Chapter 12 - NO MORE QUIET ROOMS
I called the nurses’ station from my cousin’s phone while keeping my mother on the line.
“Security,” I said. “Room four-twelve. Now.”
Jorge was speaking calmly.
That frightened me more than shouting would have.
“You’ve put your son in an impossible position.”
My mother answered, “Get out.”
“I’m offering you a way to protect him.”
“You offered Rodrigo the same thing.”
A pause.
Then Jorge’s voice grew lower.
“Rodrigo didn’t know when to stop.”
I heard a chair move.
“Neither do I,” my mother said.
The line filled with footsteps.
A nurse told Jorge to step outside.
He protested that he was family.
My mother said, clearly enough for everyone to hear, “He is not authorized to take me anywhere.”
By the time I arrived, security had escorted him from the floor.
The transfer papers contained no approval from her treating physician.
Fuentes collected them.
My mother sat upright, pale and furious.
I reached for her.
She slapped my hand away.
“Don’t look at me like I’m already dead.”
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
Then she took my hand herself.
We stayed like that until her breathing slowed.
Jorge’s visit changed something.
Not because it proved everything.
Because witnesses had seen him trying to move the woman at the center of an active investigation using papers she said she had never authorized.
His explanations began colliding.
He said he was helping.
He said the family had asked.
He said he hadn’t known police were involved.
The hospital had records contradicting him.
Karina had messages contradicting him.
Now my mother was willing to contradict him herself.
That evening, she made a formal supplemental statement.
She described every visit, every cup, every time Karina had insisted she was forgetful.
At one point, her voice broke.
“She told my son I was making things up.”
I stared at my hands.
“And I let her,” I said.
My mother looked at me.
“Yes. But you’re listening now.”
Fuentes’s phone rang.
She stepped outside, spoke briefly, and returned.
Investigators examining Karina’s phone had recovered an audio message.
It was from Jorge.
Sent the morning my mother was hospitalized.
Fuentes asked whether we wanted to hear it.
My mother nodded.
May you like
Jorge’s voice filled the room.
“No more delays, Karina. Get her signature before the hospital starts asking what you’ve been giving her.”
