Then his eyes returned to the ultrasound screen.
His voice resounded calmly, but cold and sharp:
“Mr. Diego, before you keep insulting your wife—you need to look very closely at what appears here... The exam room didn’t expand to accommodate the intrusion. Instead, the walls of a white
bone
sterile, coated with framed anatomical cross-sections of the human pelvis and plastic dispensers of antiseptic wipes, appeared to contract, trapping the four of us in a heavy, pressurized vacuum.
The acoustic rhythm of the fetal beats — *tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tum*— continued to resonate in the console’s built-in speakers at a steady rate of one hundred and fifty-four beats per minute. It was a clean and fast cadence, indifferent to the three adults who were next to the exploration table.
Diego was a meter twenty centimeters from the edge of my mattress covered in paper. He had not removed his coat of dark wool; his shoulders were still wet from the light drizzle that fell on Fourth Avenue. His stance was rigid, with his chin held high, showing the theatrical disdain he used to reserve for low-level subcontractors in his company’s works.
Next to her, Paula kept a well-kept hand slightly leaning on the elbow of her coat. He wore brown hair combed on a smooth, shiny mane, and wore a cream-colored cashmere-necked sweater that gave off a light aroma of high-end almond flower perfume; the same fragrance he had worn six months ago when he sat at our table, complementing the texture of my homemade focaccia.
