Chapter 72 CHAPTER 73

Chapter 72 CHAPTER 73

Three days passed.
Vladimir ate by mouth for the first time the next day. A very thin soup Lina fed him with a spoon, half of which ended up on the bib. He coughed. Asked for more. Managed only two more spoonfuls because his stomach couldn’t handle it. But he ate.
His voice came back little by little. He worked on it with a speech therapist, a young woman who came up every morning and made him repeat ridiculous phrases.
“My name is Vladimir Rossi. I am thirty-six years old. I live in this house.”
Vladimir repeated them patiently, without complaint, with the clenched jaw of men who do not complain even when they are dying.
“Thirty-five,” he corrected at one point.
“Thirty-six, sir. You had a birthday in February.”
Vladimir frowned. Moved his hand. Julieta took the other one.
“You were asleep on your birthday, Vladimir.”
“Oh.”
“You turned thirty-six without noticing. Which would be traumatic for most men. In your case, I think it’s fair. You spent years cheating your way out of aging.”
Vladimir exhaled through his nose. Almost laughed.
The therapist smiled and continued down the list.

Gabriela was brought upstairs on the fourth day.
Ana led her by the hand and left her at the door of the master bedroom. The little girl stood there, Captain pressed against her chest, looking toward the bed.
“Come here, principessa,” Vladimir said.
It was barely more than a thread of sound, but it was his voice.
Gabriela recognized it.
She crossed the room neither running nor walking, something in between, and when she reached the bed, she hesitated before climbing up.
“Can I hug you?”
“That’s the only thing I need today, principessa.”
Gabriela climbed up carefully, with the caution she had learned over the last few months from her mother, from Julieta, from Mario, from the entire house.
She wrapped an arm across his chest and buried her face against his neck. Captain ended up squashed between them.
Vladimir lifted his left hand with an effort that showed across his whole face and rested his palm on her back.
He stayed that way for a long moment, hand spread over his daughter’s back, not moving, simply feeling her breathe against him.
“I got bigger,” Gabriela said into his neck.
“I can see that.”
“I turned six.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“You missed my birthday.”
“I know. I’m sorry, principessa.”
“It’s okay. Mommy Julieta gave me double presents to make up for it.”
Vladimir closed his eyes.
Mommy Julieta.
The child had said it without thinking, without presenting it as news, the way someone names something that has already had a name in their heart for months.
Vladimir, lying in bed, received it without reacting outwardly, because he didn’t have the strength left for outward reactions.
But he stored it away exactly as she had said it.
Mommy Julieta.
And he never let it go.
“Well done, Mommy Julieta,” he said slowly, his voice rough, looking at Julieta over Gabriela’s shoulder.
Julieta swallowed.
“Well, Vladimir.”
“Well what?”
“There’s something else, Vladimir. And I think you’re ready now.”

Ana took Gabriela into the hallway under some flimsy excuse.
The little girl obeyed without protest because she, too, had learned how to read a room.
When Julieta closed the door and walked toward the bassinet, Vladimir followed her with his eyes.
“The baby.”
“The baby.”
“Julieta.”
“Wait. I’ll pick him up and bring him to you.”
She lifted Lucio from the bassinet with the sweet awkwardness of a woman who had only been a mother for a few days.
She settled him in her right arm and adjusted the blanket.
Then she carried him to the bed and sat carefully on the edge.
“Vladimir.”
“Yes?”
“There’s someone I want you to meet.”
She adjusted the baby’s head against her forearm and lowered him until he was level with Vladimir’s face, not placing him on him yet, simply letting the father see him up close.
“This is Lucio.”
Vladimir looked at him.
He looked at his face, his closed eyes, his fine eyebrows, his mouth.
He looked at the tiny hands emerging from the blanket.
He looked at the cheekbones, the nose, the chin.
And he understood.
“Julieta.”
“Yes.”
“This...”
“Yes.”
“Is he mine?”
“He’s ours.”
Vladimir didn’t answer immediately.
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again.
He looked at the baby once more.
At the line of his jaw.
At his cheekbones.
At his forehead.
“He has my face.”
“He has your face, yes. It’s outrageous. Even the doctor laughed.”
Vladimir swallowed.
Slowly, with the familiar effort, he moved his left hand and raised two fingers toward Julieta.
“Bring him closer.”
Julieta leaned in.
She placed Lucio directly on his chest, just as she had on the first day, against his sternum.
She rested the baby’s head near his father’s neck.
This time Vladimir felt him.
This time Vladimir, awake and with his eyes open, felt the tiny weight of the child on his chest.
Felt the warmth.
Felt the faint little rhythm of his breathing.
He lifted his left hand around the other side of the baby and slowly laid it across him until his palm rested against that tiny back.
He held him.
Not with strength.
With presence.
And then Vladimir Rossi cried.
It was not a dramatic cry.
He was a man who had spent four months in a coma and did not have the strength for dramatic tears.
But they came.
Down his temples.
Down his cheeks.
Onto the pillow.
One after another after another.
Without fighting them.
Without wiping them away because he still couldn’t raise his right arm.
Julieta wiped them away with her thumb.
“Vladimir.”
“How many things. How many things I missed.”
“You’ll get them all back. The ones that can be recovered. The ones that can’t, you’ll have to accept. But you missed less than you think. He’s here. Alive. Healthy. He waited for you. I waited for you with him. We both waited for you.”
Vladimir closed his eyes.
He pulled the baby a little closer against him.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Lucio.”
“Lucio.”
“Why Lucio?”
“For Lucía.”
His left hand trembled on the baby’s back.
“Julieta.”
“Yes?”
“That...”
“Yes?”
“That’s too much for a man who just woke up.”
“Then get used to it. Because I’m going to remind you every day.”
Vladimir nodded.
Without opening his eyes.
Another tear slipped down his temple.
“All right.”
“Do you like it?”
“He wins by default. I never had a chance.”
Julieta smiled.
She brushed Lucio’s hair back from his forehead.
“Vladimir.”
“Yes?”
“One thing.”
“Yes?”
“The day he was conceived. Do you remember?”
Vladimir opened his eyes and looked at her.
He thought.
It took effort.
The strain showed clearly on his face.
But he thought.
“The morning in my office.”
“The morning in your office.”
“The whiskey.”
“That one.”
“Then the timing is right. Five months, almost six.”
“Almost six, yes. He came early. But he’s fine. He’s strong.”
“I’m holding him. He’s stronger than his father.”
“For now.”
“For now.”
Vladimir looked at Julieta.
He saw the exhaustion.
The dark circles under her eyes.
The hair gathered carelessly at the back of her head.
The blouse stained with milk that she had forgotten to change that morning.
He looked at her completely, in a way he had not been able to for months.
“Julieta.”
“Yes?”
“When I’m better.”
“Yes?”
“You and I need to have a conversation.”
“A long one.”
“A long one.”
“I know. I’m waiting for it.”
“Good.”
“But not today.”
“Not today.”
“Today is only this.”
Vladimir nodded.
He closed his eyes again.
Kept his hand resting on Lucio’s back.
Lucio breathed softly against his father’s neck, asleep, unaware, content.
And Vladimir Rossi, lying in a bed in the master bedroom of his mansion, with the love of his life sitting beside him and a son he had never known existed resting on his chest, drifted back to sleep.
Not the sleep of a coma this time.
Just the ordinary sleep of a very tired man who had been given, in the space of five minutes, more life than his body could possibly process all at once.