The twins, barely five months old, seemed to have made a pact with insomnia and fear. One would begin to sob as if remembering something sad, and the other would respond with a higher note, until both rose to a chorus that echoed through the mansion’s corridors and made the windows tremble
Elena rocked them as best she could. Her wrists were tied to the headboard with linen strips that cut into her skin. With each movement, the yellow latex gloves—which she hadn’t yet had time to remove—crunched with that alien clumsiness of someone attempting tenderness with gagged hands. She hadn’t eaten since morning. She hadn’t slept more than two hours straight in weeks. All she wanted—no, what she needed—was an hour. Sixty minutes to rush to the hospital and sit by her son’s bedside. Eight years old. Lungs filled with infection. Skin as pale as the fabric of the sheets. A raging fever. And his gaze—that gaze that begs a mother not to leave—stuck like a hook in her memory
She had begged the doctors not to give up. She had sought appointments with pulmonologists, pleaded, wept in hospital bathrooms with her mask soaked through. But doctors are of little use when the mother is forbidden to be there, when the legs that should be running are trapped in a job that, in the last few hours, had become a prison.
Mrs. Hale’s footsteps had traversed the corridor that afternoon like a cruel metronometer, tap, tap, tap, a wine glass held by red fingers and cold jewels.
“That pitiful face again?” the woman had said without looking at the babies. “What excuse now? Did you forget how to fold my husband’s shirts or perhaps burn the stew thinking about your soap opera?”
Elena swallowed. “Ma’am… my son… is in the hospital. He’s very sick. I just need…”
Catherine Hale’s laughter was like shattering glass. “Your son? That sickly child I hear about every other day? Since when should I pay for other people’s incompetence?”
—Thirty minutes, please. I’ll be right back. No one will notice…
