Chapter 3 - WHAT WAS IN HER BLOOD
Rachel met us at Lancaster General.
She did not dramatize the situation.
That was one reason I trusted her.
She explained each test to Lucía, documented the puncture mark, and asked whether Lucía wanted a hospital advocate present.
Lucía said yes.
By afternoon, the preliminary toxicology result gave us the first hard fact.
A prescription sedative was present in Lucía’s blood.
Not enough to endanger her pregnancy.
Enough to make her unusually drowsy and impair memory.
Lucía stared at Rachel.
“I didn’t take anything.”
Rachel turned to me.
“Does your infirmary stock this medication?”
“No.”
Beatriz had always kept our medical inventory meticulous. Blood-pressure medicine, antibiotics prescribed to individual sisters, basic first-aid supplies, diabetic medications.
Nothing that should have produced this result.
When we returned to Santa Clara, I asked Sister Miriam, our bookkeeper, to meet me in the infirmary.
I did not invite Beatriz.
We counted everything.
Halfway through the cabinet inventory, Miriam pulled out a box of disposable IV catheters.
“This isn’t on the purchase sheet.”
Rachel inspected them.
Neither were several saline bags.
Then we found rolls of the same white tape I had picked up beside Lucía’s chair.
None of it proved why Lucía was pregnant.
But it proved somebody had been providing medical treatment without documentation.
When Beatriz returned from afternoon prayer, I showed her the supplies.
Her face hardened.
“We keep extras.”
“Not unlogged extras.”
“Sometimes donations come in.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t remember.”
I placed the blue key on the table.
“What did this open?”
“An old cabinet.”
“It matches Lucía’s previous bedroom lock.”
She said nothing.
Rachel stepped closer.
“Lucía had an unprescribed sedative in her system.”
Beatriz looked genuinely shaken.
For the first time, I wondered whether her fear was not simply fear of being caught.
Maybe it was fear of what would happen if somebody else was exposed.
I asked again.
“Who gave Lucía the medication?”
Beatriz whispered, “You’re making assumptions.”
“Then help me stop making them.”
She turned away.
That evening I went to Miriam’s office and asked for three years of receiving logs.
Every delivery to Santa Clara was recorded because our front entrance remained restricted.
We worked until almost midnight.
Then Miriam pointed at three entries.
Each was an insulated medical package.
Each had been addressed to Sister Beatriz.
The deliveries were separated by roughly eleven months.
The sender was listed as Keystone Reproductive Storage.
The most recent package had arrived six weeks earlier.
May you like
And beneath the delivery signature was a name I knew immediately.
Carmen Morales.
