A convenient change.

It happened many years ago, back when I was a young adult in my early 20s. I was working as a nurse in a local hospital, I was a children's emergency room nurse and loved my job. I was born to serve and care for others. It was my calling and my passion.

It happened one day while I was working my afternoon shift, a colleague's husband came to work and told me that his wife was having health problems, they had recently had a child and her left breast was having serious problems with lactation.

She was not a very close friend but we had been studying for all three years of our careers and also now worked at the same hospital, so I told her husband that I would be happy to come to her house to attend to her wound. And so I did.

I had bought a car some time before and it had a fault. When I took the car to the technician I was told that he would take it to the hospital once he finished fixing some details. He brought the car to me at 6pm and then when I finished work at 7pm I called my friend to tell her I was leaving for her house.

I think it was about 8pm when I pulled into the parking lot in front of her house and there was the husband waiting to guide me to their home. He came with a little boy about 3 years old, he took off from his father and with a big smile he threw his arms out for me to hold him, when I picked him up he gave me a kiss. I was smitten with him from that moment on, I didn't know him and I didn't understand why this boy gave me his best hug and his most beautiful smile.

He had straight jet-black hair that fell in front of his little face and reached just before his little eyes lit up with joy.

Every day since then, I have helping her with her breast lesion.  She developed purulent mastitis with breastfeeding and I was draining her wound every day until she had no more purulent fluid and once there was no more fluid to drain I finished the treatment.

Before saying goodbye to them I made my colleague promise that when she baptized her son I wanted to be his godmother, not the godmother of Eduardo, her newborn son, but the godmother of Luis, her oldest, the one who always welcomed me with hugs and kisses.

 Time passed, I had now been transferred to the surgical inpatient service and was on the morning shift. That day I was surprised to receive a visit from my friend, she was now beaming, and she told me that that same day in the afternoon would be the baptism of her child. Everything was ready and I only had to go to the church for the baptism and after giving me all the pertinent indications such as where the church was, what time to go and the details I needed to know, she made a preamble and told me that there was a small detail that she hoped I would not take it badly.

To my surprise and my friend's serious face I knew I would not like what she was going to tell me. But she had already gotten out of me the commitment to attend the baptism in the afternoon. It was then when she told me that I would baptize the youngest child, Eduardo, and not Luis the child of the most spontaneous hugs and kisses I had ever met in my life.

I was so happy to be Luis' godmother and now I was not, I was upset and, after arguing for a while about my disappointment, I had to keep my promise to go to the baptism.

That is a feeling that I never got over in my life, I spent many months without visiting my friend because of my work and when I managed to visit her I always told this story.

Turns out that my godson grew up and always listened to the story, one day when he was about 18 years old and I was visiting him at home I decided to tell the same story, he gets up and tells us all "Whenever my godmother comes after years of not visiting she tells the same story of what my mom did to her. It’s like she never wanted me as a godchild."

It was only that day that I realized what I was doing, by telling a story that had become to me a funny tale as the years went by, that story affected my godson and made him think that I didn't love him, that I never got over that day. I looked at the faces of my friends and I was perplexed as to how my eternal “funny” story was supposed to end. But in the end we laughed together and I decided I owed my godson an explanation, once I did we were all happy again.

Until that day I stopped telling that story, but now I hope that this situation in my country will end so that my boys will come back to the country and I will see them again. Then I will visit them again and when we are all together I will tell them again the story of how my friend changed my godson for the baptism.