That body has silk inside, thought Bradford, and he remembered how quickly the boy had recovered, pink and sitting up in bed less than a day later, but strangely, the nurses, who would have been moved in any other case, didn’t really grow fond of their sick little patient—that’s what they called him, el enfermito, how maddening, patients should be called by their names—they pretended to care about him, but it took some doing and no wonder, he was a little beast, furious at his body and at those who wanted to help him and at his parents, and he was only relieved, physically at ease, when he was with his brother, another one of those proud children for whom, Bradford thought, one had to thank Perón, a man he should hate but who inspired only indifference in him, even a little admiration—he didn’t feel class conflict or any economic impact because the members of the Cults of the Shadow are always close to power, and as such are untouched by social fluctuations. So Bradford didn’t care about Perón or his wife—that fascinating, moribund woman—and was secretly grateful for these children so full of hubris who never bowed their heads, children like Juan and his brother Luis, then almost a teenager with aquamarine eyes, the brother who spent more time with Juan than his own parents did—they were always in a hurry, always giving the excuse that they had to work, the buses, the streetcars, putting food on the table, Bradford hated them, they stank of close quarters and smoke, and partly because of that, because he knew they were crammed into a shack on the outskirts of town, he asked for a meeting with his team leader, the hospital director, and the head of cardiology to request that they allow him to keep Juan on permanently in the hospital. He talked about unsanitary conditions in the boy’s home, but also about pioneering procedures that would put the hospital at the vanguard of surgery, not just regionally but worldwide, and he wasn’t exaggerating the child’s good prospects: unlike most congenital heart patients, he wasn’t malnourished, he was a normal size for his age—it was remarkable, he’d always been like that, even if he did lose weight at times—and he had come through the first palliative surgery with flying colors. Bradford wanted to carry out the second, more extensive corrective surgery in a few months. They agreed. The hospital’s vice-director was an intimate friend of Bradford’s family, and also a member of the Order, though peripheral. Gonzalo Biedma. His brilliant daughter would, in the future, be Bradford’s right hand, the hand he now lacked.