Dr. Benítez wasn’t just any physician. He was the Chief of Toxicology and Internal Medicine, a sixty-year-old man with silver hair and eyes that carried the weight of a thousand tragedies. He had seen every way a human body could fail, and every way a human being could be cruel.
When the paramedics wheeled my convulsing body into the ER, something about the clinical picture didn’t sit right with him. It didn’t fit the standard obstetric emergencies.
He saw the Mees’ lines—faint white striations—across my fingernails. He smelled the faint, garlic-like odor on my breath, masking the lavender. He noted the peripheral neuropathy I had complained about in my chart weeks prior.
“This isn’t a difficult pregnancy,” Dr. Benítez muttered to the resident, his voice low and dangerous. “Order a heavy metals panel. Stat. This looks like murder in slow motion.”
While machines breathed for me and pumped fluids to flush the toxin from my blood, Dr. Benítez stared at the preliminary results on his tablet.
Arsenic.
Lethal levels. Accumulated over months in small doses, culminating in a massive, singular spike just an hour ago.