He kissed me on the forehead and came out again, saying he was going to get a coffee. As soon as the door closed, I grabbed the landline with trembling fingers and dialed again.

“I mean that man has been trying to kill her slowly for weeks.

For a second I stopped hearing the hospital. The corridor. Air conditioning. My own breathing.

“No,” I murmured, though deep down I already knew. No, Maria…

“The last time I went to clean the kitchen, I saw that he threw away his good pills and changed the bottle for another one just like it. I also saw him put a few dark drops in the tea that he had at night. I thought it was a vitamin or something from the doctor… until I started to hear him talking on the phone with a woman. He said that it was not long now. That his liver “was finally doing what it should.”

I felt a spasm of nausea so bad that I had to cover my mouth.

The nights.

The metallic taste.

The tiredness that worsened just when Javier began to “take care” of me personally.

The way he insisted on making me tea himself.

Everything began to fall into place in a frightening way.

“Madam, look at me even if I’m not in front of you,” Maria said in that voice of a woman who has no education but is true. If you break me right now, he wins. So no. It is not going to break.

I swallowed hard.

“What do we do?”

There was a short silence. No doubt. Calculation.

“First, that he does not sign anything.” Second, that I enter the house before he returns. Third… that you get a doctor who is not afraid of you.

I closed my eyes.

The hospital doctor had spoken carefully, yes, but something in his eyes had been strange. No lie. Rather resignation, as if he were reading numbers that did not quite match the body in front of him.

“There’s a doctor,” I whispered. Andrea Montalvo. She is a hepatologist. She was a resident with my cousin. Once he asked me for a second opinion, but Javier said that nothing needed to be moved.

“Well, now we need it,” Maria cut in. Call her.

I didn’t have my cell phone.

But I knew her number by heart because my cousin had repeated it to me so many times that I ended up learning it out of exhaustion.

I marked with clumsy hands.

A young, alert voice answered.

“Dr. Montalvo?”

“I’m Lucía Serrano. We met at a dinner at Adriana’s house… I need help. Now. And I don’t want my husband to find out.

I don’t know what he heard in my tone, but he didn’t ask useless questions. He only said:

“Tell me a room and hospital.” I’m close.

When I hung up, Maria spoke again.

“I’m almost home.” Where are the important things?

I looked at the door, as if Javier could come back through it.

“In the studio. Bottom drawer of the left bookcase. There is a blue folder with the deeds, a USB stick and a cream envelope with my previous will.

“Previous?”

“Yes. Two years ago I signed one, leaving almost everything to Javier if there were no children.

“And now?”

I felt my heart pounding in my chest.

“Right now I don’t even plan to leave you the shame.

Maria let out a snort that was almost laughing.

—That’s how I like it better.

The next hour was the longest of my life.