This was the first time we had touched since that time outside my hotel room, but it was entirely different. There was no electricity, no sensuality lacing our words, no hunger between us. It was a sweet hug of congratulations, and, dare I thought it, pride. It was a relief to be with him like this—and have it mean nothing more. He still wore that gold band on his left hand, so it couldn’t be anything more.
“I couldn’t have done it without you,” I said once we parted.
“Sure you could have.”
I shook my head. “No. You’ve helped so much since joining the trial team, but I actually mean your past work. If you hadn’t made the strides you did, I wouldn’t have thought of this. We wouldn’t be here today.”
I wasn’t imagining that his eyes misted over, not unlike Mandy’s only a few moments ago.
“This is all you, Carolina. And I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to call you that. Please forgive me this once. I am bursting with pride.”
“Thank you.”
“So what’s next for you?” he asked.
“Well, cure cancer, of course,” I said. Everyone always looked at me like I was crazy when I said that. I wasn’t delusional; I knew I probably wouldn’t be the one person who cured cancer. It would take a cooperative international effort to one day eradicate this disease from our planet, but I said those words like a promise:I will do my part.
Hector threw his head back with a laugh. “I don’t doubt it. I feel bad for cancer. I think it has met its match.”
“I have to go. I have to wrap up a few things and go tell Dad.”
“Congratulations, Carolina.”
Dad wasn’tat home when I got there. I turned on the television, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I shut it off and paced the small living room. It was so quiet in the house that I easily heard the sound of tires coming up the driveway, signaling his arrival.
“Mija,”he said as he entered the front door. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then, why are you here?”
I knew he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but a pang of guilt radiated through my ribcage all the same. I had overworked the last two years, completely neglecting my family and friends. The clinical trial and my patients had consumed me. I had thought of little else. I worked to fill up the hours in such a way that I could not spend a single second of any day thinking about Hector and what we had almost been.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I know I’ve been busy, but I have good news.”
When I told him the trial results and explained what that meant in non-medical terms, he wept.
My father was a proud man. He was a strong, hardworking, old-school, Mexican man. A man like that didn’t cry, and still, he’d let me see him cry exactly twice. There was never any shame in it. The first time was at my mom’s funeral, and the second time was at this very moment.
“Really?” He looked up at me with those glistening black eyes. Wrinkles etched the outside corners of each eye—the echoes of constant smiling.
“Yes, Dad. Really.”
He was sitting now, and I knelt before him. I placed my head on his lap like I had when I was a little girl, and he patted my head. I didn’t care that his clothes were full of black stains from the garage, or that the smell of grease would end up in my hair.
“Papi,” I croaked out. “I could have saved her.”
It was a hard admission to make. I couldn’t look at him. It was irrational—to feel shame at not being able to save her when I had only been a child. The scientific, rational part of my brain assured me it couldn’t have been my fault. But my irrational side, the side that sometimes won out in internal battles, the side of my heart,that sidedidn’t free me of the shame of failure.
He stroked my hair gently. We wept now, our sobs the only sound in the quiet house.
“I know,mija.I know.”
“You think she would forgive me?” I asked, even fully understanding how irrational that line of thinking was.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. “Look at me.” He grabbed my chin and pulled my face up to force me into looking at him. I sat back on my heels. “Carolina Isabel Ramirez Fuentes, there is nothing you could have done. You hear me?”
“I know. But if it had beennow, I could have—” I insisted.