Two strange things happened that day when I went to the hospital to visit my friend Alejandra, who had just had a baby. When I left the apartment where I live with two friends, standing at the elevator door was a yellow cat staring at me. Since I love cats, I greeted him by touching his head while he purred.
"Hello kitty. What are you doing here?, and how did you get in?"
They're not allowed in this building. And as I continued to pet his back, he rubbed his yellow fur body against my legs. His translucent, caramel-colored eyes looked up at me, and he held his tail high up. He was a beauty.
When the elevator door opened, out stepped the next door neighbor, a grumpy lady who talked to herself and always walked with a cane even when I saw her walking with a lot of energy. Dressed in a knee-length skirt and a white flannel that reached almost to her skirt, she looked at me through her thick glasses and then looked at the cat.
"You know Miriam that animals are not allowed here and while" she looked at me, with the cane she tried to hit the cat, but it nimbly ran down the hallway and reached the stairs where it disappeared.
"Don't mistreat the animals, I'm going to report you and besides that cat is not mine, and let me pass, you are blocking the entrance to the elevator and I'm in a hurry".
Mrs. Lidia, that's her name, moved very slowly... on purpose, and I barely had time to get in before the door closed. How unpleasant, I always try to avoid her, if she comes down the street I cross to the other side before I meet her, as she is always complaining and criticizing the neighbors.
I left the building and took the bus that would take me to the hospital, it is about an hour's drive from where I live. It was very full, and I could not find a seat, with some annoyance I stood next to a man who had a very bad smell, I tried to move to another place, but the people did not allow me to do so. We were like sardines in a can. I am very sensitive to smells and between the heat and the man I was getting dizzy. I felt that everything was turning around and thick beads of sweat were running down my forehead. Furthermore, I held on with both hands to the tube next to me. A young man in a white coat sitting in the back of the bus was motioning for me to move over there, but the people wouldn't let me. In my desperation because I thought I was going to faint I screamed at the top of my lungs.
"Let me through!I'm going to faint!".
All the faces looked at me with surprise and some laughed. An old lady, who was sitting near me, started to argue.
"Oh dear, let the young lady pass, can't you see that the poor thing is pale and very thin, stand back a little".
Finally, I was able to get to where the young man was calling me, he gave me his seat and offered me water. He is a medical resident named Alberto. I estimated him to be about twenty-five or twenty-six years old, not quite thirty. He has a dark face with black hair and eyes, and a smile with very white teeth. Even when I wasn't feeling very well, I found him very attractive and friendly. The breeze coming through the window refreshed me.
We chatted as I arrived at the hospital and what a coincidence... he was on his way there too. We said goodbye at the entrance, he told me his first and last name, and that he was assigned to the pediatric area.
I thought it was strange to see some policemen entering the hospital, maybe there is a prisoner here, that's what I thought, and I went up the elevator to the second floor. On the way out, I see many doctors and nurses walking through the corridors.
When I got to the room where my friend Alejandra was, I found her crying her eyes out and her mother trying to console her. Her face was very red and her frizzy brown hair was falling uncontrollably over her face. She is very young, barely twenty years old.
I almost ran over to the bed.
"What happened, why are you crying?"
"My baby girl disappeared, they don't know where she is".
"They don't know where she is!".
The nurse explains to me that the baby was in the hospital and when they went to pick her up to take her to the room so that her mother could breastfeed her, she was no longer there. The doctors, the police and the hospital staff are looking for her.
"Don't worry, my friend," I tell her, hugging her, "they will find her. I have a friend who is in pediatrics, I'm going to ask him to help us".
I go to pediatrics and meet Alberto and explain to him what is going on.
"The hospital is in an uproar," he tells me. "Let's go help look for her".
I go out with Alberto, and we walk through the maternity corridors, enter several rooms and check the bathrooms. In one of them, a patient is not in her bed and the room is alone.
We go out and Alberto asks the nurse. She informs him that the patient, a 40-year-old woman named Carmela, has not been found and that her child died at birth. The police are already aware and are making inquiries. She is the main suspect.
We go back out into the hallway and in a corner near the elevator is the yellow kitten. I look at it in amazement. Alberto approaches him and asks him the same question I asked him this morning.
"What are you doing here, kitty?, where did you come from?" He approached him purring.
"You won't believe it, Alberto, but this cat was in the building where I live".
"So he followed you here". Cats are very perceptive and I'm sure you're a nice young lady", he says, winking at me.
I blush and tell him: "But it's so far away, how did he get here so fast?"
At that moment the cat passes by my legs, looks at us with those caramel-colored eyes and walks towards the stairs. There he stops and turns to look at us again.
"I think he wants us to follow him". Alberto and I follow him to the downstairs hallway with the walls gleaming white, and we see the cat enter a room that says "Warehouse", at the end of that room there is another door that leads to an office. Before entering we hear the soft cry of a baby.
There, sitting in a chair, is a woman in a pink robe with black hair with some gray in a bun. In her lap is Alejandra's baby.
Alberto approaches her carefully and convinces her to get out of there. The poor woman had lost her mind because of her son's death and her mind gave her the comfort of believing he was alive.
I myself handed the baby to my friend, who hugs and kisses her. She is so grateful that we found her safe and sound. I feel like the heroine of a movie and I even found love. This was a very strange but extraordinarily exciting day. When I arrived home the yellow cat was waiting for me at the door, I guess he adopted me and I adopted him.
This is my participation in The Ink Well Fiction Prompt #108. Thank you very much for reading