The obstetrician opened the folder, but she did not look at me first.
She looked at Paola.
“Were you the person who locked the balcony door?” she asked.
Paola’s face stiffened.
“It was an accident.”
Alejandro stood so quickly that his chair struck the wall.
“No, it wasn’t.”
His voice sounded unfamiliar—low, broken, and furious.
Paola turned toward him.
“You weren’t there.”
“I found my wife unconscious behind a locked door.”
“She went outside on her own.”
“And the lock is on the inside.”
Silence spread through the room.
I barely heard them.
My hands were pressed against my stomach, searching for the familiar shape that was no longer there.
“Where is my baby?” I asked again.
The doctor immediately moved to my bedside.
“Your daughter is alive.”
The words reached me slowly.
Alive.
Not safe.
Not healthy.
But alive.
My breath broke into a sob.
“She was delivered by emergency cesarean section,” the doctor continued.
“She is in the neonatal intensive care unit.
She is very small, and she needs help breathing, but she is receiving the strongest care we can give her.”
Alejandro covered his mouth with both hands.
I stared at the doctor.
“Why did you have to deliver her?”
She pulled her chair closer.
“When the ambulance brought you in, your body temperature was dangerously low.
You were having frequent contractions, your blood pressure was unstable, and your baby’s heart rate was dropping.”
She turned the report so Alejandro and I could see it, though the numbers meant nothing to me.
“The cold stress and physical trauma triggered a partial placental abruption.
Part of the placenta began separating from the uterine wall.
That reduced the oxygen reaching your baby.”
Alejandro made a strangled sound.
I gripped the blanket.
“Is she going to be okay?”
“We are cautiously hopeful,” the doctor said.
“But she was born at twenty-eight weeks because waiting any longer could have killed her.
It also could have caused severe bleeding for you.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Paola took one step backward.
The doctor’s gaze followed her.
“This was not harmless discomfort.
Another delay could have cost two lives.”
Alejandro’s mother began to cry.
His father looked at Paola as though he no longer recognized his own daughter.
Paola shook her head.
“She wasn’t outside that long.”
The doctor closed the folder.
“Long enough.”
Paola’s voice rose.
