I still have a hard time counting this without my throat closing.
I haven’t seen Elena in almost three years, since the divorce. We don’t end up with an infidelity or a scandal of those that people say quietly during family meals. Ours died slowly, between endless meetings, tiredness, small discussions that became great and longer silences.
One day we signed the papers in a court in Mexico City, we shook hands almost like strangers and everyone continued with their life.
I stayed in the capital, sunk up to my neck in a construction company that would not let me breathe. Elena went to Quintana Roo to work in the hotel management. I heard from her for friends in common, nothing more. That was fine. That he looked calmer. That he barely talked about his past life.
And I didn’t ask either.
Until I was sent to Cancun for work.
The idea was to review a plot of land for a new resort near the Hotel Zone, meet with engineers, take action, sign some documents and return to Mexico City in two days. I arrived tired, settled in a hotel facing the sea and that night I went for a walk to clear my head.
Cancun has a strange way of fooling you. The music comes out of the bars as if no one had any problems. Tourists take pictures smiling under neon lights. The moist air sticks to the shirt. The sea roars nearby, but people walk as if everything in life could be solved with a cold beer and a beautiful view.
I walked into a small bar, nothing elegant, of those where the light is low and one comes in just to sit for a while. I ordered a beer.
And when I looked up, I saw her.
Elena was at the bar.
I don’t know how to explain it, but even though I was on my back, I recognized her instantly. The way to accommodate the hair behind the ear. The way to hold the glass without drinking. That serious stance I always had when I was thinking too much.
I felt a dry blow to my chest.
When she turned and saw me, she opened her eyes with the same surprise as me.
“Carlos?
I don’t know how long we’re staring at each other, but it felt weird. As if three years had suddenly shrugged and cupred again between the two of us.
We ended up sitting at the same table.
At first we spoke carefully, like two people who know each other too much and at the same time no longer know each other. She asked me about my work. I asked him about his. We laughed at an old trip to Puebla, an absurd fight for a dog we never adopted, things that would have hurt us more in another time.
The worst thing was to realize that with her I could still talk easy.
Like before.
Around midnight, Elena said she knew the hotel where I was staying. Then he suggested that we walk a little along the beach.
And I, who had spent years convincing me that I had already overcome her, accepted it as an idiot.
The beach was almost empty. The sea sounded strong, though not as loud as everything I brought around inside. We walked barefoot on the sand, talking about nonsense, memories, how bad we had done so many things.
There was a moment when Elena was silent and only looked at me.
That was enough.
That night he went back to the hotel with me.
I didn’t think too much. I wanted to believe that it was a strange farewell, a shared weakness, something that would be buried in Cancun. We don’t even talk about tomorrow. There were no promises. There were no questions.
It just happened.
But at dawn, everything changed.
I woke up late, with the sun coming in through the white curtains. Elena was already standing by the window, wearing one of my shirts. For a second I felt something dangerous: peace. That kind of peace that makes you forget why a story broke.
Until I got out of bed.
And I saw the sheet.
There was a red spot.
It wasn’t big. But it was there. Clara. Impossible to ignore.
I was frozen.
Elena turned around, saw my face and, for a second, I would swear she was also scared. He walked quickly to the bed, pulled the sheet and said too quickly:
It’s nothing, Carlos. Don’t ask questions. You better get to bathe, you got a job.
It wasn’t someone’s answer that was quiet.
It was someone’s answer hiding something.
PART 2
I shouldn’t have let her go alone.
That was the first thing I thought when I saw her pick up her clothes with fast, almost clumsy movements, avoiding looking me in the eyes. The red spot was still there, small but impossible, as a written endpoint before I could understand the story.
“Elena,” I said. Wait.
She buttoned my shirt up, like that could cover everything.
Don’t start, Carlos.
“What happened?”
He let out a dry laugh.
Nothing happened.
“You don’t bleed like that because you do.
As soon as I said that, I saw his face harden. Not shameful. Scary.
He leaned over the bed, pulled the sheet and made it a ball in his arms.
Don’t ask things you don’t want to know.
That phrase left me cold.
What does that mean?
Elena didn’t respond right away. He went to the bathroom, opened the door and left the sheet inside, as if he wanted to hide not only the stain, but the whole night. Then he came out with the dress in his hand.
“It means this was stupid and that you have a meeting in two hours. Dress up. Forget it. I’m going to do the same.
I knew her enough to know that when she spoke like that it was because she was about to break or run away.
I’m not going to let you leave like this.
She smiled, but without humor.
“Carlos, you’ve been letting me go for three years.
That shut my mouth.
He turned his back on me. I no longer looked like the woman who had slept by my side a few hours earlier. In less than five minutes we had gone from sharing a bed to being two strangers with too much history on top.
Before he left, he stopped at the door.
He didn’t turn.
“If you remember me after today… do yourself the favor of remembering me like last night. Not like this morning.
And he’s gone.
I didn’t follow her.
For weeks I hated myself for that.
I continued with the trip, with the joints, with the resort plans, with the engineers, with the numbers and signatures. But since that morning something stuck in my body.
I wrote to her that same afternoon:
Are you okay?
It took hours to answer.
Yes. Don’t look for me.
That was it.
Two days later I returned to Mexico City. I wanted to convince myself that the stain could have a simple explanation. That maybe Elena was sick. That maybe I just felt ashamed. That maybe I was exaggerating because the guilt of having slept with my ex-wife was looking for an excuse to keep thinking about her.
I tried to be normal.
I couldn’t.
I wrote to him again a week later.
He didn’t answer.
Intenté llamarla.
He sent me to mailbox.
A mutual friend told me that Elena had asked for a few days off at the hotel and that no one knew where she was. That worried me more than I wanted to admit.
Or maybe that’s what I repeated not to accept that I kept caring.
Until a month passed.
It was Tuesday. It was raining in Mexico City and I was stuck over Peripheral, answering audios of work, when a call from an unknown number of Quintana Roo came in.
I answered without thinking.
“Well?
A woman’s voice sounded tense, professional.
Mr. Carlos Medina?
I felt something swirling in my stomach.
“Yes, he speaks.
We call him from the General Hospital of Cancun. Mrs. Elena Ríos left him registered as an emergency contact.
For a second I didn’t understand what I had just heard.
Emergency contact.
Me.
After three years.
After just one night.
After telling me not to look for her.
“What happened?” I asked, and my own voice sounded to me.
The woman briefly paused, from those pauses of someone trying to say something without dropping everything on the phone.
“The lady was admitted this morning with severe bleeding and loss of consciousness. Among his belongings he had his name noted. We need to locate a trusted family member or person.
Traffic has disappeared.
The rain is gone.
Everything became a buzz around a single word.
Bleeding.
I’m going there.
I hung up, got the car in the first exit I could and drove to the airport as if there was still something that could be reached on time.
During the flight I didn’t think about work, or divorce, or the shame of having slept with it again.
I thought about the sheet.
On her face when she saw her.
In the exact fear that crossed his eyes before hiding it.
And for the first time I allowed myself to name what I had hitherto avoided thinking.
That blood hadn’t been an accident.
I arrived at the hospital in Cancun at dusk. The building smelled of chlorine, overheated coffee and moisture. At admission I was looked at funny when I said his name, but a young nurse took me to a small waiting room, where a doctor on duty explained enough to leave me worse.
Elena had arrived fainted.
I had lost a lot of blood.
They had stabilized her.
She was still sedated.
But there was something else.
The doctor said it looking at a folder, not me.
We found signs of a previous procedure. One made outside of a suitable hospital setting. There are signs of infection and an internal injury that had been complicated for several days.
