PART 2: Clara heard the words, but for several seconds they did not become real. They floated above the hospital bed like something spoken in another language, something meant for another woman, another life, another kind of pain. Her newborn son whimpered in the nurse’s arms, still wrapped in a white blanket, still searching the air with his tiny mouth. The room smelled of antiseptic, blood, warm cotton, and the kind of grief that arrives before anyone has had time to understand it. Clara stared at Dr. Ricardo Salazar as if his face might change, as if he might suddenly correct himself, laugh sadly, and say, “No, no, forgive me, I misspoke. Emilio is alive. Emilio is coming. Emilio was just afraid.” But the doctor did not correct himself. He stood there with one hand pressed to the rail of her hospital bed, his face gray, his eyes wet, looking at the baby like a man seeing both a miracle and a ghost.

“No,” Clara whispered. Her voice was so weak she barely recognized it. “No. He walked out. I saw him walk out.”

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