Bruce
I woke up in the hospital with a small hand on mine. Wait, was I messing things up? In my right mind, I would have said Esmeralda shouldn’t be around me. I struggled to open my eyes, prying my eyelids apart. For a brief moment, all I saw was white. Gradually, shapes, colors, and sounds began to make sense. The hand on mine didn’t belong to my daughter. It was my mother’s instead. She had leaned her head down towards her hand, the one holding mine rather tightly.
"Mom."
She didn’t stir.
"Mama," I said, using the old endearment from when I was younger.
Instantly, she sat up, her eyes wide with surprise.
"My baby," she said, reaching for my cheek. "Barry wouldn’t tell me what happened to you, and so I insisted. Somehow Barry finds himself impervious to me, but not so much to Elija
