His doctor informed him, “You require a combined liver and kidney transplant. This is far more complicated than a typical operation because of your genetic makeup. It will be challenging to find suitable donors. It will be equally challenging to find a surgical team with the specialized knowledge needed to manage a case this complicated.”
“Pay whatever it takes,” Roberto stated. “I am not interested in dying.”
“There is a team,” the physician said. “They came for a humanitarian surgery mission last month. They go abroad, although their headquarters are in Houston. These five doctors, who are brothers, are well-known for similar cases. Their combined areas of expertise are ideal for your needs.”
He hesitated.
“They refer to themselves as The Quintet.”
When Roberto entered the conference room on the day of the consultation, the world he had constructed on a single lie started to crumble.
When he came in, five men were standing.
Tall. Elegant in the particular sense of those who have not inherited their bearing but have earned it. All five of them had dark skin, curly hair, and features that were both ancient and uniquely theirs.
Something went wrong with Roberto’s heart in his chest.
Those faces were familiar to him.
He had no idea how he had met them. Since the night he stood over a hospital bed and yelled accusations at a woman who was giving him the truth, he had not seen them. However, the body occasionally possesses knowledge that the conscious mind rejects, and his body was aware of it.
The man in the middle of the group said, “Good morning.” His voice was professional and measured, the voice of a man who had spent 25 years practicing composure under pressure. “My name is Miguel Vega, a doctor. Drs. Gabriel (anesthesiology), Rafael (cardiology), Uriel (nephrology), and Samuel (genetics and hepatology) are my brothers.”
“Are you brothers?” Roberto asked.
“Quintuplets,” Miguel said. “Born in 1995.”
Roberto caught it too late as the file he was holding slipped. He stood motionless among the papers as they fell to the ground.
“Where—” His voice wasn’t working properly. “Where are you from?”
Gabriel said, “We were born in this state.” His tone was steady and devoid of heat, the way a professional keeps calm in a place where the personal and the professional had just collapsed into each other. “We were poor children growing up in south Texas. Due to the color of our skin, our father left us at the hospital the night we were born. He told our mother that we repulsed him.”
Roberto’s legs found a chair. Without choosing to sit, he was seated.
The door to the conference room opened.
A hospital assistant pulled a wheelchair-bound woman through. She was beautiful, still, and in her late sixties. She had the demeanor of someone who had carried difficult things for a long time and had come to terms with it.
Isabel was the one.
With the composure of a woman who had nothing more to prove to anyone in that room, she gazed at him.
“Isabel,” he muttered.
“Hi, Roberto,” she said. “A long time has passed.”
He dropped from his chair. There was nothing left in him to perform, and if it had been a performance, it ceased to be one as soon as it started.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I was mistaken. I was entirely mistaken. I was mistaken when I believed that they couldn’t be mine due to their appearance.”
“Mr.—” “We conduct DNA testing as part of our protocol for cases involving potential genetic factors,” Samuel remarked from the far end of the table.
He put a tablet on the table where Roberto could view the screen after turning it on.
Probability of paternity: 99.99%
Samuel went on, “You are our biological father.” As part of our investigation into your particular genetic marker, we also looked into the genetic background of your family in relation to our skin tone. In the late nineteenth century, your great-great-grandfather traveled to the American South as an African missionary. Because of the bigotry of the time, the family concealed that ancestry. For many generations, the genetic expression has been latent.
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