A rainy night makes the city look like a broken mirror. I’d been driving for ten hours before I saw her on the corner of the main avenue, soaked, one hand on her stomach and the other desperately raised. I approached, and before I could say anything, she opened the back door.
“Please, please,” she begged. “I need to get to San José Hospital. The baby’s coming.”
She was young, maybe twenty-five, her face contorted with pain.
Her cheeks were wet, although I couldn’t tell if it was from the rain or her tears. “Get in, get in,” I said. “Relax, we’ll get there.”
I started quickly, but carefully.
She was breathing deeply, trying to control her contractions. “What’s your name?” I asked, trying to keep her calm. “Carolina,” she answered between gasps.
“Oh God, it hurts so much.”
“It’s almost time, Carolina. Breathe like they taught you, okay?”
“I didn’t go to class,” she said, her voice cracking. “I couldn’t… I don’t have anyone.
Her father left when he found out I was pregnant.”
A lump formed in my throat. I thought of my own daughter, who was about this girl’s age. “Now you have me, okay?
You’re not alone. We’ll get there all right.”
The traffic was stifled by the rain, yet I took side streets I knew by heart after twenty years of driving a taxi. Carolina moaned in the backseat.
“I won’t be able to pay,” she said suddenly. “I spent everything I had on the deposit for the apartment. I… I’m so sorry.”
“Forget about that,” I replied.
Now the important thing is that you and your baby are fine. As we finally arrived at the hospital, I ran downstairs to get help. Two nurses came out with a wheelchair and quickly took her to the emergency room.
She turned to look at me before entering. “Wait! What’s your name?”
“Roberto,” I yelled.
“Roberto Méndez! But don’t worry about that for now. Good luck!”
I stood there in the rain.
I returned to the taxi, turned off the meter I’d never turned on, and came back home thinking about that lonely girl about to become a mother. The days passed, and I thought I’d never know what had happened to Carolina and her baby. Until one afternoon, three weeks later, I received a call from an unknown number.
“Mr. Roberto Méndez?” a woman’s voice asked. “Yes, who’s speaking?”
“I’m Carolina, from the taxi.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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