Rosario Slits Her Throat at the Clinic

Rosario’s death at the clinic is staged in plain view, yet the images that seem to record an unmistakable suicide deepen Amaia Salazar’s suspicion rather than resolve it. The event turns a public, witnessed death into another apparent lie: Rosario is dead, but Amaia cannot accept that she chose to die.

News and Setting

The news reaches Amaia on a morning when James is absent. Awake in bed, she lingers over the empty pillow and the small domestic habits that have become conspicuous without him, then gets up to make coffee and returns beneath the duvet. As the phone rings, she sees that the call is from Father Sarasola, whose hesitation is unusual enough to alarm her.

Father Sarasola tells her that Rosario has returned to the clinic. The phrase gives way to the facts: about fifteen minutes earlier, Rosario entered the reception, stood before the security cameras, drew a knife from beneath her clothes, and cut her throat. Reception staff and two guards summoned doctors immediately. They tried to save her, but she died while being taken to the operating theatre; the blood loss was overwhelming.

The clinic is not an empty or private setting. Its reception is busy, and the camera’s wide view includes people Amaia supposes may be visitors, doctors, or other staff arriving for or leaving work. Rosario’s action is thus visible to the institution and its occupants, but the recording cannot by itself explain what the act means or establish that it was freely chosen.

The Recorded Act

Amaia insists on seeing the security footage with her own eyes. A security chief starts the playback. Rosario enters slowly, one hand concealed beneath her coat and the other held around her waist. Her pace suggests exhaustion or dejection, not physical difficulty. She walks to the middle of the hall without looking at anyone, then raises her head until she is sure the cameras have captured her. She is crying.

The sequence is deliberate in its visible details. Rosario brings out a large knife, raises it to her throat, and draws it firmly from left to right. She remains standing for three seconds, closes her eyes, and falls. The footage then fills with hurried movement and alarm; the crowd gathering around her blocks the camera’s view. The security chief switches off the screen. What the recording supplies is a precise account of the act, not an answer to the question Amaia carries away from it.

Amaia’s Response

After watching, Amaia asks Father Sarasola to contact her sisters. He agrees to do so. He then shields her from other callers and visitors, including her sisters, Forensic Doctor San Martín, Markina, and the commissioner, leading them away with an appeal to respect her grief. Yet the narration distinguishes this appearance of grief from Amaia’s actual state: she feels neither pain nor peace, neither relief nor satisfaction. Rosario’s death does not give her the release that might be expected if the dead woman had simply been an enemy.

Amaia’s refusal to accept the apparent explanation takes shape through the image of the wolf. A wolf, she thinks, must be pursued, cornered, and confronted; it does not simply kill itself or throw itself from a cliff. To end its power, it has to be killed. The metaphor makes her doubt more than an expression of shock: it gives her a way to read Rosario’s death against the possibility of a staged or coerced ending.

The Doubt That Remains

Amaia cannot forget the details the camera has fixed: Rosario’s tear-streaked, devastated face, the desperation in her expression, and the cruelty of her final grimace. She recognizes the pattern from another apparent suicide, that of a monster who died weeping in a prison cell. The comparison leads her to a firm conclusion: neither death was voluntary. The footage has shown Rosario making the fatal movement, but for Amaia the visible gesture does not settle agency.

The scene therefore ends not in acceptance or mourning but in repulsion. Amaia identifies the feeling as her response to lies and to the foul sense of being surrounded by them. She leaves Father Sarasola’s office without saying goodbye and returns directly to the police station in Elizondo. Rosario’s death closes one immediate question while sharpening another: if the apparent suicide is not what it seems, someone has made the evidence of a choice look complete.