“He said he’d sell his motorcycle if he had to. He begged me not to let any more time pass.”
Elena frowned.
“That doesn’t sound like someone abandoning their daughter.”
“No,” the doctor replied. “It sounds like a terrified father.”
Mariana checked Lucía’s sweatshirt and put it in a clean bag. In the pocket, she found a folded pharmacy receipt. On the back, written in blue pen, was a hurried phrase:
“Call Cárdenas. Don’t wait.”
Meanwhile, Elena and Mariana returned to the house. In Diego’s bedroom, they found his wallet on the nightstand, his keys next to a photo of Lucía dressed as an Adelita in a school festival, and several receipts for small loans.
On the kitchen calendar were notes written in weary handwriting:
“Double shift.”
“Lucía’s appointment.”
“Buy medicine.”
“Pay the electricity bill.”
“Call the insurance company again.”
Mariana felt embarrassed for all the comments she had read that morning. That house didn’t tell the story of abandonment. It told the story of someone trying to hold onto their world with nothing.
As they were leaving, Don Eusebio, an elderly neighbor, approached under a broken umbrella.
“I saw Diego that afternoon,” he said softly. “He was running to the pharmacy, soaking wet. He yelled to me that his daughter’s medicine couldn’t wait.”
Elena looked at him seriously.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
Don Eusebio lowered his gaze.
“Because around here, nobody gets involved. Until something terrible happens.”
That night, at the nurses’ station, the phone rang. Marisol answered.
“Children’s Hospital, good evening.”
On the other end, there was faint breathing.
“Please… tell me if my daughter is okay.”
Marisol froze.
“Who’s speaking?”
“Lucía… my little girl… is she alive?”
The call cut off.
Lucía, who had been listening from her bed, sat up abruptly.
“It was my dad! I know it was him!”
Mariana tried to calm her down.
“We’re not sure, my little girl.”
Lucía cried.
“Ask him if I’m his sunshine. He always calls me that.”
Minutes later, another hospital called with unbelievable news: they had an unidentified man, seriously injured after a motorcycle accident during the storm. Every time he woke up, he repeated the same thing:
“My little girl is alone. I have to get back to Lucía.”
And just before they could confirm if that man was Diego Morales, the door to the room burst open.
PART 3
The woman who entered the room was soaking wet, her face contorted with rage, and her cell phone trembling in her hand.
Lucía’s eyes widened.
“Aunt Carmen?”
Carmen Morales ran to the bed and knelt beside her.
“Forgive me, my child. Forgive me for believing what everyone was saying.”
Lucía squeezed her hand.
“Where is my father?”
Carmen wept.
“He’s alive.”
The truth began to emerge little by little.
Diego had gone out in the storm to buy medicine and some food. Lucía had spent the afternoon in severe pain, and he didn’t want to wait any longer. As he crossed an avenue near the pharmacy, a delivery van lost control on the wet pavement and hit his motorcycle.
Diego was thrown against the sidewalk. Because he had left in a hurry, without his wallet or ID, the paramedics took him unconscious to a hospital in another town as an unidentified patient.
When he woke up intermittently, he was confused. He couldn’t remember complete numbers. He couldn’t explain exactly where he lived. But he never stopped repeating his daughter’s name.
He never stopped trying to go back.
And when he finally managed to call from a borrowed phone, the signal dropped before he could say who it was.
Two hours later, an ambulance took Diego to the same hospital where Lucía was.
She saw him first.
“Dad!”
Diego came in pale, with bruises on his face, a bandage on his head, and his arm in a sling. Hearing her voice, he completely broke down.
“Sunshine…”
Lucía stretched out her arms through the IV tubing. Diego made it to the bed as best he could and hugged her gently, crying into her hair.
“I tried to come back, my love. I swear. I tried to come back.”
“I told them you hadn’t left me,” she sobbed.
Outside the room, several neighbors remained silent. Doña Gloria deleted her Facebook posts with trembling hands. Don Eusebio wiped his eyes.
“He wasn’t the only one who failed,” he said hoarsely. We all failed. We saw a little girl in danger and chose to gossip.
The story changed that very afternoon. Diego stopped being “the monster of Las Rosas” and became the father who, even wounded and lost, only thought about returning to his daughter.
Days later, when Lucía was discharged with a clear treatment plan, she returned home holding her father’s hand. But the street was no longer the same.
The neighbors had stocked the refrigerator, fixed the door, cleaned the yard, and painted the porch yellow because Lucía said that color looked like the sun.
At the entrance, there was a drawing taped up. It was Lucía holding Diego’s hand, Pancho beside her, and above it a phrase written in crayon:
“My dad and his little sunshine.”
Diego
