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“What do you mean?” I could picture him furrowing hiseyebrows in confusion. “That’s six weeks of vacation, Francisco.”
“Yes, I’m aware.”I know how to count, old man.I wanted to hang up on him and run back and hide. Maybe tuck myself inside that bed in Santiago’s guest room and sleep for twelve hours straight.
“Where are you?”
“Córdoba.”
“What are you doing in that god-forsaken province?” he sneered. He’d historically clashed with the representatives from this province, my father’s ideas too conservative for some of the elected members of this area. He scoffed and then took a long drag of his cigarette, the burning sound of the thin paper crisp and clear on my end of the phone.
“Okay, good talk.” He was playing his silence game. Something he did a lot to my mother on purpose. To get her to crack, to make her look weak. “Say hi to Mom for me.”
“Chiquito,” he said with atoneI hated. Not only was it derogatory, but also calling me little boy? That hurt. “Have you spoken to her?” he asked, his tone back to casual and conversational. I knew he was referring to Jazmín’s mom because he never called her by her name and tried to be casual about it.
“Mom?” I played coy, acting casual but knowing exactly what he wanted. “No, I’m going to call her a little bit later. I thought you had that luncheon with the Díaz people.”
The Díaz people were actually his biggest supporters. They were a well-to-do family in the country with a lot ofmoney to burn who used it to advance political campaigns that could—allegedly—tip the scales to their favor. Nothing was done for free in politics, that was for sure, and my father bent over backwards for them so that he could get a couple millionpesosin return to fund his campaign.
“Yes,” he said. Another drag of his cigarette. “That is why I’m calling you. There’s an… issue.”
Interesting.
He never involved me too much in the logistics of his campaign. He wanted to show a united front in front of the press and the opposition, showing how his family was a strong unit with traditional values so that his constituents could see themselves reflected in us. But ever since Jazmín’s death, he’d become a little bit more paranoid of being caught.
His biggest dirty little secret yet. The one kept tightly tucked in the past.
That day, I had been hiding in the hallway, stuck in between the stairwell and the door to the pediatrics rooms. A few meters past the door, the nurses’ station sat, almost forgotten amongst the chaos of the night. I had snuck in earlier than I usually did, and the staff was busy doing their shift change, lots of people roaming the hallways.
I was scrolling my phone, waiting for movement to die down, when it started buzzing, my father’s name blinking at me from the screen. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few weeks, our last interaction having ended in a bout of screaming that even my mother couldn’t shut down.
“¿Dónde estás?”Fuck. He already knew the answer, I could bet my life on that. “Cuántas veces te lo tengo que decir,” he said tersely. How many times do I have to tell you? He spoke to me as if I were a child still cowering behind the furniture in the exact same way I did when I was young.
“Eugenio,” I said, using his first name instead of calling him Dad. He didn’t deserve it, especially not in the last few months or so. His daughter—my sister—was in the hospital, and he moved heaven and earth to make sure no one knew who she was. And that meant that I needed to stay away because some people recognized me even if I had separated myself from his image. That was why he was probably calling me now. One of his spies had called him to tattle on me.
“Francisco,basta.”
“No. You stop. I’m not having this conversation again?—”
“If the press finds out…” he said. He was seething, I could tell. I’d had years of practice.
“Not my problem, Eugenio,” I added, shrugging my shoulders despite not having him in front of me. A door sounded above me, a few steps coming down the stairs and the sound getting louder and louder with each step. “You should have thought about this seventeen years ago,Father.”
“¿Qué dijiste?”
“You heard me,” I replied nonchalantly.
“Mirá, mocoso. No te me llegues a cruzar porque te reviento,” he threatened. Five years ago, this would have scared me,the threat of physical violence. Today, it did nothing to me because my priorities lay elsewhere. I was done trying to bend over backwards for him, and I was damn proud of it. The steps were getting closer to me.
“Chau, Papá.” I hung up the phone and tucked it clumsily into my slacks pocket, my hands shaking from the harshness of the conversation. Harsher words had been said in the past five years, for sure, but that didn’t make this less intense.
I rested my head on the cold concrete of the wall. I was stuck in that small landing, the lights dim and dull, until the shift change was over and I could slide into my sister’s room unnoticed. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down before going in to see her. I hated that she was in the middle of all this. Not her fault for being born into this fucked-up family.
I felt a tap on my shoulder, then a gentle squeeze.
Our signal.
I turned, and there she was, standing in front of me, her mouth pulled into a blinding smile and her hair away from her face like she preferred. She wasn’t wearing pink scrubs today but instead dark jeans and a colorful shirt under her white coat.
“Hi,” she said, her smile turning brighter at the edges and her eyes soft on me. She squeezed my bicep again, then released it. That hand joined the other one holding a laptop tightly against her chest. “What’s going on?”
