She sat on the edge of the immense bed, carved from dark wood, pressing her slender, outstretched fingers to her temples. The pain wasn’t just a headache; it was a slow, heavy wave spreading through her skull, as if someone inside her were ringing invisible bells. Doña Margarita Andrade, mother of the famous billionaire Alejandro Romero, had been suffering attacks for weeks that left her groaning at dawn, unable to find rest in any position.
The best doctors in Mexico City had paraded through this house in Las Lomas: neurologists, surgeons, therapists. They all examined the results, frowned, and repeated the same phrases as if reading from a script.
—The CT scan is perfect.
—The tests are impeccable.
—The blood pressure… better than that of a twenty-year-old woman.
And yet, the pain was so brutal that, sometimes, Doña Margarita would lose consciousness, pale, as if life were silently slipping away from her.
Alejandro, accustomed to solving any problem with money, contracts, contacts, or technology, was crumbling for the first time. He had brought in specialists from Japan, Germany, and Switzerland. He had bought rare medications and therapies that cost more than a house. He had even ordered the north wing of the mansion to be converted into a mini-hospital: machines, monitors, hospital beds.
Nothing helped.
The illness —or whatever it was— lived in her mother’s mind like a shadow that could not disappear.
That night, one of the worst, Alejandro sat by the bed, holding Doña Margarita’s cold hand. She was breathing with difficulty, her lips almost colorless. Her eyes trembled every time the pain returned like a blow.
Alejandro swallowed hard as he looked at his mother’s face.
“Mom… hold on, please,” she whispered. “The doctor’s coming… he’s coming…”
But he himself did not believe it.
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