The delivery room smelled like antiseptic, sweat, and fear.
Not the ordinary fear that accompanies childbirth.vr
This was something heavier.
Something sharp enough to cut through the fluorescent lights and the carefully rehearsed professionalism of the hospital staff.
Machines beeped.vr
Metal instruments clinked against trays.
Nurses moved quickly from one side of the room to the other while whispers traveled beneath the noise like frightened ghosts.
And in the center of it all, Camila Vargas lay pale against the hospital bed, her damp hair stuck to her forehead, her body trembling violently from exhaustion.
She had spent nineteen hours in labor.
Nineteen hours listening to doctors tell her everything was under control.
Nineteen hours gripping Alejandro Vargas’s hand so tightly that his wedding ring had cut into her skin.
Alejandro stood beside her now, still wearing the same dark suit he had arrived in before dawn.
One of the richest men in the country.
A man accustomed to solving problems with signatures, power, and money.
But none of that mattered in that room.
Because his son wasn’t breathing.
The newborn lay unnaturally still beneath the harsh surgical lights.
Tiny.
Grayish.
Silent.
A silence so wrong that even the machines seemed uncomfortable around it.
The neonatologist removed his gloves slowly.
Too slowly.
