Act IX – Chapter 27 "Live"
The first thing she felt was the cold.
That clinical, artificial chill that soaks into hospital walls and never really leaves.
She opened her eyes slowly.
White ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The steady silence of a machine beside her.
She moved her fingers first, then her hands, then tried to turn her head.
She instinctively reached up to touch her hair.
It was gone. What was left was short, uniform, close to the scalp.
She didn't know why, but it felt like a loss.
The scrape of a chair against the floor.
A man shot to his feet from the corner of the room, nearly knocking over his plastic cup, eyes wide open, his face wrecked by weeks of sleepless waiting.
He moved toward the bed, one hand reaching out, trembling, as if he was afraid she'd disappear if he moved too fast.
He said something in a language she understood instinctively.
"Alicia… Dios mío… Alicia."
She looked at him without knowing who he was.
But he looked at her like she was the only person in the world.
He pressed the nurse call button with one hand, and with the other, gently took hers — pressing his forehead against her fingers, shoulders shaking in silence.
She didn't pull away.
She didn't know what else to do.
The Doctors
The medical staff arrived in under two minutes.
The nurse checked her vitals. The chief surgeon came in behind her, grabbed the chart from the foot of the bed, skimmed a page, then stepped forward with a measured smile.
"Good morning. How are you feeling?"
She thought about it honestly.
"My head hurts."
"That's normal. You've just come out of an induced coma. Your operation was just over two months ago."
"Two months?"
The doctor continued.
"I'm going to ask you a few simple questions. Take as long as you need. Can you tell me your name?"
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came.
"I… I don't know."
"How old are you?"
Silence.
"Where do you live?"
Silence.
The doctor noted something without changing his expression.
"Do you remember anything at all? An image, a sound, a feeling — no matter how vague?"
She closed her eyes and genuinely searched.
There was something. Less a memory, more an impression. A warmth against her cheek. A steady sound, like a heartbeat — something reassuring, something alive.
"A heartbeat," she said, without understanding why.
The doctor nodded gently.
"Good. Let me tell you a few things."
He sat on the edge of the stool beside her bed.
"Your name is Alicia Sanchez. You're nineteen years old. The man beside you is your father — he flew in from Spain the moment he heard what happened. You were in a serious accident that required major surgery on your head. What you're experiencing — this absence of memories — is a direct result of that surgery. Your memory should come back gradually, but we can't tell you how long that will take. A few weeks, a few months, possibly longer."
"Possibly never?" she asked, calmly.
He didn't answer immediately.
"We remain optimistic."
She nodded.
The Thing He Had to Say
The nausea hit all at once.
She brought her hand to her mouth. The nurse, who seemed to have expected it, held out a bag a second before it was needed.
She was sick, slightly hunched, eyes watering with the effort, her father's hand on her back.
When it passed, she wiped her mouth and exhaled slowly.
"Why do I feel like this?"
The doctor took a moment.
He set the file on his knees, folded his hands over it, and looked at her with that particular precision of people trained to deliver difficult news without breaking someone with it.
"That's actually what I wanted to address."
A brief pause.
"When you were admitted to this hospital, we noticed certain unusual indicators for a woman your age. After running further analysis, it turns out you are pregnant."
The room seemed to hold its breath.
"We were waiting for you to wake up before telling you, and to know what you'd like to do. It's still not too late to change course, if that's your choice. You have time to think it over — there's no urgency on that front."
Alicia Sanchez stared at the white ceiling.
She didn't know who she was.
She didn't know where she came from.
She didn't know whose child it was.
A few kilometers away, behind thick glass, in a cold grey visitation room,
Léo was looking at Andrea.
"You've grown up."
Léo stayed quiet.
Andrea continued, hesitant.
"I didn't know what to get you… so I made you a cake. I'll leave it with the guard on the way out."
"You remembered my birthday?"
"How could I forget?"
She paused.
"Did you know we were born on the same day?"
"I didn't, no."
He glanced at her hands, flat on the table, trembling slightly. He took a breath.
"Are you alright?"
"I… that doesn't matter. Today is your day."
"From what I understand… it's yours too."
She hesitated, then tried to shift the subject.
"How is Maria? Did she take good care of you?"
"Maria died five years ago. Lung cancer."
"Oh… I didn't know."
"Her death didn't make the papers. No."
Andrea was uncomfortable. She searched for something to say.
"How did you manage to—"
He shrugged.
"I figured it out."
"I see…"
Silence settled between them.
Léo thought about his father's final moments. About a man who, in dying, hadn't said a single word of blame toward her. He let out a quiet breath.
"He was right, you know."
"Sorry?"
"You don't trust yourself."
Silence.
"Stop shaking. Nobody's going to hurt you here, or anywhere else. Relax. I'm not here to make you feel worse. My father respected you — so I have no reason not to."
"Emilio…"
"He never stopped loving you. You should know that."
Andrea looked down.
"I… maybe I should go."
"No. Stay and hear this."
She began to cry quietly.
"I'm so sorry… I was too young for all of it. I couldn't…"
"And he knew that. He never blamed you."
Léo laid his hands flat on the table.
"One day he told me that after you left, he'd wanted to end his life. Do you know why he didn't?"
"No…"
"Because he knew that if he did — if he gave up — you would never forgive yourself. He kept living for you. Even when death was calling."
"I'm so sorry."
"Stop apologizing."
His voice wasn't harsh. It was simply clear.
"Apologies don't fix anything. If you really want to make it right, then grant him his wish."
"His wish?"
"In his last moments, he said you were beautiful. That he wished you had more confidence in yourself. He blamed himself. He was convinced he was responsible for your self-doubt."
Léo paused.
"So don't apologize. Live, head held high. Whatever you've been through — even if we never really knew each other."
Andrea couldn't hold back her tears.
Léo was crying too, quietly, without wiping them away.
"Live. That's all he wanted."
He let the silence breathe for a moment, then continued.
"A man like him — if he'd wanted to find you, he would have. If anything had ever happened to you, even after years apart, even if you'd hated him with everything you had, he would have turned the whole world upside down for you."
He looked her straight in the eyes.
"So stop putting yourself down. You weren't there when I grew up. That's a fact. You can't change it. If you left because it was too much — that's okay. You're the only one responsible for your choices. But stop regretting. Stop going in circles. And forgive yourself."
Andrea didn't know what to say.
She sat looking at this twenty-one-year-old man on the other side of a pane of glass — a man she hadn't watched grow up — who had just said everything she had never found the courage to say to herself.
"Thank you for the cake," he said at last, tears running freely. "I'll enjoy every bite."
He shifted slightly in his seat.
"So please… stop running. Face life with your head up."
One last pause.
"Be happy."
The guard announced the end of the visit.
Andrea stood, thanked her son with a look that no longer had anything trembling in it, and handed the cake to the guard on her way out.
Maybe they would see each other again. Maybe not.
But after that conversation, both of them crossed their respective thresholds with a little less weight in their chest.
That evening, alone in his cell, Léo finished the birthday cake down to the last crumb.
He was crying.
But it was from joy.
To be continued.