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The sliding glass door opened at the exact moment I looked up. Santiago walked through, and a blonde woman followed closely behind. Victoria was saying something right next me, but I wasn’t listening, instead enthralled by the scene in front of me.
“I think I’m getting a cat.” The woman sighed, almost like that was her only choice. Santiago chuckled in response, and she smiled at him brightly. She was wearing light blue scrubs with a pen tucked diagonally in her breast pocket. Her hair was up in a tight ponytail, but there were a few flyaways at the nape of her neck, where the humidity was making them stick to her skin.
All the air I didn’t know I was holding left my lungs. And it felt like I was standing on a ledge, even though I was sitting down and my feet were firmly planted on the ground. My mind was reeling with the vision in front of me. That doctor from years ago. The one that was so kind to us.Ella. Her.
She blinked, then turned to Victoria. Her eyes did something weird, reactionary. But within a second, it was gone. Then she quirked her lips and turned to look at her brother, expectant.
“Lu, this isMago, the friend I told you about,” he said, looking between us. I stood up, moving in slow motion, my hands shaking with—who even knew. “Mago, Lucía, my sister.”
Sister.
Sister?How was this possible? Could I have been so checked out that I didn’t even notice her at the wedding?
My heart kicked into overdrive.
I could sense Victoria standing next to me, the warmth of her body close to my arm, but time stopped, and it was like Lucía and I were both inside a cone of nothingness. The universe playing a cruel joke on us both. Maybe.
My steps faltered, but I corrected myself. They were still standing right next to the sliding glass door, a few meters from where we were. I set my phone down on the coffee table, barely missing the edge of the top by a few centimeters. My movements were clumsy and erratic. Like everything I did around her.
“Hi,” she said, lifting her hand and waving weakly. Did she not recognize me? “Nice to meet you.” She smiled, and it was blinding.
Just like that first time I’d seen her in Jazmín’s hospital room when her cancer came back. She was wearing pink scrubs then, her hair up in a messy bun, sitting askew on her head. It was past midnight then, the only moment I could sneak into the hospital to see my sister, who was getting treatment for the leukemia that wouldn’t leave her system.
Since she had been born, I had been kept very separate from her life. My parents did everything in their power to keep her a secret from everyone, especially the press, but the fighting between them had escalated to violence, and they couldn’t keep it from me.
She was the product of an affair—an abuse of power on my father’s part—but I couldn’t care less. She was my blood. And so to avoid hearing my parents fight about her, I would sneak into her hospital room in the middle of the night, on nights when her mother wasn’t able to stay with her.
The hospital was aware of the challenging family dynamics, and most of the staff looked the other way, especially the night nurses.
“Hey,” I had whispered to the head nurse that night. She was hunched over her phone, scrolling through her text messages. She looked up with a bright expression on her face, tucking her phone into the pocket of her scrubs and standing to give me a hug.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, a surprised look on her face. She looked around, trying to see if any of the heads of service were in the vicinity of her desk. “We just rounded, and she’s passed out.”
“It’s okay,” I replied. “I can stay until she’s up if no one’s going to rat me out.”
She pressed her lips together, biting her smile. “We have a new doctor,” she added. “She’s a sweetheart. She won’t rat you out, but you need to keep your distance. I’ll brief her.”
“Thank you.” I bent over to kiss her cheek, then turned towards Jazmín’s room. Once I was at the door, I winked at her, getting a big, toothy grin in response, and then walked into the room.
The doctor was leaning against the window, her gaze focused on a small notepad in her hand. She was chewing the end of her pen, lost in concentration over whatever was scrawled on the lined paper.
I closed the door quietly behind me, and at the small sound of the latch, she looked up, her nose scrunching in response. She relaxed her features and smiled, the corners of her lips ticking up just a little bit. She was stunning. Even with the wild golden hair on top of her head and those loose pink scrubs draping on her body. Her big, blue eyes shone in the dark of the room.
And now I was seeing her again after so many years of so many missed moments and things that were never said amongst us. Movement to my right snapped me out of my memories. Santiago moved to be closer to his wife, backing her body up against his front and draping his arm around her shoulders. He whispered something in her ear that made her light up and look up at him.
“She’s going to be around this summer,” Victoria said. I turned to look at my friend’s wife, ping-ponging my attention between her and Lucía. I could see her mouth moving, her eyes fixed on me, but I couldn’t make out a single word. “Whatever you need,” she concluded.
“Francisco,” I said, moving a step or two closer to Lucíaand kissing her cheek as a way of introduction. She hummed, and her hand hovered over my arm. She smiled in response and turned back to look at Victoria, who started asking her questions that, again, I couldn’t make out between the rush of what was happening in front of me.
Shit.
10
LUCÍA
No.
No. No, no, no, no.
