Chapter 3 - The Cremation They Wanted Too QuicklyThe silence after my refusal was short but sharp.
My mother recovered first.
“Excuse me?”
“There will be no cremation,” I said.
Rodrigo laughed under his breath as though grief had made me childish.
“Camila wanted simplicity,” he said.
“No,” I answered. “Camila wanted truth.”
My mother stepped closer. Her perfume—jasmine and something colder—filled the narrow hall.
“Your wife died in labor,” she said. “Your son died with her. Dragging this out will only deepen the humiliation.”
Humiliation.
Not heartbreak.
Not sorrow.
Humiliation.
I looked at her carefully and realized something I should have understood years earlier: my mother was not afraid of pain. She was afraid of scandal.
“I want the medical reports,” I said.
“Tomorrow.”
“Now.”
“The doctor is unavailable.”
“Then I’ll go to the hospital.”
Rodrigo cut in. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“That’s convenient,” I said. “Because one of us has a dead wife in the living room, and the other has a fresh scratch on his neck.”
His hand flew instinctively to the mark before he caught himself.
Too late.
My mother’s eyes hardened.
“Enough.”
“No,” I said, and this time my own voice surprised even me. “Enough is what you should have said before my wife ended up in a coffin.”
The housemaids had gone still against the wall. Even the priest looked as though he regretted accepting the invitation.
I turned and walked past all of them.
No one stopped me.
At San Miguel General, the obstetrics desk had no trouble finding Camila’s intake.
But when I asked for the stillbirth record, the nurse hesitated.
Then she checked again.
Then again.
“There should be a corresponding neonatal record,” she murmured.
“There should be a death record too,” I said.
She swallowed.
“Please wait.”
A doctor came out ten minutes later.
Private. Polite. Defensive.
He confirmed Camila had been admitted in distress, undergone emergency delivery, and died shortly after due to “catastrophic postpartum complications.”
“And my son?”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
He lowered his eyes.
“The file indicates neonatal death.”
“Indicates?”
“The full administrative report may not have been finalized.”
Something cold uncoiled inside my chest.
So there was no finalized death certificate for my son.
Not yet.
As I turned to leave, an older nurse brushed past me and let a folded note slip against my palm.
I did not open it until I reached my truck.
May you like
Inside were six words, written fast and hard enough to dent the paper:
Your baby cried. Find Elena Ruiz.
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