Not a visitor in a raincoat. Not a doctor. A man in a faded gray shirt and black sweatpants, thin almost to the point of illness, his face hollow but sharply familiar in a way that makes my stomach drop. For one impossible second my mind refuses to assemble what my eyes are seeing. Then the pieces lock together, and the world tilts beneath me.
He has Adrián’s face.
Not exactly. Not perfectly. But close enough that I feel the hallway lurch.
The same dark eyes. The same straight nose. The same line of the jaw, only leaner, rougher, sharpened by hardship. He looks like Adrián pulled through fever and left out in bad weather. Or like a family photograph warped by years in the sun. He is staring at Teresa with a bitterness so old it seems to have calcified.
“You let him marry her,” the man says, and now the words are knives because there is no misunderstanding left. “You let him build a whole life on top of my name.”
Inside the room, Adrián turns sharply, as if some instinct has warned him. His eyes find the gap in the door.