“Will they ask for money?” she whispered.
“No,” Alejandro said. “I’ll handle it.”
He made calls. Signed forms. Authorized treatments without blinking at costs that once would have seemed significant to anyone else.
At 3:17 a.m., a doctor approached.
“He’s severely malnourished and hypothermic,” she said. “But you brought him in just in time. If you’d waited another hour…”
She didn’t finish.
Alejandro exhaled for the first time all night.
Mateo survived.
Child services was notified, as protocol required. The truth emerged slowly: their mother had died months earlier. Their father had been absent long before that. They had been drifting between shelters until they stopped going altogether.
Valeria had been trying to protect her brother alone.
Days turned into weeks. Mateo regained weight. Color returned to his cheeks. Valeria smiled cautiously, like someone testing whether the world was safe enough to trust.
Alejandro visited every day.
At first, it was guilt. Then responsibility.
Then something else.
One afternoon, Mateo reached for Alejandro’s finger and refused to let go.
Alejandro’s chest tightened.
He spoke to social workers. To lawyers. To himself in long, sleepless nights.