“Almost,” Andrés said. I heard the rustle of fabric, the sound of a kiss. “Just discussing the timeline.”

“Good,” Karla giggled. “Because I really don’t want to wait to be a mother to that baby. My baby.”

Rage is a powerful fuel. If I could have moved, I would have torn the IVs from my arms and strangled them all. But I couldn’t. I lay there, forcing my heart to keep beating, forcing my brain to record every word.

Reflex, the nurse had said when she wiped a tear from my eye later that day.

It wasn’t a reflex. It was a promise.

Day 20. The nurses were my spies, though they didn’t know it. They gossiped while they changed my sheets, assuming I was deaf to the world.

“Did you see the Instagram post?” Nurse Elena whispered to Nurse Sofia.

“The one from the ‘family friend’?” Sofia snorted. “Disgusting.”

“She’s wearing the patient’s wedding dress, Sofia. I swear to God. She posted a story captioned ‘Welcome Home Celebration’ and she’s spinning around in the living room… in Lucía’s dress.”

“And the husband?”

“He’s filming it. You can see him in the mirror reflection. Laughing.”

My wedding dress. The lace imported from Spain. The dress I wore when I promised to love him until death parted us. Now, it was a costume for his mistress, worn in my home, while I lay rotting in a hospital bed.

“And the baby?” Sofia asked.

“The grandma already changed the registration,” Elena whispered, her voice dropping lower. “Lucía wanted ‘Esperanza.’ Hope. The grandmother filed the papers yesterday. The baby is ‘Mía’ now.”

Mía. Mine. Possessive.

They weren’t just killing me. They were erasing me. They were overwriting my life with a new version where I never existed.

But then, Elena said something that stopped my heart.

“What about the other one?”

“Shh,” Sofia hissed. “We aren’t supposed to know about that. Dr. Martínez is keeping it off the main chart to protect the child.”

The other one?

My mind raced. The ultrasound had always shown one baby. One heartbeat. Had I missed something?

Day 25. Dr. Martínez stood by my bedside. He wasn’t talking to me, but he was talking near me. He was on the phone, his voice hushed and angry.

“I cannot do that, Teresa. It is illegal.”

Pause.

“I don’t care about your ‘private adoption arrangement.’ The patient gave birth to monozygotic twins. Hidden twins. It happens, though rarely. The second child is in the NICU.”

Twins. I had two daughters.