I'm on my way to the psychiatric hospitalization archive. I requested to review a copy of Arturo Figueroa Sanz's physical file. It's not a necessary procedure, but I have the impression that there's something there that isn't in the electronic records. I turn down the side corridor that connects to the nursing station. And then I see him.
Tomás.
He's standing in front of the coffee machine, wearing a blue sweatshirt open over his uniform. He has a notebook in his hand, but he's not writing. He's just standing there, as if his body were being held up by something other than the floor. He radiates a constructed calm, as if he had been training for years to remain steady in the midst of chaos.
From where I stand, he can't see me. I stop next to a column, adjusting the papers in the folder I'm carrying, not because I need to, but because it gives me an excuse.
An intern approaches him. I recognize her: short rotation, new face. She speaks in a low voice. He responds briefly, with a slight smile. She laughs, looks down, and leaves.
The scene is harmless, professional. But something in me is triggered with a force I can't explain clinically. Claudia, in my head:
"You can't go on forever putting off the pleasure that someone other than yourself gives you."
And then the image changes.
A memory settles in with sudden clarity: a night with Ignacio, his breath close to me, his voice whispering orders disguised as compliments. I feel the chills down my spine, my skin prickling, the certainty that I could let go of control without losing myself. My hands tied, my breath held. The feeling of letting myself go completely, as if no other moment existed but that one. The memory fades, but it leaves a trail. And in front of me, Tomás is still there. His body projects a strength that is hidden in his composure. Every line of his uniform reveals a defined shape. A torso sculpted to resist, not to show off. Firm legs, aligned posture. His physique seems made to hold the weight of the world... or to impose it.
The folder trembles slightly in my hands.
I force myself to continue. When I pass in front of the station, he is no longer there. I didn't hear footsteps. I didn't see him leave. He just stopped being there. As if he knew when to disappear.
The archive room retains a coldness that belongs to no season. It smells of tamed dust and dry ink. The archivist has me sign a withdrawal form: date, time, reason, department. She hands me the file on a tray, as if she were handing me an object that weighs more than the paper it is made of. "Return it before 5:30 p.m.," she says. I nod.
I open the folder. The top document is the same one I saw that early morning, already printed when I arrived. I reread it without looking for anything in particular: the resident's instructions, the dosage, the precise wording. At the end, the signature: Dr. Cristian Gajardo. Something tenses up inside me. A vague image overlaps in my mind: the same sheet, the same layout... but another name. I try to place it, to pinpoint it; I can't. The scene comes back to my mind with its cold lights and the hum of the printing machine. I remember seeing the early response team in the distance, the feeling of having reached the end of something that was already decided.
I was tired. I covered clinical duties that were not my responsibility. I entered with the code already closed. Everything could have played with my perception. Even so, the echo of doubt does not disappear; it just settles like an underground stream that has not yet found a way to emerge.
I turn to the nursing sheet. The signs are written in steady handwriting, without peaks or drops. Medications administered, secure restraint, checks every two hours, "no behavioral escalation." An impeccable record, excessively impeccable. I look for print stamps on the back: three marks, same date, different times. They don't reveal new versions, only that someone printed more than once. I mentally underline the repetition; repetition is sometimes the alibi of order.
"Do you need anything else?" asks the archivist from her desk.
"A simple copy of this nursing sheet," I reply. "And, if it exists, the associated print voucher."
She types silently. She brings me a small folder with print queue receipts. There are codes without names, but with times. Two of them match my marks. I write down the numbers.
I continue. In the interconsultation section, the specialist's reevaluation appears as "pending." There are no recorded requests with exact times, only "request reiterated." I remember the pager, which is sometimes a faith without a church: you call, someone listens, no one answers. I close my eyes for a moment; I count to five; I come back. There is also a "physical restraint" form, correctly signed, with the time measured in segments, as if the body were a task and not a person.
I add to my notebook, in tight handwriting: "Cross hours of printing queue with spooler—restarts 7:12–7:19 a.m.—; take copies to Audit; request roster of inmates on duty on the 29th and 30th."
I stare at the bottom margin of the page for a minute. Sometimes the margins hold more than the center. Someone drew a half-erased pencil line with a pen. As if they had written something down and then regretted it. I tilt the paper; in the slanting light, I can make out a word: "transfer." Nothing else. No time. No destination. A pencil shadow that did not survive the regret.
"Can I take a photo?" I ask.
"No, doctor," replies the archivist. "Copies by office. We'll make one to size, but without handwritten notes."
"I understand. Thank you."
I make a note in my notebook of the ghost of that word. I close the file with a sigh I don't hear. I return it with the same respect with which it was given to me. I sign the return form.
The clock reads 6:04 p.m. when I close my workstation. It was a long day, but not as long as the feeling I've been carrying since morning: that mixture of certainty and emptiness that remains when the evidence is insufficient, and yet suspicion fills the room.
As I check my work email one last time, a thought I had stopped thinking about reappears: the conversation with Tomás a few days ago, next to the pedestrian exit. "She's not very good at lying," he said, without emphasis, with a weariness that seemed ancient. At the time, it didn't sound like an accusation to me; now, with the file fresh in my hands, it feels like something he shouldn't have said. As if his body had gotten ahead of his mind.
I turn off the computer. I grab my coat. In the elevator, I review the sequence of shifts, Veronica's statements, the camera cut from 7:12 to 7:34, the restarts, the temporary passes. Everything continues to float between the suspicious and the unprovable.
As I leave the building, the afternoon light filters through the trees at the entrance. The metal fence casts rectangular shadows on the ground. And there he is, again. Sitting on the concrete bench, just before the exit.
Tomás.
He's no longer wearing his uniform. He is wearing a gray T-shirt that seems to have known his body forever; his arms, muscular but not ostentatious, rest on his thighs. Dark jeans, clean sneakers. His clothes are as precise as his way of speaking.
He doesn't see me right away. He looks up when I'm already a few feet away. He nods, as if he had been waiting for me.
"Are you done for the day, Doctor?"
"For today, yes."
"Me too."
I'm about to keep walking when his voice returns, without raising his tone:
"Would you like to have a coffee?"
The question is simple, with no apparent intention, but the way he says it demands an answer.
"Nearby?"
"I know a place five minutes' walk away. It's quiet. And it's not full of hospital staff."
I smile slightly.
"Let's go."
The place is small: exposed brick, warm lighting, well-spaced tables. Soft music, the smell of freshly ground coffee, display cases with simple but carefully prepared pastries. Everything seems to be in its place. We sit by the window. He orders a double espresso; I order a cappuccino.
"Do you always stay so long after your shift?" I ask.
"It depends on the day," he says. "And on what you don't want to take home with you."
"And today?"
"Today..." He chooses his words carefully. "Today I preferred not to think alone."
He doesn't say it dramatically, but it's not casual. His back is straight, his shoulders relaxed, his chin tilted slightly toward me, as if offering me a place, not an explanation. The tension is just below the surface; it doesn't explode, it holds.
"When you told me about Veronica," I venture, "it sounded like you knew something that wasn't in the records."
He picks up his cup without drinking.
"It was a poorly chosen phrase," he replies, measuredly. Sometimes fatigue confuses intuition with memory.
"And does that happen often?"
"Not with everyone."
The silence that follows is not uncomfortable. It is a hallway. We could cross it or stay on this side. I don't cross. Or not yet.
"Why did you choose nursing?" I ask, shifting the focus.
"Because nursing is the art of caring," he says, "observing, evaluating, deciding, and supporting. It's not just 'making beds' or 'running IVs'; it's exercising your own judgment, prioritizing risks, educating, advocating for the patient, and coordinating the team. I like hands because they think. I work in a team, yes, but I have professional autonomy: I don't blindly obey."
She says this, and I think of Arturo. Of how many bodies are held differently depending on who is looking at them.
"And you?" she asks. "Why writing and not something else?"
"Because I write better than I comfort," I reply. "And because I understood that if you don't write, sometimes you don't exist."
"You still exist," she says. "It's just that no one takes responsibility for you."
He looks at me a second longer than a colleague would look at another. It's not invasive, but it's not neutral either. I want to tell him that I also carry things that are not written, that sometimes I stand on the edge because the center burns, that the order I seem to love is also my defense. I don't say it. I drink coffee.
"Do you know something about the case that I don't know?" I ask, finally.
"I know there are days when the system works to make sure no one remembers," he says, without embellishment. "And I know that sometimes, when someone decides to remember, the system calls it a problem."
"Are you warning me about something?"
"I'm telling you to watch your back," he replies.
It might sound patronizing. It's not. It sounds like someone who has already hit something harder than a wall.
We run out of things to talk about, and for the first time, silence is a possibility. He fills it with a simple gesture: he pushes the sugar packet toward me, even though he knows I don't sweeten my coffee. That detail is proof: he's attentive, even when he gets it wrong. I smile at him without showing my teeth. He looks down for a second, as if the floor were less complex than my face.
I pay for my coffee. We say goodbye without a handshake. He doesn't ask if we'll see each other tomorrow. I don't say I'll look for him. We walk down the same sidewalk and part ways at the corner, each heading to our cars.
At home, Wilson greets me with his usual choreography. His paws pound the floor with unmistakable joy. I bend down and hug him tighter than usual. He licks my palm; it tastes like coffee and hallway.
I change my clothes. I leave my uniform in the hamper. I open the kitchen window; the air carries the smell of bread from another house. I put water on to boil without knowing why. I look at my phone. I don't text. I turn on a lamp and turn off the main light.
I sit on the sofa with Wilson at my feet and let the conversation come back in the form of details: the low voice, the way he hesitated before answering, his "I preferred not to think alone," his warning to watch my back. And then I feel it. It's not just desire. It's something deeper and more dangerous: the promise of a complicity that could push my limits without asking permission.
I think about the case. If I get involved with him, I stop looking from the outside. If I cross that line, the undefeated objectivity I boasted of maintaining becomes a fable. And yet, the line has already moved. I didn't cross it; I got too close.
I force myself to bring back the center: Arturo Figueroa Sanz. The black section. The copies printed more than once. The word "transfer" erased. The approximate insistences. The supplier with a temporary pass. The pieces that don't fit. The promise of an audit. The inmate roster. The pager that rings on a table and no one picks up.
I turn on the desk lamp. I open the notebook. I write in capital letters: "KEEP ASKING, EVEN IF THEY DON'T ANSWER." Below, a new list:
— Check with the gatehouse to see if the camera supplier entered with an internal escort and who it was.
— Confirm with IT whether the reboots were scheduled or contingent (name of the person who executed them).
— Ask Maintenance for work orders by area, not global, to narrow down the location.
— Talk to Veronica again, ask for exact times and names of those who were at the station during those hours.
— Ask Tomás "what was missing?" without naming anyone else.
Wilson rests his snout on my knee. I pet him. His body relaxes a millimeter. I don't write down the rest. I don't write down "Tomás attracts me," I don't write down "he can choose my questions," I don't write down "I'm afraid." I choose not to put it in writing. Good habits: knowing what to write and what to hold in the body.
I close the notebook. I walk to the window. The street is empty like a blank page. I'll drive early tomorrow; arriving early always clears my mind. I turn off the lamp.
Before going to sleep, I leave a single sentence in the margin of my mind, like someone marking a page with their finger: "Remembering is not accusing; it is holding on." If the system prefers oblivion, I will insist on the opposite. Tomorrow, coffee. Tomorrow, hallways. Tomorrow, questions. And, perhaps, an answer that is not dressed up in protocol.