Paula Rouco woke up in pain as the anesthesia wore off.
Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal watch her and notice the slightest low grunt.
“Paulita? How are you?” asked Estrella Berrocal as he approached her, red-eyed and distressed.
As soon as Paula Rouco opened her eyes, she saw the concerned eyes of Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal.
She did not cry out in pain, but she was crying for a moment.
Estrella Berrocal wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, “Are you in pain, do you want a doctor to come and see him?”
Paula Rouco shook her head with tears in her eyes and the first words out of her mouth were to ask: “Is the baby gone … baby?”
Estrella Berrocal pouted and reached out to touch her little face, crying and laughing to reassure her, “Our Paulita is too young to have a baby right now.”
“So, she’s really gone?”
Paula Rouco’s voice trembled.
The long silence of Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal was a silent answer to her question.
Adam Rouco leaned over, stroked his daughter’s little head and said softly, “The most important thing for you now is to recover well, and leave the rest to daddy. No one can bully you with Daddy around.”
Paula Rouco slid down two lines of tears, filled with guilt: “Dad, Estrella, I’m sorry, I’ve been horrible, I’ve embarrassed you.”
Estrella Berrocal said, “You’re our daughter, how can you make us feel ashamed?”
Adam Rouco bowed his head and kissed his daughter on the forehead, saying in a muffled voice, “No matter what you have done, you are still our daughter and daddy and Estrella will always love you and spoil you unconditionally.”
Estrella Berrocal holds her little hand and wraps her hand around Adam Rouco’s big hand at the same time.
Paula Rouco said, “Dad, scold me, I feel so bad, I will feel better if you scold me.”
Now she realizes how ill-informed and willful she was.
“You are daddy’s little girl, how can daddy scold you, just like when you were little even if you broke daddy’s favorite china, daddy wouldn’t scold you. Because daddy loves you.”
…
Paula Rouco was in the hospital for several days at a time and, at first, she often lay alone in her bed, not knowing what to conjure up, tears falling silently from her eyes.
Later, she stopped crying and was much calmer.
Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal looked on in anguish.
In their eyes, Paulita has always been lively and cheerful since she was a child, and she has never been as depressed as she is now.
Severo Laris and the loss of that child hit her hard.
Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal never asked about Severo Laris and the fall down the stairs.
Adam Rouco would rather send someone to investigate than rub salt in Paulita’s heart.
Susana came to see Paula Rouco at the hospital.
Estrella Berrocal said to Susana outside the room: “Susana, you’re usually the best with Paulita, so maybe she’s willing to tell you what she won’t tell me or her father. You can help me make her smile, she hasn’t smiled in a long time and she used to smile a lot. Please.”
Susana was not feeling well either and with a slight bitterness in her eyes said, “Aunt Estrella, don’t worry, Paulita is my best friend and I will make her happy.”
“Yes, thank you.”
Estrella Berrocal gives Susana a hug.
When Susana entered the room, Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal left without interrupting their conversation.
Susana put on a casual face and said, “Do you get bored lying here all the time?”.
Paula Rouco was in a low mood and said, “I want to be discharged but my father and Estrella won’t let me, but when a few more days go by, I should be able to go out, I guess.”
“So you’re going back to La Ciudad Santa to rest for a while?”
Paula Rouco nodded, “My father has contacted the school and is going to take me home for a while.”
Susana was stunned and asked, “Is Uncle Adam asking you to take a break from school?”
“I don’t know, my father doesn’t want to talk about it and I don’t want to worry, Susanna. ”
“It’s okay. You take good care of your health and I’m sure Uncle Adam doesn’t let us juniors worry about poor things.”
Susana took an apple and peeled it with a fruit knife, “I’m going to peel your apple, this apple I bought from the farm store online, the farmer himself grew it, it’s sweet.”
Paula Rouco doesn’t have much to say and people are a bit quiet.
Susana kept talking to her, “Paulita, you know what? I heard that if you keep peeling apples, a wish will come true, do you want to make a wish?”.
“If I hadn’t met Severo Laris. ”
She said it very calmly.
Susana’s grip on the fruit knife gave a jerk and the apple skin broke.
Paula Rouco looked at the broken apple peel and smiled as if it sounded, but she was not happy, “The peel is broken, so I can’t make a wish.”
Susanna’s expression froze for half a second and she smiled, “It’s okay, big deal, I’ll sharpen one for you.”
Her eyes were calm as she said, “But it’s not like you can start life all over again.”
Susanna looked at her blank stare and comforted her, “Since we can’t start over, let’s go out, you’ll forget after a while, besides, Miss Orange is very pretty and deserves a better life and better people.”
“If I’m good, why don’t others like me?”
She was childish, sensitive and vulnerable, the Paula Rouco of yesteryear, not so much.
Susana swallowed saliva, “It’s just that he’s blind.”
Paula Rouco rolled her eyes and asked, “Susana, am I sick?”
She didn’t want to be afflicted, didn’t want to worry her father and Estrella, couldn’t smile at them when she wanted to, and was saddened by her inability to do even what she could to reassure him and Estrella.
It was like being sick, not wanting to talk, not wanting to laugh, very depressed.
Susana encouraged, “Come out in the sun more often, come to me when you want to talk, don’t be bored alone, Uncle Adam and Aunt Estrella love you very much, you can talk to them about anything, I think they will understand, soon, you will be fine.”
Susana talked with Paula Rouco for a good hour. Paula Rouco was a little sleepy and when she fell asleep, Susana left.
As Susana left the room, she saw Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal watching outside.
Susana approached, not forgetting to remind Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal: “Uncle Adam, Aunt Estrella, I think Paulita is a little strange, a little depressed.”
Adam Rouco nodded, with a touch of gravity on his forehead, and said, “We’ll keep an eye on her, she must be traumatized after what happened, and you are young and easily depressed.”
When Susana left, Adam Rouco and Estrella Berrocal stood outside the room, looking through the glass window at Paulita asleep in her hospital bed.
Estrella Berrocal said, “Adam, we’re going to take Paulita home. Didn’t the doctor say she was ready to be discharged, and that it’s better if she goes home to recover; it’s easier for people to get depressed when they’re in the hospital all day?”
“Well, tomorrow we’ll discharge her on the paperwork and take Paulita home to recover.”
Estrella Berrocal looked at the poor little person inside her and sighed, “These days I wonder, Adam, could we have done it wrong? If we hadn’t forced her to break up with Severo Laris, would the outcome have been different?”.
“But in life there are no assumptions, and we can only be thankful that at least now she is separated from Severo Laris, who hurt her. If we hadn’t stopped her in the first place and she had Severo Laris’ baby on our backs, and she was so young, would you have let her break her wings and marry a stranger and live a mediocre, unknown life?”
When Adam Rouco said this, Estrella Berrocal was greatly relieved.
Adam Rouco put his arm around his wife and said in a serious voice, “Even a serious illness heals someday, if we are patient with her and encourage her, it is good that she is young, being young means that scars heal easily.”
Estrella Berrocal nodded and leaned into Adam Rouco’s arms, “Paulita will be fine.”