Every second counted. Carmen knew she was breaking half a dozen regulations. Her partner was yelling at her over the radio, asking what the hell she was doing escorting a civilian at that speed without authorization. She turned off the radio. She couldn’t explain that this man had given her a second life and that she wasn’t going to let him lose his.
They arrived at the emergency room entrance of La Paz Hospital at 2:54 p.m. Six minutes before the deadline.
Diego got out of the car almost before it came to a complete stop. He grabbed the pink suitcase from the back seat and ran toward the entrance, but stopped for a second. He turned to Carmen, who had taken off her helmet. He looked at her with a mixture of amazement and immense gratitude.
“Thank you!” she cried, her voice breaking with emotion. “I don’t know why you did this, but thank you!”
Carmen just nodded, her throat tight. She wanted to tell him, “You did more for me,” but it wasn’t the right time. Diego disappeared through the automatic doors, running toward his daughter’s life.
Carmen stood there for a moment, listening to the buzz of adrenaline in her ears. She felt exhausted, but strangely whole. However, the story didn’t end there. Curiosity and a strange sense of responsibility wouldn’t leave her alone. That night, instead of resting, Carmen searched for Diego Navarro’s name online.
What she found broke her heart.
Diego wasn’t a wealthy executive with a fast car. He was a former volunteer firefighter—that explained his bravery in the fire years ago—who had left the force after his wife died in a car accident five years earlier. He worked in a factory, raising his daughter, Luna, alone. And seven-year-old Luna had acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Recent articles in the local press reported a desperate campaign to find a bone marrow donor. Chemotherapy wasn’t working. Luna was running out of time.
Carmen turned off the computer and was left in darkness in her small apartment. She remembered the pink suitcase with unicorns. She remembered the despair in Diego’s eyes. He had saved Carmen from the fire, but now he faced a fire he couldn’t extinguish with water: his own daughter’s illness.
“The universe can’t be that cruel,” Carmen thought. “It couldn’t have put me in his path just so I could escort him to watch his daughter die.”
The next day, Carmen went to the donor center.