She looks down at Julián, then back at you.
“Promise you won’t let them say he’s gone again,” she says.
You nod so fast it hurts.
“I promise,” you whisper, even though you don’t know what you can promise against death.
Camila slides out of the coffin slowly, like she’s leaving a place she earned.
The moment she moves, Julián’s hand drops a little, and the room exhales like it’s been holding its breath for years.
The paramedics work fast.
They check airway, pulse, pupils, oxygen, everything your terrified brain can’t track.
They lift Julián onto a stretcher, and he looks too light, too pale, like he’s made of paper.
You grab the side of the stretcher without thinking, and a paramedic gently blocks you.
“We need space,” she says, but her eyes say, I know you’re breaking.
Camila grips your coat with both hands, small fingers digging in like anchors.
Her eyes never leave Julián’s face.
As they rush him out, Julián’s eyelids flutter.
It’s not fully open.
It’s a tremor, a flicker, like the body is remembering it has doors.
You feel your heart leap, then slam down again, because hope is painful when it’s fragile.
In the ambulance, you sit on a narrow bench, your knees pressed together, your hands clenched hard enough to hurt.
Camila sits beside you, too still, too focused.
The paramedic monitors Julián, calling numbers into a radio, voice steady like she’s holding the universe to a schedule.
“Was he pronounced dead,” she asks you suddenly.
You blink.
“Yes,” you whisper. “At the hospital.”
The paramedic’s jaw tightens in a way that scares you.
“Who pronounced,” she asks, clipped.
You fumble for the name through the fog in your head.
“Dr. Rivas,” you say. “He said… he said there was nothing to do.”
The paramedic doesn’t respond the way you expect.
She doesn’t nod.
She doesn’t shrug.
She looks at Julián, then back at you, and there’s something sharp behind her eyes.
“Sometimes,” she says carefully, “people get it wrong.”
That sentence hits you like a punch.
Because it’s not just about medicine.
It’s about everything.
About the way adults declare endings while children still hear beginnings.
At the hospital, chaos unfolds with a different kind of cruelty.
Doctors swarm, orders are shouted, a curtain is pulled, your hands are pushed away again and again.
They take Julián into a room you can’t enter, and the doors shut like a verdict.
Camila sits on a plastic chair in the hallway, legs swinging slightly, eyes locked on the closed doors.
You want to cry. You want to scream.
Instead you sit beside her and try to breathe in four counts like a therapist once taught you, and it feels useless.
“How did you know,” you ask her, voice raw.
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