Dust motes plume from cinderblocks being leveled. A blue flash of metal against flame. Behind the steel grate,
the house in San Ramón is carved out to make an accessible space where Hortensia will stay, when she returns from the hospital with part of her cerebellum cut out.
Will blue flash in the operating room? Will she get into surgery before the tumor devours her, or she caves to a pathogen vacationing in the ward?
She’s waited weeks, all the while doctoring other patients.
They report back to Anita, her caretaker and the owner of the house. “She helped me distract myself from the pain by telling me stories
of how she survived the Civil War” they say, “she brought me a dish of plantains because the nurse gave me a plate full of chicken and I get hives.”
While Anita relays their stories, the little girl Dayana Michelle kills a worm Anita mistook for a stick.