Chapter 2 - The Empty Side of the Bed
The automated voicemail echoed off the high ceiling of the bedroom, repeating its sterile, terrifying warning into the empty space: Do not remain alone... Call back now.
Elena Hernández remained frozen, her boots standing inches from the dark, spreading stain on the mattress. Her mind, usually so sharp and calculating when it came to household budgets, social hierarchies, and family alliances, refused to process the data flashing before her eyes.
A bride on her wedding night. A massive hemorrhage. A doctor’s urgent warning.
Slowly, fighting a tremor in her knees that she hadn't felt since her husband’s funeral, Elena dragged her gaze away from my motionless body and looked toward the empty side of the bed.
The bedside table, usually cluttered with Carlos’s leather wallet, his heavy silver signet ring, and his car keys, was completely bare. Only a standard white wall charger remained plugged into the baseboard outlet, its black cord dangling limply over the edge like a severed vine.
She turned her head toward the walk-in closet.
The sliding mirrored door was half-open. Carlos’s large leather travel suitcase—the one he always took on his business trips to the capital—was gone from its shelf. The tailored charcoal suit he had worn to the rehearsal dinner was missing from its hanger.
He hadn't slept here. He hadn't even stayed through the night.
Panic, cold and sharp, clawed its way up Elena’s throat. She took a staggering step forward, ignoring the sticky dampness beneath her feet, and dropped to her knees beside the bed.
"Mariana?" she whispered, her voice cracking, stripped of its usual iron authority.
She reached out a trembling hand and touched my cheek.
It felt like cold marble. There was no residual warmth of life, no faint flutter of breath against her fingertips. My skin was clammy, ice-cold, and completely slack.
"Mariana? Can you hear me? Open your eyes!" Elena cried out, shaking my shoulder.
My head rolled limply to the side. My eyelids flickered once, a pathetic, slow-motion struggle against the dark, but no words came out. A thin line of pale pink saliva trickled from the corner of my pale lips, staining the pillowcase.
Terror, sudden and overwhelming, finally broke through Elena’s paralysis. She scrambled backward, her hands scraping against the floorboards, and screamed at the top of her lungs.
"Help! Someone help me! Carmen! Beatriz! Get up here now!"
Downstairs, the sound of shattering porcelain echoed through the house as Aunt Carmen dropped a coffee mug in shock. Footsteps pounded against the tile floor, followed by rapid, frantic scrambling up the staircase.
Aunt Carmen and Aunt Beatriz burst into the master bedroom, their faces flushed with sleep and annoyance.
"Elena, what on earth is—" Carmen started, her voice cutting off instantly as she crossed the threshold.
Both aunts stopped dead in their tracks at the doorway. Their eyes swept over the crumpled wedding dress, the bloodstained bed, my grey, lifeless face, and Elena kneeling in the middle of it all like a broken supplicant. Their earlier smiles and knowing gossip evaporated into thin air, replaced by the primitive, instinctive horror of women who recognized the signs of a tragedy too large to hide.
Carmen covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes wide. "Madre de Dios... what happened here?"
Beatriz, her face draining of all color, looked frantically around the room. She noticed the empty side of the bed, the missing suitcase, and the discarded phone still glowing on the pillow.
"Where is Carlos?" Beatriz demanded, her voice rising in panic. "Elena, where is my nephew? Where is Carlos?"
Elena didn't answer. She was staring blankly at a folded piece of heavy cardstock that had been partially hidden under my pillow, pushed aside as if someone had hastily shoved it out of sight.
With trembling fingers, Elena reached out and pulled the paper free.
Across the top, stamped in bold red letters by the hospital’s electronic triage system, were the words: URGENT FOLLOW-UP REQUIRED – PREGNANCY COMPLICATION / ECTOPIC RISK.
Below the medical terminology, scrawled in the unmistakable, blocky handwriting of her son, was Carlos’s signature.
He had signed the consent form three days before the wedding, confirming that the attending physician’s explicit warnings about the life-threatening nature of the pregnancy and the urgent need for immediate surgical intervention had been fully explained to him.
He knew.
He had known before he walked down the aisle. He had known while the guests cheered, while the champagne flowed, and while he slipped a diamond band onto my trembling finger.
Downstairs, the distant, rising wail of an ambulance siren began to tear through the morning air, growing louder with every second.
Elena unfolded the rest of the report with shaking, blood-smeared hands. As the paper flattened out, a handwritten note clipped to the bottom by a nurse caught her eye.
The note was written in blue ink, hurried and sharp: Patient states her fiancé refuses to postpone the ceremony, insists the scandal would ruin his business standing, and has taken physical possession of her phone to prevent her from contacting medical services.
The room seemed to spin on its axis. Elena went completely pale, the blood rushing out of her head until her vision tunneled into a tiny, dark circle.
Before Carmen or Beatriz could rush forward to catch her, the heavy front door downstairs slammed shut with a concussive boom that rattled the glass in the windows.
Carlos’s voice echoed up through the stairwell, bright, casual, and utterly devoid of human soul.
"Mom! Before Mariana wakes up and starts complaining about her cramps, we need to get our story straight. The accountant is coming by at noon, and I need you to make sure she’s out of the master suite before—"
May you like
Carlos’s voice cut off mid-sentence as he reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the upper hallway.
Elena slowly picked herself up from the floor. Her fingers clutched the bloodstained medical report like a weapon. She turned her head toward the doorway, her eyes burning with a dark, consuming fire that her son had never seen in all his thirty years of life.
