The little girl tumbles into her mother’s arms sobbing, tiny fingers digging into the fabric of Carmen’s uniform like she’s trying to climb back inside safety itself. Carmen curls around her on the floor, shaking. You cannot move fast enough to help them, and the helplessness hits you so hard it almost makes you black out.
It also makes you furious in a way you haven’t felt in two years.
Real fury. Not the brittle kind that wrote thirty-seven rules and demanded silence because silence was easier than humiliation. Not the cold, tyrannical kind that drove nurses away and turned your office into a mausoleum. This is something cleaner, hotter, more dangerous. The kind that reminds a man what he used to do before his body betrayed him and everyone around him started speaking as if he were already gone.
The older of the two lawyers clears his throat first.
“Señor Garza,” he says cautiously, “if you are able to communicate—”
“I said,” you rasp, “get out.”
The lawyer stops.
Mauricio tries to recover. He is good at that, you’ll give him that. Your late sister’s boy always had a talent for finding the smoothest lie in the room and stepping into it before anyone else noticed what he was covering. He straightens his jacket, smooths his cuffs, and gives a nervous little laugh.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” he says. “The child ran in here, startled you, and Carmen overreacted—”
You slam your hand against the armrest.
The crack of palm against wood silences him better than shouting could have.
You have not moved that fast in months. The pain blooms immediately, hot and electric, but the look on his face almost makes it worth it. He genuinely thought your body was too weak to answer him now. You can see it in the shock, the recalculation, the first ugly shimmer of panic rising through the polish.
One of the lawyers steps back.
The other looks at Mauricio, then at you, and understands the problem instantly. If you can speak, if you can issue commands, if you can react coherently in real time, the guardianship petition they came to present this morning changes shape completely. It no longer looks like responsible family intervention.
It looks like theft arriving early.
“Perhaps,” the older lawyer says carefully, “this is not the appropriate moment for—”
“No,” you say. “It is.”
