PART 1

“If your wife dies tonight, at least answer the phone, coward.”

That was the first sentence I heard at 2:17 in the morning, while I was lying in an oceanfront suite in Punta Mita, with a woman who was not my wife asleep beside me and an open bottle of champagne on the table.

I looked at the phone screen through half-closed eyes.

Mauricio.

My best friend since high school. My compadre. The man who had been with me when I had nothing but debts, a borrowed office in Guadalajara, and a wife who believed in me more than I believed in myself.

I answered, annoyed, lowering my voice so I would not wake Camila.

“What’s going on, Mau? It’s two in the morning.”

On the other end, I only heard heavy breathing.

“Where are you, Alejandro?”

“In Monterrey, I already told you. At the conference.”

“Don’t lie to me right now. Mariana is in the hospital.”

I felt a cold tug in my stomach.

Mariana.

My wife.

The woman I had been married to for eleven years. The one who sold her jewelry when my first business went bankrupt. The one who ate basket tacos with me on the sidewalk when we barely had enough to pay the rent. The one who watched me become a partner at a big consulting firm and never threw it in my face that I barely looked at her anymore.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She fainted at home. I came because the neighbor called me. I brought her to Real San José Hospital. She has a serious infection from appendicitis that got complicated. They’re taking her into surgery now. They need authorization.”

I sat up in bed. Camila moved between the sheets, her makeup smudged and a new bracelet on her wrist, one I had just bought her with the card from our joint account.

For one second, I thought about getting up. Buying the first flight. Making something up. Going back.

But then I looked around.

The suite cost almost forty thousand pesos a night. There were still two days left on the trip. I had already paid for the yacht, the private dinner, the bottles, the gifts. Camila had promised me one last “unforgettable” night. And in my sick mind, the hospital became an inconvenience, an interruption, an uncomfortable scene where I could not do anything.

“Mau, I can’t leave,” I lied. “Flights were canceled because of the storm. I’m stuck. You sign. You’re a doctor, you know what to do.”

There was such a long silence that I thought the call had dropped.

“Are you listening to what I’m telling you?” he finally said. “Your wife could die.”

I swallowed.

“Do whatever is necessary. I’ll pay for everything. As soon as I can, I’ll come back.”

Mauricio did not shout. That was the worst part.

“All right, Alejandro. I’ll sign.”

Then he hung up.

I stayed there with the phone in my hand, breathing as if I had just escaped a problem. Not as if I had just abandoned my wife.

Camila opened her eyes.

“Is everything okay, love?”

The word “love” sounded delicious and filthy to me at the same time.

“Nothing serious,” I said, turning off my main phone. “A family matter.”

“Are we going to the yacht tomorrow?”

I looked at her. She was twenty-three years old, with an easy laugh and zero interest in knowing who was paying for the fantasy.

“Of course,” I answered. “Everything stays the same.”

I turned on my secret phone and left the other one inside the suite’s safe.

That morning, I thought I had been smart.

I did not know that, at that very moment, while Mariana was being taken into the operating room, Mauricio was signing much more than a medical authorization.

He was signing the end of my life as I knew it.

PART 2

I returned to Guadalajara three days later, wearing the perfectly rehearsed face of a devastated husband.