Álvaro Ibáñez asked to sit down. He knew part of it. Not all of it.
The complete part was in another file.
Rafael found her minutes later.
It was a restructuring report signed four years earlier by the Mendoza Salud group itself, the hospital consortium he chaired. One of the centers absorbed by his company, the Santa Emilia Hospital, had closed its neonatal unit to cut costs and centralize high-risk deliveries at another facility almost forty minutes away.
On paper, the measure had been efficient.
In real life, no.
Because three weeks after the lockdown, an ambulance left late with a premature newborn who needed immediate assistance. There was traffic. There was paperwork. There was waiting.
And the girl died before arriving.
The mother of that baby was Carmen.
Rafael felt the air disappear from the hallway.
He looked down at the end of the document. His signature was there.
He hadn’t met Carmen then. He never read her name. He never saw the face of the woman that cutout had ripped apart inside. For him, it had been a board decision, a line on a chart, a necessary optimization.
For her, it had been Lucia.
His daughter.
The daughter who never breathed again.
Carmen didn’t cry while they told her. Nor did she tremble. She simply opened the little notebook she kept in her pocket and revealed the first page.
There were dates. Doses. Protocols. Notes on neonatal resuscitation. Names of maneuvers. Reminders written in cramped handwriting, almost invisible at some edges.
In the upper right corner, in faded blue ink, were two initials: LR
—Lucía Ruiz —Carmen said, seeing Isabel reading them—. My daughter.
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