The gallery was empty. The fact that was about midnight reduced Lucy’s chances of bumping into someone. Better. She didn’t want to be seen so vulnerable.

Her feet went in the wrong direction. They didn’t go to the right, toward the laboratory, to take the test results the Director had requested; instead, they went to the left, to the nursery. Upon realizing the ruse of her subconscious, Lucy just let herself be guided by it.

Her heart galloped. She wanted to see him.

She turned left at the corner and reached a stretch of the gallery that had no way out. The last door was the entrance to the nursery; two guards were flanking it. The tears clouded her vision again, and she wiped them off before they saw her crying. Nevertheless, her eyes must have looked kind of puffy, and her nose was dripping; so many tears caused her congestion. Her appearance surely was a mess, and she had no way of hiding it so quickly. But did it matter if the guards realized how bad she felt? Their job was to guard the nursery, standing still and with their mouth shut. Theirs wasn’t to be aware of how much of a mess she might look.

Lucy glanced at them. They were young men, perhaps ten years younger than her; they wore a black uniform, boots, caps, and carried guns holstered on their belts. Their heads were held high, and their eyes were fixed on a non-existent horizon.

Lucy ignored them and stopped in front of the nursery, got close to the door’s window, and peeped inside. An emptiness squeezed her guts.

The nursery had white, unstained walls, though that was half up, the bottom part was covered with multicolored drawings of unrecognizable figures, irregular scratches, and all that the wild creativity of a child had captured with the help of crayons. The room had no furniture except for a rubber chair dumped in a corner and a plastic table with short legs, which now was fulfilling the role of a drawing board for the child responsible for that artistic manifestation on the walls.

Sitting on the floor and surrounded by pencils and colorful papers, the little boy let his art loose.

Watching him so absorbed in his activity, so calm, it was almost impossible for Lucy to think that until recently, that same person had suffered constant outbursts of rage. She remembered him screaming, crying, pulling his hair out, neurotic.

She surrounded the doorknob with trembling fingers, looked at the security guards on her sides—none of them returned her gaze—and entered, slowly and quietly.

The little one didn’t even bother to raise his head to see who had interrupted his privacy, and for a few seconds, Lucy had the kindness to stay on the room’s threshold so as not to break his aura of peace.

The child was in his white jammies, now all stained with colorful dots everywhere. He held the canvas with his right hand and painted with his left one. He’s left-handed, Lucy recalled and noticed with relief the scratches the little one had inflicted on his arms had begun to heal.

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Dissuading that little angel from causing pain to himself, without abusing sedatives, had been a grueling task. It hadn’t been enough to remove from his surroundings the elements that he could use to hurt himself. They had to tie him up and even gag him so he would not sink his teeth into his own flesh. How awful had been all! Such madness!

And it’s your fault, yours and your soulless coworkers’.

Lucy sank again into the depths of her misery, and suddenly…

“Hello,” it rumbled in the room.

That had been her own voice that had escaped her lips. The heat reached her face, and she knew she’d blushed. Red like a tomato, Rosa would have said if she’d seen her.

The little boy realized he was no longer alone and raised his head, accusing her with those wide-open green eyes as if she had just desecrated his sacred chamber. She’d been spotted.

“Hello,” he answered, and immediately looked down, trying to see past Lucy’s legs, as if looking for someone hiding behind them. And before he could say anything, she knew what question she would hear, the same old question. “My brother? My brother is not coming with you?”

Unlike the previous times, this time Lucy didn’t feel ashamed, she felt miserable. However, she was already there and had interrupted him, so now she must continue.

“Uh-uh. But tomorrow I’ll bring him so you can say hello,” she said and winked at him. “What do you say, huh?”

The boy put on a smile that raised a particular sparkle in his eyes and dimpled his cheeks. It was pure joy.

He’ll have a lovely face when he grows up… If he reaches adulthood, Lucy thought.

“W-What are you doing?” she asked then. It was obvious the little one was drawing, but she needed to get the awful previous thought out of her head.

The little boy shrugged. “Drawing,” he replied, and returned those huge eyes to her, perhaps waiting for her to leave to continue with his work.

But what had begun to gallop on Lucy’s chest, that damned guilt, was a dense substance hard to remove; it wouldn’t leave her that easily. She had to keep trying.

“What are you drawing?”

And to that question, stupid or not, there was no answer other than a long, awkward pause.

Lucy nodded and tried to smile. What she achieved to give was a sad grimace. She pushed a lock of dark hair away, tucked it behind her ear, and scratched her crown.

He’s a four-year-old kid, for goodness’ sake! Why do you feel so disturbed when you’re around him? She hesitated, and the answer came by itself: Because you know what you’ve done to him, and because you know what he could do to you.

She felt like caressing his little head, touching that beautiful brown hair that looked like a copper helmet. But no. If she touched him, she’d fall apart. She preferred to put her hands back and cross her fingers so that those foolish, unconscious movements wouldn’t betray her again.

She glanced at the colorful doodles that covered the walls’ lower parts, and she nodded, pretending to study them as if they were some famous artist’s work.

“They’re very pretty,” she said.

Again, no answer other than those huge, green eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to leave.

“Aren’t you sleepy yet?” Another question just to take a sentence longer than two words out of him. “It’s too late, y’know? Good kids should be sleeping by this hour.”

And why would he give a damn about what other kids do?

Lucy uttered one last fake smile, announcing her defeat before the possibility of a conversation, and she went back to the door.

“I should go now. Dr. Templeton is waiting for me,” she said. “I-I’ll leave you alone so you can continue with your drawings.”

And with a shiver running down her spine, she turned to look at the child. “S-see you s-soon, Broga,” she waved goodbye.

She closed the door behind her, and ignoring the guards in black, she filled her lungs with air and walked away.