Chapter Text
My youngest son has always been a mystery to me. He is bright and quick, but sulky and stubborn. He looks like me in my younger days, tall, thin with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. Not much of an ass, but from what I’ve heard, the front makes up for that. Or used to make… Javier is 47. He has been a DEA agent for more than a decade, highly qualified, focussed, and unrelenting. A hard man. Hardened by the things he has seen and done. I told him … I warned him that life would change him, but he wouldn’t listen. He never listens to me.
Javí has always been a ladies’ man. His mother, my late wife, Alicia, doted on him. As did Pete (or Abuelíta as he will still call her). They pampered him, and he loved them. Jorge, Javí’s older brother always came second. Funnily enough, that hasn’t stopped him from loving Javí as well. Jorge thinks he’s funny. I’m not so sure about that. I think my son has been sad and lonely for a long time. (That wedding wouldn’t have changed that one bit. He would have been miserable and lonely even with a wife.)
I called him bright, yeah, you know, that’s what dads will tell you about their bachelor sons. They’re bright and handsome. Javí is. He really is. He holds two titles (in Psychology and Sociology), and he’s taught in college. He was a deputy sheriff before he was old enough to legally wear a gun. And he was in his twenties when he joined the Colombian special unit. Bloque de Búsceda. He’s trained in combat, and he’s instructed junior officers for years. He helped capture Pablo Escobar. Ironically, when they shot Escobar, Javí had been in the States, sent on a wild goose chase. He saw the news on TV, and trust me, it was a slap to his face. My son is one of the best in his line of work, but he is also a beautiful person. He won’t allow many to see, but he’s a kind-hearted, gentle soul who loves sitting on the porch, a hen in his lap, smoking and watching the sun rise. He’s never been one for sunsets. Says he prefers beginnings rather than ends.
And now he’s here.
When they took me to his bedside, I didn’t recognize him. He was lying on his side, thin and fragile, covered by a bluish hospital sheet. He was so pale! I remember my son under a Texan sun, tanned and sweating, grinning at me while he is fixing fences. The man on that bed didn’t look like my boy. The nurse handed me his file. Apparently, they had identified him by his teeth and his fingerprints. I shuddered and tried to get a better look at the patient. He was lying still, sedated, and his arms were in front of his chest hiding his face. His greasy hair was the colour of Javí’s, but my boy would never have let himself go like this. “He’s developed a fever,” the nurse explained and touched the man’s head. He whimpered almost inaudibly at her touch, “He’s running a really bad infection, as you can see,” she pointed at the bags draining the man’s body of all sorts of fluids. There were four of them, three dark ones, almost black, and one that seemed to hold blood. They were filling steadily, and the nurse said that they had been for almost a week, “He’s bleeding internally,” the damage had been extensive. Rape, they had said on the phone. So, of course, I had expected my Javí shrugging it off with a handful of cruel jokes, calling his attackers a pain in the ass. I hadn’t expected a man so torn and broken. The nurse slowly brought the man’s hands down to his chest, all the while talking to him and explaining why she was doing it, that his dad was here to see him, that he wanted to see his face, but the man hadn’t shown any reaction. Once the hands were gone, I could see the small face, badly bruised. His bottom lip was split, and there was a nasty gash across his left cheek. It could have been my Javí. “I have downed his tranquilizers. He should wake up soon,” the nurse smiled and softly ran a finger along the man’s wrist. He seemed to give a small huff but remained immobile, “If you notice anything or if he says, here’s the emergency button,” she placed a remote on a cord in my palm, “He hasn’t talked to us, though he’s responsive, but the trauma his body has suffered is severe.” I nodded, and she left us alone. I wondered if I should touch the man, but Javí has never been one for PDA, so I just sat there watching him come round, and all at once, I heard him. Papá. It had been more of a whisper, and I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard the word, but then he whispered it again. His heavy-lidded eyes were on me, and he was attempting a smile. It was horrible. “Sí, sí, papa está aquí,” I said and moved closer, bringing my hand to the man’s shoulder. He flinched under my touch and wailed as if in pain, and I removed my hand. “Papá!” he mewled, and his body was seizing. His arms weakly went around his form as he tried to curl in on himself, “Pap-pah-ahh,” his face scrunched up, and I don’t know if I’d pressed the button or if it was just a coincidence, but the kind nurse came rushing back, stroking Javí’s head with one hand and upping his drugs with the other. “Papá,” he whispered as he was slipping away, and I couldn’t stop the tears, “Mí híjo,” my wonderful son! I watched Javí go limp again, the nurse cradling him and speaking words of comfort, and then he was lying still, helpless, broken. The blanket had slipped off his shoulders, and I saw the marks on his arms, saw the tubes and needles they had stuck into him, too. They were feeding him all sorts of things.
There were tubes up his nostrils, too. A machine was helping him breathe. He was so frail. I sat down heavily, unsure what mercy to pray for. A peaceful death or a recovery that I feared would be unlikely. The nurse was convinced that Javí was strong, “He’s a fighter. What brought him to Mexico?” I sighed and remained vague. Work. She nodded, “He doesn’t talk about work,” yeah, I thought, that figured if he hadn’t talked at all, “oh, but he asked the doctor about sex. After the first operation.” I huffed. That was my Javí. “So what about sex?” The nurse gaped at me and said that she wasn’t sure. It was too early to say if he’d still be functional. She also asked if sex was something Javí had enjoyed. “Very much so, Hermosa,” I winked at her, and she nodded. “Is he good at his job?” she wondered, and I said yes. He was. “He’s beautiful,” she then offered, “I mean, he’s obviously looking after himself,” she gestured at Javí’s skin which was smooth and shiny. I rubbed my eyes. Smooth and shiny, alright, but what was the point if he died? “He won’t die,” the nurse smiled, “he’ll hurt, and it will take some time, but he’ll recover.” She asked me to tell her about him, and I showed her some photographs that I’m keeping in my wallet (Javí and his first car and Javí sitting on a fence, happy days). She bit her bottom lip and said he looked cute, then she went to fetch the things for his beauty treatment. I frowned, and she gave me a good-natured grin, only to come back with some oils and lotions, a comb and a pair of scissors, a bowl and a plastic sheet. She explained that she couldn’t really wash Javí’s hair, but she could soap and rinse it with him lying there, and she showed me. She also combed and dried his hair before she gently trimmed the hairs on his moustache. “He likes that,” she smiled, “can you see that?” She pointed at Javí’s lips that seemed to form a minuscule smile, but maybe I was imagining it. The nurse removed Javí’s thin gown, and I gasped at the bruises to my son’s chest. “I thought you said raped,” I furrowed my brow at the abrasions on the honeyed flesh on Javí’s belly. The marks were deep, the wounds an angry red and black, half-festered. His front was black and blue up to his chest, and I wondered why that was. The back looked even worse. There were black bruises to his sides. He couldn’t have been kicked that viciously surely. “They used a metal bar,” the nurse said, “we found it … inside.” I stared at her in horror. A metal bar? “Quite a sharp one, about this long,” she gestured a length of 50 centimetres, and I exhaled and squeezed my eyes shut. They had stuck a metal pole into my boy? Why? “To inflict maximum damage. We cannot be sure how many punches he’s taken, but the doctors think about a hundred. Probably more.” I must have paled (as the nurse came over and helped me sit down) and looked at the sleeping form. A hundred punches?! And Javí had been conscious for all of it?! “We think so, yes,” the nurse confirmed, and my tears were flowing more freely. Who would do that sort of thing? Who would do this to my beautiful boy? “Mí híjo,” I said, and the nurse gave me a little smile, before she turned her attention back to Javí, rubbing oil onto his skin and treating the cuts and bruises with a thick white cream.