Chapter 4 - The Call Daniel Never Got
Daniel Hernández was halfway through a maintenance shift at a water-treatment plant outside San Antonio when his phone rang.
He let it go to voicemail. His mother had already called three times that morning to complain that Mariana hadn't come downstairs. He'd answered the first call and told her to leave Mariana alone. On the second, she'd said, "Your wife doesn't even bother with our daughter anymore."
Now the voicemail came through. It wasn't his mother.
"Mr. Hernández, this is Saint David's Medical Center. Your wife is in emergency surgery. Please call us immediately."
He stopped beside a vibrating pump. For a moment he couldn't remember which direction the parking lot was. He called the hospital. A calm voice confirmed Mariana had arrived with life-threatening bleeding.
"But my mother said she was sleeping," he said.
"You need to come."
He called Beatriz on the drive. She answered after six rings.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I was about to. Everything happened so fast."
"She was bleeding."
"I didn't know until lunch."
Daniel swerved into a gas-station lot and braked hard. "The hospital says she'd been bleeding for hours."
"Mariana has always exaggerated pain. You know that."
That sentence sounded familiar because he'd heard it all year. Every time Mariana requested quiet, Beatriz called her dramatic. Every time Mariana asked him to speak to his mother, he said he would tomorrow. Tomorrow had become their entire marriage.
"Where's her phone?" he demanded.
The line went silent.
"Mom?"
"Don't you dare talk to me like I'm a criminal."
She hung up. Daniel started driving again. His hands wouldn't stop shaking on the wheel.
At the hospital, a surgeon met him near the family room. The baby had been delivered by emergency cesarean section. He was alive and being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit. Mariana had lost a dangerous amount of blood and was receiving transfusions. She was not yet stable.
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Daniel leaned against the wall. "Can I see my son?"
"Soon," the surgeon said. "But first, you need to know something. Your wife told us she was asking for help long before anybody called."
