The little girl looked down at her bleeding feet.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel kept his voice gentle.
“When did they stop eating?”
“Yesterday.”
“Where is your mommy?”
The girl’s lower lip trembled.
“My mommy has been sleeping for three days.”
The sentence landed harder than a scream.
“Sleeping?” Maria whispered.
The child nodded.
“She doesn’t move. She doesn’t open her eyes anymore. I put water on her face, but she didn’t wake up.”
Daniel glanced at the nurses.
“And the babies?”
“They cried for a long time. Then they got quiet yesterday.”
The waiting room became silent in a way no hospital waiting room was supposed to be silent.
No coughing.
No phones ringing.
No shoes squeaking across the floor.
Only the hum of fluorescent lights and the thin mechanical beep of a monitor somewhere behind the nurses’ station.
Daniel swallowed once.
Then he became sharply professional, because sometimes mercy looked like speed.
