THE CEO DISCOVERED HE HAD TWINS

The first shot hit her in the shoulder and sent her two steps forward, crashing into the alley wall. The second one grazed her thigh as she was already running. She didn’t fall because she knew that if she fell, they’d kill her. That, and because the eight-and-a-half-month-old baby she was carrying inside her demanded that she move before she thought. Valeria pressed her backpack against her belly and turned the corner—the neighborhood where she’d been hiding for six days and knew little about—but the footsteps of the two men were coming from two blocks back, and it was run or die. The blood from her shoulder ran hot down her back. The blood from her thigh was lighter—just a brush from the bullet. She was a medical student; she’d spent a year and a half in public hospitals seeing people brought in with gunshot wounds, and she knew the one in her shoulder wasn’t fatal. A shot like that, at that distance, had been intentional—just to stop her. Not to kill her. Margarita wanted her alive—and only so she could have her grandson. Let them let her give birth. They’ll take care of it afterward. Make it look like an accident. That phrase had been repeating in her head for six days. That very night, she’d stuffed four items into a backpack, slipped out the service door while covering her enormous belly, and disappeared into the early-morning buses. Three boarding houses, two haircuts, a fake ID that cost her every last bit of cash she had left. And even so, they found her. She turned another corner. A contraction bent her in half and knocked the wind out of her. She leaned against a cinder block wall, clenched her teeth, and waited. The contraction lasted fifty seconds. No. Not now. But her body—after being shot twice and terrified by the chase—decided the baby had to come out now, and no one could stop it. Valeria bit her tongue to keep from screaming and kept walking. “Sweetheart. Come here.” Valeria looked up. A petite elderly woman, with white hair pulled back in a bun and an oil-stained apron, gave her a brief wave from a half-open doorway. Without fear, without surprise, as if she’d spent the whole afternoon waiting for something like this to happen. Valeria hesitated. The next contraction hit her, and she couldn’t think about it anymore. She stepped through the doorway. “Back there. The room at the end. There’s a mattress.” “Ma’am, I was shot.” “I saw that. Move your legs, girl.” The room had a mattress on the floor, a small table with a wooden crucifix, and a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The old woman came in behind her and handed her a clean towel. “Take off your underwear.” “Your shoulder first. The bullet wound could get infected.” “Are you a doctor?” “An intern.” “Then you know that if I stop to remove the bullet now, the baby will die—is that what you want?” Valeria didn’t argue. She knew it. An intern who’d been working shifts in the ER for a year and a half knows that priorities are what they are. She pulled down her pants with hands made clumsy by the blood, lay down, and bent her knees. The old woman lifted her skirt and inserted two fingers to check her dilation. “Eight centimeters. Not long now.” “I know.” “Have you given birth before?” “No, but I’ve been in the delivery room many times.” “Then I don’t need to explain anything to you.” Another contraction. Valeria grabbed the sheet with her good hand and clenched it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A scream rose in her throat, and she stifled it between her teeth. “Let it out,” said the old woman. “No one can hear you in here.” “Yes, they can hear me. They’re coming after me.” The old woman stood still for two seconds. She walked over to the window, peered through a c***k, and came back. “How many?” “Two. There might be more.” “What do they want?” “The boy—then they’ll kill me.” “Who could be so heartless?” “My mother-in-law.” The old woman nodded as if she’d heard that many times before. As if, in forty years of taking in children, she’d already taken in more than one girl from outside the neighborhood who was running away from her own family. “I’m Doña Carmen. I’ll help you. Hang in there. We’ll figure it out later.” “If they come, don’t open the door.” “I’m not opening the door for anyone tonight. Push.” Valeria pushed. The baby was born at 11:23. Doña Carmen caught him in both hands, blew on his face, and gave him a gentle pat. The baby cried with that pure intensity of those who come into the world angry about the journey. “It’s a boy. He’s strong.” He cut the cord with scissors sterilized over a fire, wrapped the baby in a towel, and placed him on her chest. Valeria looked at him, ran a finger over his tiny lip, and for the first time in days felt something other than fear. And then her stomach clenched again. “Doña Carmen.” “I know. I felt it when I put my fingers inside you. I didn’t tell you so I wouldn’t scare you.” “Another one?” “Another one. Ultrasounds are just machines. The body is the body. Push.” Doña Carmen pulled the first one out of her chest, laid it on a blanket a meter away from the mattress, and put her hands back in. —Sweetheart, this one’s in the wrong position. Valeria closed her eyes; her son had chosen the worst possible moment to come out in a breech position—her on the floor of a tenement, with an elderly woman whose hands were clean but who had no instruments. This could be her death; she needed an operating room or an expert gynecologist. “Ma’am, if I die, it doesn’t matter—just get my son out alive.” “I’ve turned babies around in there twenty-two times in forty years. Twenty-two alive. Push.” Doña Carmen thrust her hand in up to her wrist. Valeria screamed. This time her scream was animalistic, and the old woman didn’t even look at her because both her arms were buried up to her elbows in blood, trying to turn a baby who had decided to come out crooked. “Come on, little one. Turn around. Turn around for your mom.” Three minutes passed. Valeria lost track of time. She saw black spots at the edges of her vision. The bullet wound in her shoulder had drained more blood than she could replenish. Inside, the calm voice of her obstetrics professor echoed: in postpartum hemorrhage, the mother has twenty minutes before going into shock. “Ma’am, I’m going to lose him.” “Push.” Valeria pushed with every last ounce of strength she had left. She pushed, thinking of Mateo on a ventilator, of Margarita’s face on the phone begging to be killed, of her two children dying with her that night. And she wasn’t going to let that happen. The second baby was born at 11:41. He came out purple. He didn’t cry. Doña Carmen grabbed him with one hand under his neck and the other under his bottom. She blew on his face. She rubbed his chest with her thumb. She ran a clean finger across his mouth to clear out the mucus. The baby was still purple. Valeria propped herself up on her elbows despite the gunshot wound. The intern beat the frightened mother by a second. “Mouth-to-nose. Short breaths. Every three seconds. And pat him on the back.” Doña Carmen placed her mouth over the baby’s nose and blew. Once. Twice. On the fourth try, the baby coughed. And breathed. And opened his enormous, dark eyes, staring at the ceiling with a calmness that would never leave him for the rest of his life. “Another boy,” said Doña Carmen, her voice breaking for the first time that night. “And this one came on his own.” She cut the umbilical cord, cleaned him off, wrapped him in another towel, and laid him next to the first one. Two identical babies on a blanket, on the floor of a tenement in a neighborhood where the police never went. “Hang in there. I’m going to take the bullet out.” She went to the kitchen and returned with a small knife she’d heated over the fire, some old tweezers, a bottle of mezcal, and a clean rag. She poured the mezcal over the wound on her shoulder. Valeria bit the back of her hand, and the pain caused her to lose consciousness—blood loss, the exhaustion of childbirth. The old woman crouched down beside the mattress and picked up one of the babies. She cradled it with the gentleness of someone who had held thousands before—but she knew that this unconscious young woman could never escape alive from the people who were searching for her with two newborns, and a wild idea crossed her mind. Three knocks on the door. Then two more, loud ones. Doña Carmen placed the baby on the empty mattress, laid the towel stained with blood from the birth on top of him, smeared a little more fresh blood around the area with a rag, and walked to the entrance. Before opening the door, she took two deep breaths and put on the weary expression she’d been wearing for forty years. She opened the door. Margarita Solís stood in the doorway wearing a black coat, with three men behind her. No makeup, no jewelry, none of the luxury she used to carry with her as she moved through the city. Just her tired face and cold eyes. “Ma’am. I’m looking for a young, pregnant, injured girl. She was shot twice and came into this neighborhood two hours ago.” “A girl like that came to my door two hours ago. But you can’t help her now.” “What?” “She died forty minutes ago.” Margarita narrowed her eyes. Doña Carmen stepped aside and let her in, with two of the men following; the third stayed at the door. She led her to the back room. On the mattress lay a baby, asleep, wrapped in a towel, with a large bloodstain around it. Margarita stood in the doorway and took it all in: the mattress, the blood, the forceps with the bullet still on the small plate, the knife from the fire, the empty bottle of mezcal. Valeria was dead—or so Margarita thought when she saw the lifeless body. She walked slowly over and ran a finger along the baby’s cheek; the baby opened its eyes for a moment, stared at her, and then closed them again. Margarita stood still. Something flickered across her face that even she didn’t understand. “It’s a boy.” “Yes.” Margarita kept staring at the baby for a long time. And then, without anyone saying a word to her, her expression softened; she picked up her grandson and walked toward the exit, but before leaving, she took out a wad of bills and placed them in the old woman’s hand. “Don’t let anyone know that the child was born here. Don’t let anyone know that his mother ever existed. If I hear a single rumor, I’ll come back and bury you in the courtyard. Do you hear me?” —Yes, ma’am.