Aurelio could not fix this.

So he learned, at seventy, in a plastic chair outside an intensive care unit, the thing his fortune had spared him from ever learning: how to sit with someone he loved in the dark, powerless, and stay.

Chapter 23 — The Clock

News of Santiago’s condition reached the public, tangled together with the criminal case now building against Griselda.

The Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it was investigating her for the abuse, for the fraudulent looting of the boy’s inheritance, for the forged documents — and for possible crimes relating to the substances found in his body.

The doctor who had signed the false diagnosis was arrested.