He Came Back Alive ,But I Buried Everything We Had

I stared at those shoes.

The phone in my pocket buzzed violently.

The caller ID showed the children's hospital ward.

I reached for it, but the phone was snatched from my hand.

Oswald held my old phone with its cracked screen, his brow furrowed tight.

The ringtone drilled into his ears, and his first reaction was disgust.

"What a piece of junk. That sound is grating."

He flung the phone away.

The old phone I'd bought five years ago hit a concrete support column in the garage and shattered into pieces.

The battery popped out and spun twice across the floor.

That phone had all of Carissa's photos.

I bit down on the arm of the bodyguard pinning me.

He screamed and let go. I scrambled off the ground on all fours, shoved past the other bodyguard, and stumbled out of the garage.

It was raining outside.

The children's hospital was on the south side of the city.

Six miles from here.

She weighed barely four pounds the day she was born. She spent two weeks in an incubator.

The first time she called me Mama, I cried the whole night.

She loved the egg custard I made. Every time, she'd lick the bowl clean, then tilt her little head up and grin at me.

She was three years old. She hadn't even gotten a real chance to see the world.

The hospital lights appeared at the far edge of my vision.

When I burst through the emergency hall doors, my legs gave out and I collapsed on the floor. The soles of my feet were nothing but blood.

The ward was on the third floor.

I gripped the stairwell railing and dragged myself up one flight at a time.

At the end of the corridor, the red light above the resuscitation room went dark.

A doctor walked out, pulled down his mask. His face was hollow with exhaustion.

"Family?"

"We did everything we could."

A nurse lifted the corner of the white sheet for me to confirm.

Carissa's face was so small. So pale. Her lips were purple.

She looked like she was sleeping, quiet and still.

But her hand was cold.

I dropped to my knees and pressed her hand against my cheek.

So cold.

The next morning.

Oswald was in the hallway outside the prenatal exam center, waiting for Wanda to finish her routine checkup.

A courier walked up and handed him a same-day express package.

He tore the wrapping open without thinking.

Three things inside.

First, a DNA paternity test report. The conclusion confirmed that Oswald Delgado was the biological father of Carissa Henson.

Next, a badly worn wooden guitar pick with a tiny letter D carved into its side.

Last, a letter written in blood. One line on the paper.

As you wished. Your debts are settled.

He hadn't finished reading the last word.

A heavy crash came from the direction of the emergency wing.

Something falling from a height. A sound both dull and sharp at once.

A nurse's scream cut through the entire floor.

A crowd formed a ring in the plaza below. On the ground, a pool of blood was spreading.

Oswald pushed through the crowd and looked down at the woman in the blue delivery vest.

She lay on the ground, eyes half open, blood at the corner of her mouth. Her expression was perfectly calm.