After donating blood to save my boyfriend, I followed a nurse because I saw my name written on a cooler.
I watched her take out my blood bag and throw it into a red container.
Seconds later, I heard my boyfriend say from a VIP room, “She would do anything if she thinks I’m dying.”
I didn’t go in to confront him.
I looked at the bruise on my arm, put away my phone, and that same night I started packing.
“If you really love me, you won’t ask how much blood they need. Just do it for me.”
That had been Diego’s last message before a nurse inserted the needle into my arm.
Forty minutes later, I left the blood bank area of a private clinic in Santa Fe, Mexico City, with weak legs, a white bandage stuck to my elbow, and the absurd certainty that I had just helped save the man I had been with for three years.
At 2:17 a.m., Bruno, one of his best friends, had called me crying.
According to him, Diego had been in an accident while driving a sports car on a private track near Querétaro.
“Valeria, he’s in really bad shape. He lost a lot of blood. He asked for you before going into surgery.”
I didn’t think.
I didn’t hesitate.
I took a taxi, crossed half the city, and signed every paper they put in front of me.
Diego Cárdenas was the son of a well-known family in Lomas de Chapultepec.
I was Valeria Torres, the daughter of an accountant from Toluca and an elementary school teacher.
For three years, I had learned to feel lucky that someone like him had chosen me.
That was what I thought until that morning.
As I looked for the elevator, I saw a nurse pushing a small medical cooler.
There was a label on the side.
VALERIA TORRES.
My name.
I followed her out of curiosity.
