“Save his leg,” Adán says, “and you will be chief of a new wing of this hospital. Lose the leg, you’ll spend the rest of your life doing abortions in a Tijuana brothel. Lose the patient, you will be in a grave before he is. And it won’t be my uncle who will put you there, it will be me. Do you understand?” The doctor understands. And Adán understands that life has changed. Childhood is over. Life is serious now.
