I was awakened by a light tapping, like a bird pecking on the window rail. Three hesitant taps, then silence. The wind blew through the crack and pressed the purple curtain to the wall, like a hand squeezing my shoulder. The clock read 12:43; the second hand jumped to twelve with a subtle jump that no one else would have heard.
Daniela had been on a work trip for two days. She’d told me to go to bed early, heat up the chicken broth in the fridge, and not to let anyone in at night. I was planning to turn the lock again, put water on some lemon tea, and watch the shadow of the flowerpot spread across the wall. But that night my head felt as heavy as if I were carrying a sandbag; my left hand tingled. I blamed it on 55. They say that when you pass a certain age, your body creaks with sounds only you hear.
The second knock wasn’t so gentle.
“Mom…” whispered a voice pressed against the door.
It was Javier.
I hurried to remove the bolt, feigning calm. I opened it and was hit by the damp smell of the night and the sweat of someone who had just run. Javier was shirtless, shiny, his hair plastered, his face flushed. The light from the hallway dripped down his shoulders like varnish. In his hand, he clutched an old towel, like a flag of surrender.
“Sorry to scare you, Mom,” his voice rasped. “Do you have anything for your cold? If not… can I borrow an egg? Can it help me ‘get over the bad air’?”
I froze. Each word fell on my ear like a fat drop on a hot sheet of paper.
“Egg to get rid of the air?” I repeated, and heard my voice tense, like a guitar string turned too high.
He nodded, looking at the floor:
“I’m getting cold.” I don’t have any more medicine in the apartment. And the eggs… I left them in the basement freezer and was too lazy to go downstairs. I didn’t want to bother you, but I remembered that you used to “roll the egg” to my grandfather.
I heard a chuckle of fate in the cracks of the tile. A story that, if told, would sound incredible: son-in-law, shirtless, at midnight, asking his mother-in-law for an egg. If Daniela found out, she’d surely say, “Mom, don’t even think about it!” And if Doña Lulú—the neighbor across the street—saw it, she’d have enough gossip for the vegetable stand.
I leaned against the door, looking for something to hold on to. A thousand things were swirling around in my head: his ironed shirt still smelled of fabric softener; Javier is an ER nurse, making a living off shifts and running errands; And I hate those guards because they drag me away from the table, leave Daniela hugging her pillow, and I imagine hallways smelling of chlorine and closed curtains. I also hate the “implausible” nature of her request. But I remembered a man who left me one rainy season, and every time his head got heavy, he’d say, “Roll an egg for me.”
Javier looked down.
“If I bother you, I’ll come back. Sorry…”
“Stop,” I interrupted him, fearing that with that “sorry,” we’d both fall into the void. “Come in. And put this on.”
I pointed to a light jacket hanging behind the door. He put it on; I saw some fine scratches on his left arm, as he was about to close it.
“I tripped on the corner,” he said before I could ask.
I turned on the stove, on the lowest heat, and put in my aluminum pot of “odd errands”: ginger, orange blossoms… and eggs. When the water boiled, I added two.
“One for you and one… as a spare,” I said, to give him something to hold on to for all this discomfort.
“Have you had dinner yet?” I asked.
“A bun on guard… and then I wandered around,” she smiled, perhaps apologizing.
“Why are you so red-faced?”
“A slight fever,” he showed me his wrist.
I didn’t manage to touch his forehead when flip-flops scraped in the hallway and Doña Lulú coughed. I closed the kitchen door slightly, as if the egg steam also carried gossip.
Once the eggs were cooked, I transferred them to a piece of cheesecloth and rolled them to crack the shell. Javier sat up straight, waiting like a kid before his vaccination. It made me laugh: the hierarchies and the “shoulds” of the house are crystal clear… until someone gets a headache and needs an egg.
“Turn around,” I told him. I wrapped the warm egg and rolled it down his spine. The smell of boiled egg mingled with the smell of detergent and clean skin.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“It just warms it up,” he whispered. “My grandmother always did it when I was a kid; she said it ‘pulls the air out.'”
His skin was turning red where the egg passed through—”bad air,” my people used to say.
I joked: “If you get any redder, you’ll even smell like a farm egg.”
He laughed. I rolled over his shoulders, his arm, and stopped at the scrape.
“How did you fall?”
“I was chasing a pickpocket. At the intersection. He snatched the bag from a woman selling tamales. I threw myself… and didn’t stop.”
“Did you catch him?”
“The bag, yes. He got scratched.” The lady cried and hugged me… and when I got to the apartment, I felt cold—she said it as if she were telling a note from the neighborhood’s loudspeaker.
The marks were even; I calmed down. I kept rolling and, suddenly, my left hand felt heavy. My thumb felt numb as if it were pinned. I hid my hand in the edge of the towel.
“Front, please,” I asked, shifting the egg to my chest. He pressed something against my throat. Up close, I saw an old, white scar on his collarbone. Everyone has their rings like trees.
Javier looked at me in the spotlight, eyes shining like a tiny fire.
“Are you tired, Mom? Is your hand shaking?” he probed me in his work voice.
“Old lady, it’s shaking,” I tried to joke, hiding the tingling that crept up my arm.
“May I check something?” He became serious. Do you see the strange left half of my face? Drooping? The crooked mouth?
“Nothing,” I laughed. “The even mouth… for lying just as well.”
He didn’t laugh. He walked around the table, poured water, and brought it to me. I was about to say, “I’ll pour it”… when my left hand slammed onto the table. The glass rattled and the water overflowed. Javier took my hand; I saw how his face changed.
“Mom,” he lowered his voice to a tone I’d never heard him use before: deep and firm. “Smile at me, big guy.”
I smiled. The right half rose normally. The left weighed like a sack. I didn’t look at myself, but I knew.
“Raise both arms,” ​​he ordered. I raised my right; the left barely reached halfway and it fell. My heart sounded like a hammer. Javier was already dialing, speaking fluently:
“Half of body weak. Face drooping.” Mom, say a long sentence.
“I… I…” The stone tongue.
I understood: the boiled egg was an excuse to cross a bridge that no one could see.
“Stop it,” he held me and, with practice, helped me stand. “It’s a TIA or a transient ischemic attack. We’re in the ‘golden hour.’ I already dialed 911.”
He looked me in the eyes: “Trust me. Let’s go.”
I was going to answer with, “No problem, I’ll go tomorrow.”
But his voice, his warm hand on my shoulder, and a fear as subtle as smoke made me nod.
While he called an ambulance, he put a sweater on me, his hands calm, his gaze determined. I leaned against him. I heard the elevator; Doña Lulú peeked through the crack.
“Neighbor, my mom’s in bad shape. I’m taking her to the ER. Will you watch the heater for me?” Javier blurted out, and he put me in the elevator before I could ask any questions.
The wind from the patio cut my face. The lights looked like diluted ink. He put me in the ambulance; he spoke to the paramedic about directions and services. I only remember his arm squeezing my shoulder and his voice:
“Look at me, don’t fall asleep,” and he placed the phone in my hand, playing with dots. “Squeeze, release, squeeze…”
In the ER, the white light blurred everything. They led me through a door with a red circle. A young doctor asked questions, took tests, and left us with fifteen minutes.
Javier explained clearly: “onset of symptoms,” FAST test, no trauma, no allergies. I saw him standing solid, shoulders firm, eyes looking into the doctor’s. And I saw how they trusted him.
The result wasn’t a verdict:
“Transient ischemia,” the doctor said. “They arrived on time; we gave medication, monitored blood pressure, and did more tests. They had good early detection.”
I turned to Javier. He smiled; for the first time since midnight, his face was no longer red with fever but warm with relief. I wanted to thank him; my voice wouldn’t come out. I could only squeeze his nurse’s hand: rough from pushing stretchers, lifting bodies, and wiping foreheads.
Daniela arrived at three, her blouse wrinkled, her hair loose, her eyes wet. She hugged me, crying and scolding:
“Mom, you scared me!” She turned to Javier. “Thank you,” she said something I’d never heard her say before.
“I didn’t get the ‘egg’,” he joked, and we both burst out laughing.
I was hospitalized for four days. Javier came every day: in the morning he’d drop Daniela off and stop by; when he left the shift, he did again. He carried a bag of huevos rancheros and laughed:
“Today the egg is for eating.”
Every time the nurse came in with the blood pressure monitor, he stepped aside, out of the way, but with his eye glued to the numbers.
Upon discharge, the doctor ordered little salt, no coffee, and walking. Daniela pushed the chair; Javier stood to one side. Doña Lulú was waiting for us in the hallway with a bunch of basil.
“Is the neighbor okay? I… that night I went in to turn off the stove. I still saw… eggs,” she stumbled on the word.
“Thanks to the ‘egg’ I got to the hospital,” I winked at her. She opened her eyes and laughed like a guava that crashes to the floor.
At home, Daniela arranged pills in the pillbox; Javier set alarms. I looked at them, and the apartment seemed to grow a meter on each side. When Daniela went to get tea, I asked Javier quietly:
“Did you really have a fever that night?”
He scratched the back of his neck, his ears red:
“Feverish, yes, but from running… and from worry. Daniela told me her hand had been tingling for days. I told her I’d come by to “check,” but you wouldn’t let me in if I told the truth. The idea about the egg occurred to me.
I laughed, and my chest tightened as if I’d released a button.
“Good trick.”
“From my grandmother,” he shrugged. “She said: grown-ups don’t believe in children’s games, but they very easily believe in the games they invent themselves.” He pointed to my aluminum pot. “Sorry for the “little lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie. It was a rescue. And yes… you “brought the evil out of me.” To everyone.
A week later, I took him to the market. We stopped by the tamale lady’s stand at the intersection.
“Señorito, this is the boy who saved your pocketbook.”
The lady looked up, her wrinkled eyes filling with water.
“My son!” she shoved a warm cornbread in his hand. “I couldn’t find a way to thank you.”
“I’ll eat the bread; the money’s so I can sell it,” Javier said.
At home, I taped a note on the refrigerator: FAST—Face, Arms, Speech, Time. Daniela added up her medication schedules.
Javier, without saying anything, left a basket of twelve brown eggs on the counter.
“For when you need them,” he winked at me. “And for breakfast.”
I looked at the basket and remembered the night the smell of boiled eggs covered the smell of fear, her hand on my shoulder, her “smile.” I felt like confessing everything I hated about her job… to scratch it out point by point. I said nothing. I washed the pot, polished it, and hung it at eye level, like someone hanging a souvenir in the sun.
The first night Daniela traveled again, I went to sleep early. At 1:10, light knocks. I woke up with three jokes ready for Javier. I opened it… and it was Doña Lulú with a tub of water, panting:
“Neighbor, I’ve leaked gas and the curtain caught on fire!”
I didn’t have time to put on my flip-flops. Reflexively, I grabbed my pot, filled it with water, and dove after it. Javier came out of the elevator in his uniform, turned off the valve, pulled down the curtain, and I emptied the pot. Shhh, like grease on ice. Doña Lulú trembled; Javier gave her sugar and warm water, legs up. I looked at the little pot and thought he was a little hero.
Finally, sitting on the floor, Lulú said:
“I was scared too when you got sick. Sorry for peeking sometimes… But if I had peeked that night, I would have only smelled like eggs.”
“Eggs also save,” I said.
“And sometimes they’re medicine,” Javier concluded.
“If you order eggs at dawn again, with a shirt on, eh?” I told him.
“I promise. And… if one day you see someone shirtless playing, maybe it’ll also bring fear,” he joked; then seriously, in a low voice: “Mom, I have another incredible proposal.”
“Egg again?”
“Half egg, half something else.” He showed me an organ donation card. I want us to talk about this in this house before the hospital forces us to talk about it.
I looked at him for a moment. The incredible thing this time wasn’t the discomfort, but the window to the future. I took it; the mica cold, my chest warm.
“Yes,” I said. “Incredible… but necessary.”
I signed. Doña Lulú opened her eyes:
“Oh, neighbors, how brave!”
“Brave not to be afraid,” I replied, and my voice sounded calm like when you drop an egg into boiling water.
A month later, on my birthday, Daniela served Mexican-style bún chả—charcoal, herbs, tortillas. As we blew out the candles, Javier gave me a small wooden box: inside, a spoon with “peace” engraved on the handle and a piece of fiber paper. It was a photo of my aluminum pot, clean and shiny on a white blanket, and a short sentence:
“The midnight egg was the excuse to recognize each other where there is no blood.”
I laughed and cried at the same time. Daniela hugged me; Javier put his hand on my back. Outside, tamales, bread, and glass plates passed by; everything sounded like music.
Late at night, I saw Javier go out onto the balcony, call a colleague from the emergency room: he laughed, listened, and said, “I’m coming,” with the “I’m coming” that one says to family. He was wearing his shirt tightly. I placed my hand on my pot. I thought: if one day I hear knocks at midnight again, maybe I’ll open the door, whoever it is. But I hope it’s Javier, so I have the eggs close at hand.
And maybe, when Daniela’s son is born, I’ll tell him the story of the night his grandfather was away, but the man who knocked at 12:43 “brought out evil” in the whole house: not with the egg rolling on our skin, but by uniting us on the same side of the line we didn’t know we were crossing.
There are surprises that explode like rockets; Others run softly like a stream under a stone. That night, the surprise was shaped like an egg. It passed through my kitchen, through the chest of a red-faced man, through the trembling hand of a stubborn woman, and left a fine trace: so that, when someone asks “Why did your son-in-law go out at dawn to ask for eggs?”, I can smile and say: “To save a face that was already falling and a heart that didn’t know how to see itself.” And so, the story closes with a small gift: a laugh where I expected tears… and the warm, reassuring smell of a freshly cooked egg.
