Doctors said I didn’t make it out of the delivery room.

Thirty days.

You learn a lot about people when they think you are furniture. They stop filtering. They shed their masks.

It was Day 12. A nurse had left a baby monitor on the counter near my bed. It was intended to let me hear my daughter in the nursery, a kindness I cherished. But someone had moved the other receiver. It wasn’t in the nursery. It was in the private family waiting room down the hall.

Static crackled, and then, voices drifted in. Crystal clear.

“This is actually perfect, Andrés. Stop looking so morose,” Teresa’s voice cut through the static.

“She’s my wife, mother. It feels… wrong,” Andrés said. But he sounded bored, not guilty.

“She is a line item on an expense report now,” Teresa retorted. “Look at the numbers. With her out of the picture, the life insurance policy triggers. The double indemnity clause because it was a ‘medical accident.’ That’s three million pesos, Andrés.”