The woman at church who put her hand on my arm and said “I’m praying for your situation” in the voice people use for that.
And the first four months of a pregnancy I had been told for ten years I would probably never have, which I spent sick on a bathroom floor being told I was a liar.
I don’t get those back.
Nobody hands them back.
Dr. Beltrán delivered the twins in December.
She was not on call.
She came in anyway, at four in the morning, because she had told me in September that she would, and because — she said this afterward, once, and never again — “Mrs. Cordero, I have had a lot of people accused in my exam room and I’ve never had one authorize me out loud to say it in front of them.
I’d like to be there when it’s over.”
Luz Mendoza, the sonographer, came off shift and stayed in the hallway.
My mother was on one side and Alma on the other.
Nestor was not called.
That was in the plan, agreed in writing, at Ines’s insistence and with my full agreement: he would be notified after, and he would meet them at the hospital the following day, which he did, and which he was entirely decent about, and which I have never once thrown at him.
He held Mateo first.
He cried.
