed Matías on a pediatric bed. Hooked up the pulse oximeter. Took his temperature again.
Thirty-nine point six.
Higher.
The doctor listened to his chest for a long thirty seconds. Checked his ears. Palpated his abdomen.
“Bilateral crackles at lung bases. Tachypnea. Mild subcostal retractions. I need an urgent chest X-ray and a full blood panel.”
“What does he have?” I asked—even though I already knew.
“Everything points to bronchiolitis potentially complicated by pneumonia. Exposure to cold and lack of proper care in the last thirty-six hours likely accelerated the infection. We need to admit him.”
“How long?”
“Depends on how he responds. If it’s simple bronchiolitis, oxygen and nebulizers—forty-eight hours. If the X-ray confirms pneumonia and we need IV antibiotics, we’re looking at three to five days minimum.”
“Will he be okay?”
She gave me the look doctors give when they don’t want to lie—but don’t want to shatter a mother in the middle of an emergency.
“One step at a time. First the X-ray. Then labs. Then we talk.”
They wheeled him away.
Three meters became ten. Ten became thirty. Thirty became a door closing in front of me.
I sank into a plastic chair.
And that’s when I finally broke.
Not like in the basement. Not like in the ambulance.
Truly broke.
A sob tore out of me from somewhere I didn’t know existed. Thirty-six hours of kidnapping. Eleven months of running. Two years of loneliness—compressed into one sound that echoed down the hospital corridor.
Gabriel sat beside me.
Said nothing. Didn’t touch me. Just sat there. Bleeding through his bandage, still refusing treatment.
“Gabriel, you need to have your arm checked.”
“Later.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Later, Lucía.”
“You’re as stubborn as your son.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.”

At twelve ten, the ER filled up.
First came Gabriela.
She ran in wearing a coat over pajamas, clearly called out of bed. When she saw me, she froze.
“Lucía.”
“Gaby.”
She hugged me—tight. The same way she had held me on that hospital bathroom floor when I thought I was losing everything.
“The baby?”
“High fever. Possible pneumonia.”
“Oh God.”
“Gaby, I’m so scared.”
“I know. But you’re here. And he’s here. And the doctors will take care of him.”
Then Aurora arrived.
“Aurora,” she corrected gently when I called her Mrs. Moretti.
She took both my hands, steady as steel.
“My grandson. How is my grandson?”
My grandson.
No hesitation. No doubt.
“He has a high fever. Possible respiratory infection. They’re evaluating him.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s in X-ray.”
She nodded. Sat beside me. Didn’t let go of my hand.
Ten minutes later, my mother arrived.
I don’t know how she got there so fast.
“Mamá.”
“My girl.”
She held me like when I was five years old and fell off my bike.
“Matías?”
“He’s sick, mamá. It might be pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?”
“He was flown from Quebec. Sedated. Exposed to cold. He’s a baby. His immune system can’t handle that.”
She sat beside me, holding me.
Aurora on one side. My mother on the other. Gabriela standing in front.
The X-ray door opened at twelve twenty-five.
The doctor stepped out, tablet in hand, face carefully composed.
“Mrs. Sandoval.”
“What does he have?”
“Bilateral lower-lobe opacities. Consistent with pneumonia. Likely bacterial. We need to admit him, start IV antibiotics, oxygen, nebulizations.”
“Prognosis?”
“In an eleven-month-old, the first forty-eight hours are critical.”
“How much risk?”
She met my eyes.
“Low mortality with proper treatment—but not zero.”
My mother squeezed my hand painfully tight.
Aurora didn’t move—but I heard her breath catch.
“Can I stay with him?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“I want to see him.”
They led us upstairs.
Room four.
A small hospital bed. Monitors. Oxygen line.
And my son.
So small beneath wires and tubes. Feverish. Breathing fast.
Gabriel stopped at the door.
Didn’t go in.
I understood.
First time seeing his son. Not a photo. Not a story.
His son.
“Go in, Gabriel.”
“Lucía, I—”
“Go in.”
He did.
Walked slowly.
Stood beside the bed.
Raised his hand.
Touched Matías’s forehead.
So gently.
Matías didn’t wake. Just shifted slightly toward his touch—as if something in him knew he was safe.
Gabriel didn’t speak.
He didn’t have to.
I took his free hand.
And the three of us stayed there.
Room four.
Father. Mother. Son.
Together for the first time.
Monitors beeping. Fever rising. Forty-eight hours of uncertainty ahead.
But together.
Finally—together.
And that was all that mattered now.