I shot upright. The room tilted and spun.
"Is this Ms. Denise Henson? Your daughter Carissa Henson's cardiac indicators have been declining steadily. Her attending physician is recommending an immediate coronary artery bypass. We can't wait any longer."
"The surgery and follow-up treatment will cost approximately five hundred thousand dollars. We need you to come in as soon as possible to sign the consent forms and settle payment. Otherwise, we cannot schedule the procedure."
"Tomorrow. Three p.m. at the latest."
I hung up and opened my phone's photo album.
Carissa lay in the ICU bed, her tiny body threaded with tubes, her cheeks tinged a wrong, bruised purple from oxygen deprivation.
She was already past three years old and still couldn't form a complete sentence. All she could manage was a slurred "Mama."
She was Oswald Delgado's daughter.
After the mudslide, I'd found out I was pregnant at the hospital.
Everyone believed Oswald was dead.
I gave birth to Carissa alone. I raised her alone.
Five hundred thousand dollars.
I couldn't scrape together five thousand.
After leaving the clinic, I waited in the underground parking garage beneath his building for four hours.
At 1:17 a.m., a Maybach rolled into the garage.
I saw him.
I ran out and planted myself in front of the car.
The tinted window lowered a crack.
"Oswald, I'm not here to make trouble."
My voice was steady.
"Give me five hundred thousand. I'll sign an NDA and disappear from this city. We'll never see each other again."
A low, derisive laugh drifted through the gap in the window.
"Five hundred thousand?"
The door swung open. He stepped out, leaned against it, and looked me over the way someone appraises something they've already decided is worthless.
"You'd even sell your own child. You pop out some bastard who could be anyone's and then show up demanding my money?"
"A single mother stalking a married man in an underground garage. What exactly do you think you're worth?"
"That child is yours."
"Interesting."
He let out a short laugh.
"How long are you planning to keep up this act?"
Footsteps echoed from the far end of the garage.
Wanda Simmons walked toward us wrapped in a long down coat, flanked by bodyguards.
"You're here again?"
She sighed, then pulled an envelope from her bag.
"Oswald told me about your situation. Life hasn't been easy for you. There's five hundred thousand in here."
The envelope opened, and a thick stack of cash spilled across the concrete floor.
"But there's a condition."
She produced a small brown pill bottle from her bag and twisted off the cap.
"Take this sterilization pill. After you swallow it, take that child of yours and leave the country. Don't come back."
She smiled at me.
"You understand, Oswald is about to run for a position within the group. Someone like you showing up again and again isn't good for his reputation."
"All I need is your guarantee that you'll never appear in his life again."
I stared at the money on the ground, then at the pill bottle in her hand.
"I'm not taking that. I can pay the money back. I'll sign an agreement..."
Before I could finish, the pill bottle slipped from Wanda's hand.
"Oh! My stomach!"
Oswald rushed over.
He jerked his chin at the bodyguards behind him.
"Pin her down over there."
Four bodyguards closed in. Two seized my arms; the other two forced my shoulders to the ground.
A pair of leather shoes filled my vision.
Oswald crouched down, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and wrenched my face upward.
"See the mud on Wanda's shoes?"
"Lick it clean. The five hundred thousand is yours. Go save that bastard of yours."
Wanda stood six feet away. A few specks of mud were spattered across the toe of her heels.
