Twelve Days of Vigil and an Unexpected Warning
For almost two weeks I did not leave Gabriel’s bed, my husband, at the General Hospital in Mexico City. A truck with a semi-trailer had hit his truck on the Periférico, leaving him with fractured ribs, a serious spinal injury and cerebral edema. The doctors spoke cautiously; I barely slept in a rigid armchair and fed myself on what the cafeteria offered.
Gabriel was co-founder, together with his brother Mauricio, of Transportes Aranda. While I prayed for his life, Mauricio appeared in the hospital with expensive suits and an impatient expression, as if the tragedy were a setback in his schedule. He kept telling me that the company couldn’t stop. What he didn’t know was that, before I became a university professor of accounting, I had spent eight years analyzing financial fraud for the prosecution.
A 500-peso bill with a hidden message
In the next bed rested Doña Elvira, an elderly woman with no visitors. I began to bring him broth, chopped fruit and sweet bread, without expecting anything in return. One afternoon, as she was adjusting her pillow, she held my wrist firmly and whispered, “Your husband’s accident was no accident.”
He slipped an old 500-peso bill into my hand. On the edge, written in tiny blue ink, were six digits, some initials and three words: “BRAKE DUCT — PLATFORM 7.” The numbers matched the license plate of Gabriel’s truck; platform 7 was a restricted area of the Transportes Aranda yard; and the initials MA could only refer to Mauricio Aranda.
