My father thought the aneurysm was going to kill him, and when it didn’t, a new era began for our family. He quit his two-packs-a-day Parliament smoking habit. Mami made him promise to cut back his hours at the factory, too—no more working through the weekend. And vacations—before the surgery we hardly took any. But after the doctors opened his skull and clipped out the bubble of trouble, Papi promised Mami that as soon as his hair grew back and the vertigo went away, he’d take her to the Bahamas, where they’d gone on their honeymoon a hundred years earlier.
We had a maid, a Peruvian-Japonesa grouch named Nila who only ever cooked breaded chicken and yellow rice, chased me out of the kitchen with a broom, and said, “Yo no se nada,” every time you asked her anything. Lately she was stealing my stuff. A little porcelain unicorn my tío gave me for my first communion. A purple bathing suit I got for Christmas a few years back. Every time I told my mother this she dismissed me and said I was the one who had a habit of losing things. And why would Nila want a unicorn or a little girl’s swimsuit anyway? Nila had men calling her all the time, which made no sense because she lived with us, even on weekends, and only ever went out on her own to go to the Pentecostal church in Paterson. Nila couldn’t speak English or drive, and since Cristían and I were both still in elementary, there was no other remedy: Tía Paloma had to come and watch over us while our parents were away.
“This is going to be interesting,” Cris said when Paloma arrived. She came on the bus that left her by the Grand Union and Papi went to pick her up at the station. She had a week’s worth of clothes packed into a small black nylon duffel with brown handles. When she said, “Hola, niños,” Cris and I dutifully went over to kiss her before Mami had a chance to tell us we were savages with no manners.
Paloma had no kids and I always got the feeling she was nervous around us. I was nine and Cris was an angry twelve. He’d just decided he didn’t want to be a nerd anymore, taken up martial arts, had an arsenal of Chinese stars, butterfly knives, and nunchucks that he threatened me with every time I got too close to his room.
The next day, when Mami and Papi were getting ready to leave for their trip, we stood at the top of the driveway to see them off. Paloma had a hand on each of our shoulders as our parents climbed into the taxi headed for the airport.
“What if they die in the Bahamas, who will take care of us?” I asked Cris as my mother blew kisses from the taxi window. Papi was busy looking over the airline tickets. He never looked back after saying good-bye.
“We’ll be orphans,” Cris said. “Maybe we can go live with the McAllisters.”
The McAllisters were our neighbors. Former Hell’s Kitchen Irish folks who invited us over whenever they barbecued—even after my uncle went to the slammer—and the only people who never called animal control when our dog, Manchas, got loose. That’s why we liked them.
“They’ll be fine. But if anything ever happens, I’ll take care of you,” Paloma said, reminding us she was our madrina, next in line to our parents.
When the taxi disappeared down the street and we went back in the house, Cris told Paloma that he’d rather eat possums and sleep in the gas station bathroom than live with her. Paloma looked sad for a second then hissed, “Chino malcriado,” but Cris was already headed upstairs to his room. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before.
Paloma was my mother’s half sister, older by twelve years. Her father was a Cuban who died when his plane crashed in the Amazon when Paloma was seven. Her mother made a living buying clothes from factories in New York and bringing them back to sell to society ladies in Colombia, while Paloma went to boarding school in Jamaica and spent her school vacations in Pereira with her aunt Isabel, the family lunatic who used to lock her in the closet for hours while she went out to play cards with her friends.
Paloma’s mother, also named Paloma, found a replacement husband quick. He was a Gregory Peck look-alike, a decorated army general, grandson of a president, and man of the people, though his biggest selling point was his blue eyes, so beautiful they made women cry, making it difficult for him to be faithful. The new marriage produced three more children—the first, my mother, whom the young Paloma hated upon conception.
The Paloma I knew lived in a tiny studio apartment on East Forty-fourth street. The kitchen was the size of a broom closet and only one person could stand in it at a time. Same for the bathroom with its cracked claw-foot tub and missing floor tiles. She slept on a full-size bed pushed against the wall, and it also served as a sofa when she had the rare guest. There was an armchair, a wooden trunk that she used as a coffee table, and stacks of books covering every free inch of the apartment—a massive collection Paloma was saving for when she retired. Until then, she mostly did crossword puzzles and word finders, with her bifocals slipping off the tip of her nose. She spent hours at it. And you couldn’t turn on the TV when she was at work on one of her puzzles. Noise really bothered Paloma. Mami said Paloma spent so much time alone that she wasn’t used to it anymore.
Paloma had enormous breasts, even after two surgical reductions, and wore pointy bras so that her breasts poked out under her loose blouses like they were looking to start a fight. She was heavy but in a way that tells you it came with old age. She still had a thin face, pale, always without makeup, and she kept her brown hair short like a schoolboy, parted on the side with wispy, innocent bangs. She always wore slacks and supportive shoes for walking the city streets, and had the glare of a real lonely New Yorker with a list of complaints about the taxes, the pollution, crime, and the mayor. Paloma had been in New York for thirty years but she spoke English as if she had arrived last week. She recklessly spliced her two languages, but she wrote perfectly in English and was skilled at dictation. Her voice, though, carried more than an accent, constantly cracking as if a thousand years of tears slept under every breath.
Paloma was married once but her husband, a Long Island gringo named Martin, died the day I was born, from a thundering heart attack while smoking a cigarette on the corner of Second Avenue. The next day, my mother’s father died.
“You see,” my brother would tell me, “you were a curse on our family.”
“You’re the curse!” I’d snap before Mami would yell at us to stop fighting like gang members.
The truth was that if there was a family curse it was my brother’s fault. He was born when our parents were newlyweds working in Puerto Rico, during a year when there was a severe shortage of baby boys born on the island. He was the only barón born in the hospital that week and a nurse tried to steal him—whether it was to keep him for herself or to sell him, we don’t know. Paloma spotted the nurse trying to leave the floor with him, ran after her, and snatched baby Cris out of her grasp just in time. A nearby security guard cuffed the nurse, who retaliated with maldicíon: “A curse on all your family” she screamed, “and never a boy to be born to you or yours again.” Three years and a miscarriage later, I was born.
Paloma often reminded Cris that if it weren’t for her, he’d be living with some Puerto Rican family in Caguas and certainly not playing video games in New Jersey. This pissed Cris off big-time and I can’t say that I blame him because nobody wants to be reminded of the favors they owe. But Cris is also the kind of person who will listen to your secrets with best-friend eyes and then throw them in your face when you least expect it. Like when I confessed to him that I had a thing for our neighbor, Tim McAllister, Cris swore he’d take it to the grave but the next time Tim came over to play Frogger, Cris spilled the beans, and Tim pretty much ignored me after that.
There was a man Paloma considered to be her boyfriend, but my parents didn’t like him, so we didn’t see him often. He was a tall, white-haired Canadian named Gerald, who my dad said never made a move for the tab if you went out to dinner with him. He often slept over at Paloma’s place and they went on vacations together once a year to extremely boring places like Taos and Nova Scotia.
When Paloma came to watch us the week that my parents were in the Bahamas, I thought I would use the opportunity to try to understand her better. We were sitting at the kitchen table. Nila had stepped up the cooking for Paloma’s visit, probably because she knew that Paloma wouldn’t hesitate to tell my mom if she was slacking. We were eating fish, a rarity in our house. My mother is from the mountains and doesn’t feel comfortable eating anything besides a cow. But Paloma said fish was healthier. She’d gone to the Grand Union earlier that day, driving Mami’s red Cadillac, and bought the fish herself. It was just the two of us having dinner. Cris stayed to eat at the house of his Taiwanese friend, Joe.
“Why don’t you marry Gerald?” I asked Paloma because back then I thought everybody wanted to be married.
“We’re happy as friends,” she told me, and then asked me if I’d finished my homework.
That was a subject I wanted to avoid. I was only in fifth grade and already an established underachiever. I went to my room. But later, the rest of the story came out.
Cris was late to come home, so Paloma called Joe’s house. His mother answered and told Paloma that Cris had not been there that evening. She put Joe on the phone, and after some coaxing, he confessed that Cris was really hanging around with Tania, the local Girl With Problems. He finally showed up a few hours later, high on his experience, whatever it was. When he walked in through the back door of the house, Paloma rushed him, grabbed him from behind the neck, and forced him onto a chair at the kitchen table for an interrogation.
He folded his arms across his chest, raised his chin in the air, and squinted his eyes so much he could probably only see his own arrogance through those lashes.
“You’re only twelve and you already want to be some kind of perro puto?” she yelled, and it seemed to me she was taking this very personally. If my mother were here, she’d just tell him not to do it again and keep him moving up to his room. Cris was a perfect student—a free ride through all sorts of bad behavior as long as he kept delivering As.
Cris grinned, his silver braces catching the light and making stars on the ceiling.
“Don’t you laugh at me,” Paloma snarled.
“You’re not one to judge,” Cris ripped. I could tell he’d been saving this one.
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t call me perro puto when you’re just a mistress. Got it?”
I wasn’t sure what a mistress was but I knew it was bad, maybe as bad as a puta pagada, which is what my parents called the women my uncles sometimes hung around with instead of their wives. Paloma was stunned and Cris used the window of shock to make his escape and retreat to his room. All we heard was the door slam. Paloma was frozen, one hand on the kitchen table as if her body was laying down roots.
“Are you okay?” I asked her. Nila had already gone to bed. I was glad she wasn’t there to see the show. I offered Paloma a glass of water. Told her maybe we could make some tea. But she just shook her head, and finally I told her good night.
Paloma left her job keeping the books at Panasonic and went to work at the Museum of Modern Art, which made her happy because she could get all kinds of discounts on stationery and tote bags from the gift shop. My mom often went to meet her for lunch and a walk around the museum while my brother and I were at school and Papi was at work. My mother didn’t have many friends, but that never struck me as weird because my father didn’t have many either, just a ton of siblings who kept marrying, divorcing, and multiplying, so there were always a lot of people around anyway.
Mami was on her own in the United States, if you didn’t count her husband or kids. She left her parents behind in Colombia and they both died before I had a chance to meet them. She had a few siblings left in Bogotá: one full sister, one full brother who was institutionalized for retardation, and another half sister that her father had with a secretary. Around here, Mami only had Paloma, and they clung together like schoolgirls, linking elbows as they walked, talking for hours about people I didn’t know, about the world they left behind in South America, in a way that made it sound like a miniseries.
You could hardly tell they were related though. Paloma with her bare face next to Mami’s hour’s worth of cosmetics, perfectly layered creams and pigments, so that her eyes seemed lit from within. My mother always dressed as if she were on her way to a cocktail party, while Paloma had on her sensible uniform—black trousers and a blouse in one of the primary colors. My mother had the soft, forgiving nature of a mother, infinite patience unless you crossed her, and then she became a viper. Paloma seemed infinitely wounded, trusted no one, never accepted when you tried to give her a gift, and always wore her purse across her chest with a hand clutching the strap, prepared to be mugged.
Paloma was happy working at the museum until a shiny Colombian compatriota named Oscar showed up, with oily hair that looked like it might drip on you if you got too close and a face that always looked wet. I saw this wonder myself one day when I went with my mother to meet Paloma at the museum. Oscar was always talking about the various women he was screwing, going into detail at the dirty parts so as to annoy Paloma, whose desk was next to his in accounting. And then his harassment became outright cruel. He’d call her fat, grotesque, mock her, told her he was going to have her fired with the false complaints he filed against her in personnel on a weekly basis. Paloma didn’t know what to do but she was tough, so she ignored the man, who was slowly poaching the few friends she’d made on the job. She had only one left. A recent college grad named Maggie, who had the kind of red hair you only see in movies. I think Maggie had a sad family story of her own and that’s why she gravitated toward Paloma.
When Paloma came to our house in New Jersey to spend the weekend, she would tell me about her. “Maggie is so sweet, she buys me a bagel and coffee every morning without my asking her to.” Or, “Maggie has to buy a dress for a party and she asked me to go shopping at Macy’s with her.”
I got the feeling she was comparing me to Maggie. At that time I was fifteen and had an especially sucky attitude. When Paloma invaded the family room, sleeping on the couch so that I couldn’t watch television when I wanted, I took to ignoring her, isolating her with my indifference. My mother never pushed us to be close with each other. Our distance seemed to reinforce her own conflicted past with her sister and every now and then she’d fall into a memory and say, “Paloma used to be terrible to me,” before she stopped herself, shook out her hands as if they were full of crumbs, and added, “Well, never mind. That’s all in the past now.”
At that time, our maid was a young Guatemalan lady with a mouth full of gold. Her name was Deisy and she’d buy turtle eggs from some store in North Bergen and eat them for lunch right there on our kitchen table. I told her they were endangered but she’d just say they were delicious, peeling away the soft shell to reveal the turtle fetus; tiny head with eyes closed and claws tucked inward. Deisy had only recently arrived but she was picking up English quickly from talk radio, and my father gave her a list of vocabulary words every morning that she’d memorize by the evening. It was Deisy who told me I needed to start treating Paloma better.
I confessed that I didn’t feel any warmth toward Paloma, no matter if she was my aunt or my godmother.
Deisy shook her head at me and said, “Ser amable no quita lo valiente.”
We made a deal. She’d give up eating turtle eggs and I’d be nicer to Paloma.
Holidays in our home consisted of my mother hosting all of my father’s family. Paloma came, too. She’d help my mother organize the food, set up the table, supervise the housekeeper so that every thing was perfect. But then, as the music and chatter filled the house and the relatives fell into their pods of conversation, Paloma was always left alone on the sofa. People avoided her, maybe because they didn’t quite know what to say. You couldn’t ask her about her boyfriend because by now everyone knew he was married to another woman in Parsippany and that he was probably never going to leave her despite his stringing Paloma along all these years. You couldn’t ask her about her job at the museum because then you’d have to hear about Oscar El Demonio for an hour, how he was trying to push her out of her job, force her to quit out of frustration, but she refused to give him the pleasure.
Or she’d talk about all the things she was going to do in a few years when she retired. She had all these trips in mind: Southeast Asia, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa. She even wanted to go back to Jamaica to see the Kingston boarding school where the nuns tormented her, the place where she first understood what it meant to be alone and possibly forgotten. And of course, as soon as she retired, she would finally start reading all the books that formed a fortress around her apartment.
But these conversations hardly ever happened because people didn’t give her the chance. Only my mother. When Mami was done feeding the people and taking compliments on the food and party, she’d go straight over to Paloma, and the two would fall into their song of history, exchange glances packed with gossip and innuendo about the other guests, which only the two of them could understand.
My mother’s mother died of cancer. Mami said it was because her husband’s infidelities had already demolished her that she handed herself over to the disease. She didn’t undergo any treatments and refused to go to the hospital. She stayed in her own bed, her body shrinking into the same sheets she’d embroidered for her wedding, while her absent husband returned home from the apartment he now shared with a mistress, to be with his wife during her last days.
Mami says that during that last month, when she left my brother and father behind to go home to Colombia, is when she really got to know her mother. All the daughters spent hours in bed with their mother, told stories, rubbed lotion on their mother’s legs and skin until she said that the pain was too great, her flesh burning from the inside out. For her last days, my mother says that her father became the perfect husband. There was no mention of his mistress or the child he’d had with her. As he sat at his wife’s bedside, he told her she was the love of his life, asked her to forgive him, and said there was no other woman that compared to her in beauty and in spirit. Mami said the worst part was that she could see in her mother’s eyes that she didn’t believe him. And he wasn’t forgiven.
When their mother died, Mami returned to Puerto Rico but Paloma stayed in Colombia for a while. My mother says they were not close then, but she heard from others that Paloma became addicted to sedatives, fell into an enormous depression, and that she spent months crying into the pillows of her mother’s bed.
It was no surprise then when Paloma was diagnosed with cancer. Her mother’s had appeared in the pancreas, lethal, the kind of cancer that seems to take pleasure in the killing. Paloma’s cancer revealed itself in her uterus. More than one doctor told her it was because she’d never had children, as if she were to blame.
I was twenty, at college in Manhattan, when my mother told me. I was impatient and asked her flat out if this meant Paloma was going to die.
“It’s not like in the old days,” Mami told me. “They say they caught it early and she’ll go right into chemo. She should be fine.”
Paloma lost her hair. At first she wore a scarf around her head or one of her old hats left over from the seventies. She lost a ton of weight with the treatment; her cheeks sank and her eyes bulged, while her lips became floppy. Her large breasts began to sag even farther and she held a constant expression of terror. Mami said we should be extra nice to Paloma, so I tried calling her every week to see how she was feeling. She was still working despite her fatigue and treatment schedule, never mind the nausea and depression that followed each session. She was still holding out for her retirement, her pension, saying once she kicked this cancer and got that cash in her pocket, she was going on a world tour.
My mother went with her to the doctor sometimes. It was on one of those visits that a new doctor who was seeing her for the first time asked her if she’d ever had children. She said no, but the doctor went further and asked if she’d ever been pregnant.
“Four times,” Paloma answered while my mother lost her breath.
“And what happened?” asked the doctor.
“I lost them.”
Nobody knew Paloma had ever been pregnant. She never told my mother. My mother asked her why she’d kept it a secret all those years but Paloma didn’t have an answer.
My parents convinced Paloma to take a vacation when her treatments were finally over. Paloma hardly ever took vacations, especially in the spring, because she said that they needed her at the museum during tax season. Papi always said Paloma did the work of a dozen people. But Oscar was still abusing her on the job, making fun of her bald head, telling her she looked like a hairless monster.
We went to Israel. The Holy Land.
At the time, I was dating a Lower East Side Costa Rican named Roly so I was too busy missing him and hoping he wouldn’t cheat while I was away to appreciate that we were walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Paloma’s hair was growing in, a dark fuzz much curlier than expected. Her face reclaimed some of its pink and she seemed invigorated by the dust and stone of Jerusalem. Paloma never went to church in New York, probably still mad at the nuns in Jamaica, but in Israel, I saw her fall into silent meditation at those holy sights packed with tourists, waiting in line behind dozens of people just for the chance to kneel before the Holy Sepulchre.
We went to the Jordan River where there was a troop of born-agains baptizing themselves. The tour guide said the water was holy, so Paloma pulled out an empty Evian bottle and filled it up with the river water. I think she planned to anoint herself with it to keep away the cancer but I didn’t ask specifics. Some things are just personal.
Mami later said to me, “I think this trip is a new beginning for her. She says she’s not going to work so much from now on. She might even retire early.”
But when we got back to the States, it was business as usual. Paloma returned to her life at the museum, her nights with Gerald, and the occasional weekend at our house in New Jersey. Sometimes I called her to say hi even though it felt unnatural to me, just to make my mother happy. Paloma hardly seemed interested in talking to me, though, and gave the same monotone replies that I’d once offered as a snotty fifteen-year-old. I felt insulted. I wanted to ask her, “What did I ever do to you?” but I knew the answer. Nothing.
They said if the cancer stayed away for five years, Paloma would be in the clear. It came back after two years. This time with full force, having deposited little nodules in her lungs, so firm in the tissue that there was no way to retrieve them. She went in for another round of radiation and chemo. She had to take time off from work and my mother brought her to stay at our house because the doctor said Paloma’s studio was too dusty for her lungs. Mami took her there to pack up some things and I think both of them knew it would be the last time.
My mom asked me to come home to Jersey to spend some time. My brother even made an appearance. Paloma was camped out in the family room, had an oxygen tank beside her, just in case, and she banished the elderly Manchas from sight because she said his fur got into her throat. She would have been more comfortable in one of the upstairs bedrooms but she was too weak to climb the steps without turning purple from exertion.
Our maid at the time was a former nurse who came to the States after her husband was murdered in Medellín. Her name was Luz and I loved her. She had two daughters, who went to work as nannies in Barcelona, and she missed them so much that she sort of used me as a stand-in, making a fresh batch of arepas and lentejas every time I came home, always leaving a steaming cup of cinammon tea on the nightstand before I went to bed. Because she’d been a nurse, Luz was extra good with Paloma. That is, until Paloma started barking at her, telling her she wasn’t cleaning well enough because the dust was causing her to cough uncontrollably. Luz almost quit a few times, told Mami she was not used to this kind of treatment, but Mami begged her to stay, finally admitting that the doctors had told her Paloma wouldn’t last much longer.
Several times a week, Mami drove Paloma to the city to see her doctors. Every weekend that I came home, I found Paloma more dependent on the oxygen tank, with plastic tubes up her nose and eyes wide as if in the midst of a duel. We kept the house quiet. Paloma couldn’t take any kind of noise, which meant that Luz couldn’t play her salsa music while she worked in the kitchen, and Mami had to whisper when she spoke on the phone to her other sister in Colombia. Paloma wouldn’t even come to the table for dinner. She was losing her appetite. It took all her will to swallow a few crackers and some soup.
All her life, Paloma loved to read the New York Post. Never the Times. When she was at the house, Papi went out every morning to get her a copy. One day, Paloma stopped reading. Each day thereafter the editions piled up on the coffee table in the family room untouched. My father tried to entice her with the latest news about the mayor or whatever political scandal was in the headlines—all to inspire a little passion in Paloma, but she wasn’t interested anymore, and soon she lost track of the days.
Gerald came to see her sometimes. My mother tried to be polite, even asked Luz to make him lunch, coffee, whatever the guy wanted as he sat in the armchair next to Paloma, who didn’t even change out of her nightgown anymore. She spent her afternoons on the sofa with her crossword puzzles, and when Gerald came to visit, they sat in silence across from each other in the family room. Sometimes Luz and I hung around the doorway trying to hear the way they spoke to each other but they didn’t give anything away. Luz said she could see in Gerald’s eyes that for him, Paloma wasn’t dying fast enough.
When Paloma was hospitalized, my mother asked me to call her sister in Colombia to tell her to come because there wasn’t much time left. Carmen arrived the next day. Papi picked her up at the airport and brought her straight to the hospital. Carmen was two years younger than my mother and they could pass for twins, though Carmen had abandoned the Andean vanity that sustained my mother, in favor of a more European look, wore mostly black and only foundation, which Mami always told her was the wrong shade. Mami warned Carmen not to cry at the sight of Paloma but when she stood at the foot of the hospital bed, the room dimly lit because too much light bothered Paloma’s eyes, Carmen folded. Paloma peeled the oxygen mask from her face when she saw her little sister for the first time in over ten years.
“I must really be dying if you’re here.”
My mother and Carmen slept at the hospital with Paloma, who was increasingly anxious that she would suffocate, her lungs locked with disease. She sucked air from the plastic nasal tubes, ravenous, and called the nurses often, telling them the oxygen tank was broken, not enough air was coming out.
After three weeks, the insurance wouldn’t pay for her hospital stay any longer and the doctor told my mother that bringing Paloma back home with her would be a mistake. Mami argued that she could take care of her, with Luz’s help, and she would hire a full-time nurse, but the doctor kept shaking his head, and finally took Mami’s wrist in his hand and said, “Trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
I could see what he meant, so it was up to me to spell it out for my mother, tell her that Paloma would die on our sofa. She needed better medical care in case there was an emergency. Mami relented. A few hours later, an ambulance came to take Paloma to a hospice in the Bronx. Mami and I followed the ambulance in her car. I could see my mother was exhausted. She’d been forsaking her makeup and wearing the same black pants and gray sweater for days. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail and she had a folder full of documents with her: Paloma’s papers indicating her wishes not to be revived or sustained on machines, leaving my mother to make all decisions on her behalf.
I thought a hospice was a hospital but I learned this is where people come to die. Shriveling bodies in wheelchairs lining the halls, forgotten people waiting for their last breath. As Paloma was set up in her new room, a counselor and a doctor took my mother and me aside to tell us about the different support groups they offer for families of patients.
Mami wouldn’t ask, so I took over.
“How long does she have?”
“I would be surprised if she lasts a week,” the doctor said, and the counselor woman put her hand on my shoulder. I hate when people you don’t know try to offer you comfort. I think she must have sensed this because the hand lasted only a second there before she removed it.
We went to see Paloma in her room, told her she should get some rest. I offered to put on the TV but she said no, that the sound and light bothered her. Her voice was just a whisper now. It took all her might to make out a few words and then she’d quickly put the oxygen mask back on and close her eyes as she drew in her breath. While we were there, she had the oxygen tank changed three times, saying each one was defective.
“They’re trying to kill me,” she told my mother with panicked eyes.
Mami soothed her, tried to read her some psalms but Paloma didn’t want to hear it. She looked at Mami, took the mask off her face, and said, “Go home, Maria. You look terrible.”
We each kissed Paloma good-bye. She didn’t meet my eyes when I told her I loved her. When I left her room, I spotted a copy of the Post on the counter of the nurses’ station, picked it up, and brought it back to Paloma’s room while my mother continued down the corridor.
I got as close to Paloma as I could, touched her hand as I held the paper in front of her. “Look, Paloma, I found the paper. You want me to leave it here for you?”
She shook her head, pulled her hand out of mine, and waved me away. I told her I loved her again but I don’t think she heard me. When I left her, she was fumbling with the oxygen mask again, fighting for each abbreviated breath.