Chapter 2 - The Doctor Who Should Never Have Entered the Aranda House
The ambulance never made it to the mansion.
Gabriel decided they couldn't wait.
Alejandro drove.
He barely remembered the journey.
Rain hammered the windshield of his black Range Rover while Gabriel sat in the back beside Valeria, monitoring her blood pressure and keeping one hand near her abdomen.
“Stay with me,” Alejandro kept saying.
“I am.”
Valeria's voice was weak.
“You're going to be all right.”
Gabriel looked into the rearview mirror.
“Watch the road.”
Alejandro gripped the steering wheel.
“What is happening to my wife?”
“I don't know yet.”
“You're a doctor.”
“And I am telling you I need imaging, blood work, and fetal monitoring before I give you an answer.”
Alejandro glanced at him.
“Is my child dying?”
Valeria closed her eyes.
Gabriel's expression hardened.
“Don't ask that question in front of her again.”
Alejandro almost snapped at him.
Almost.
Then he realized Gabriel was right.
He drove faster.
Twenty minutes later, they reached St. Matthew's Medical Center.
Gabriel had called ahead.
A team was waiting.
Valeria disappeared through a pair of double doors before Alejandro could even kiss her.
He stood in the corridor, soaked from the rain, staring after her.
Then he remembered the photograph.
He turned toward Gabriel.
“You've been inside my house before.”
Gabriel removed his wet coat.
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Four.”
“And you never contacted me?”
“Valeria asked me not to.”
“Why would my wife trust you instead of me?”
Gabriel stared at him for several seconds.
“Maybe you should ask yourself that.”
Alejandro stepped closer.
“Careful.”
Gabriel didn't move.
“I am not one of your employees, Mr. Aranda.”
“You were secretly visiting my pregnant wife.”
“To keep her alive.”
“Then tell me everything.”
“I intend to.”
Gabriel looked toward the doors through which Valeria had disappeared.
“But first your wife needs a husband, not an interrogator.”
The words struck Alejandro harder than he expected.
For the next hour, he sat alone.
Camila arrived first.
Then Rafael.
Victor did not come.
Neither did Esther.
At 11:42 p.m., Gabriel finally returned.
Alejandro stood immediately.
“The baby?”
“Stable.”
His knees almost failed.
“And Valeria?”
“Stable too.”
Alejandro closed his eyes.
Gabriel continued.
“The bleeding appears to have come from an injury aggravated by severe blood-pressure fluctuations. We're keeping her overnight. If her condition remains stable, we may avoid an emergency delivery.”
Alejandro exhaled.
Then Gabriel added:
“But you need to understand something.”
“What?”
“If she had continued drinking those packets for another week, we might be having a very different conversation.”
Alejandro's relief disappeared.
“Can you prove my mother did it?”
“I can prove someone did.”
Gabriel removed a folder from his bag.
Inside were laboratory reports.
“Different packets contained different concentrations. Whoever prepared them understood dosage.”
Rafael frowned.
“Esther isn't a doctor.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“No.”
A strange silence followed.
Alejandro noticed it.
“You know something.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“Back at the house, my mother said my father did something to you.”
Gabriel's expression changed.
Rafael immediately stood.
“This isn't the place.”
“It is exactly the place.”
Alejandro looked between them.
“What did my father do?”
Gabriel stared through the glass doors at Valeria's room.
Then he asked a question Alejandro had never expected.
“Did your father ever tell you why he paid for my medical school?”
Alejandro stopped breathing.
“What?”
Rafael looked away.
Gabriel gave a humorless smile.
“I thought not.”
“You knew my father?”
“He knew me.”
“How?”
Gabriel reached into his wallet.
He removed an old photograph.
Two young men stood beside a fishing boat.
One was Gabriel at perhaps eighteen.
The other was unmistakable.
Alejandro's father.
Alejandro stared at it.
“My father died when you were what? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Why were you with him?”
Gabriel's eyes met his.
“Because Alejandro…”
He paused.
May you like
“Your father was my father too.”
And somewhere inside the hospital, an alarm suddenly began to ring.
