When Love Burned to Nothing

Chicago, Illinois

Painful screams could be heard through the door of the delivery room in the old hospital. Two men standing guard in front of the room endured their pain when the screams resumed.

Dell Rosie, standing not far from the delivery bed, looked still, watching a nurse and a middle-aged doctor who helped give birth to a woman. Now and then, he glanced at his colleague, who was also watching from the corner room.

There was a sound of a baby crying after a long struggle. Her loud voice filled the tension in the room. 

“Once again, Ma’am,” said the doctor with a low voice. “Inhale and exhale slowly.”

“I can’t anymore,” hissed the woman.

Rosie approached the delivery bed and said sternly, “If you choose to die here, Cinzia, imagine what will happen to these babies.”

The woman moaned in tears at his words.

“Please don’t hurt them,” she whispered in a hoarse voice that barely drained from screaming.

The man paused again and signaled to the doctor to finish the labor immediately.

A few minutes later, there was another loud wail that counterbalanced the twin's cries.

Rosie stared flatly at the two baby girls. His attention returned to Cinzia, who sobbed in grief.

“I want to keep both of them with me, Rosie,” said Cinzia with tears. Almost half an hour, she brought the two little angels into the world, but she had not been allowed to embrace them.

The man sitting in the corner of the room snorted at the request as if it was absurd. The scratches along his arm twitched when he heard that.

“Shut your mouth, puta,” hissed the man. “Rosie, kill the babies. Take Cedro and Amato with you.” The man stood up and left the delivery room.

Hearing his order, Cinzia screamed hysterically with the curse of an injured mother. She struggled with all her might to free herself from the chain attached to her delivery place. Her eyes wildly stared at the two babies in the arms of the two men guarding outside the door.

“Noooo … nooo! My babies! Please, give my babies to me!” she screamed with the last remaining strength. The nurse who had been helping her injected something into Cinzia’s thigh.

Her scream was no longer loud, and her voice could no longer be heard as the drug overwhelmed her consciousness and made her sleep forever. The last sound she heard before she drifted away was the babies crying, and a man’s voice said, ‘I make sure they are growing up healthy, Cinzia.’

It’s a shame her stiff face can’t carve a smile.

At precisely two in the morning before spring, two shots were heard in the delivery room of an old hospital, and the next day there was no news about what happened. The nurse and doctor are forever on the missing person list.