Prism - By Rachel Moschell Page 0,84

heard herself say something she never would have expected.

“Doña Filomena, can you please pray for another friend of mine?” The word ‘friend’ was spoken rather tightly. “He was shot in the head. The doctors think he might not live.”

“Oh, that is serious!” Doña Filomena shook her head slowly, thin gray braids scratching her worn sweater. “We must pray for this poor boy, too. Sometimes, when I am not working, I come here to the hospital to pray for people. And if I cannot come, I will remember to pray for your friend at church.”

Wara felt some kind of relief that Filomena would probably be waving her hands around and praying for Alejo, because right now, she couldn’t. All she could do was sit there and watch him, to see if he would live or die.

Fighting back the bitterness stinging her throat, Wara said goodbye to Doña Filomena and made a beeline for the back door of the hospital. An ample concrete square shaded by a balcony preceded the hospital’s delivery area, currently completely empty.

Filomena’s words echoed through Wara’s head: “They found out that poor boy had died and gone to glory.” Barely stifling a cry of grief, Wara flopped to the ground behind a huge clay planter and curled into a ball.

Sometime in the afternoon, Wara forced herself up from the ground. She wandered the dusty neighborhood and called the Martirs on the brand new cell phone Alejo had bought for them. She couldn’t call them on her own new cell phone, because the thing only worked for local calls. By the time she left the Viva call center across from Univalle, dusk had darkened to full-blown night. Few people passed the hospital on the unlit sidewalks. Wara sighed deeply and headed across the street to the hospital, resigned to spend one last night here before joining the Martirs in Lima.

Yes, she felt bad for Alejo; he was up there all alone, life hanging in the balance. But he wasn’t hers to care for, not by a long shot. She needed some time, needed to be close to people she actually liked. The roll of red boliviano bills she had pilfered from Alejo were more than enough to make it to Lima. With her dark coloring, she’d likely make it across the border on the bus without showing ID. She had also called her parents again from the call center, and they would wire money to Lima for her and arrange for a plane ticket back to the U.S.

Home.

But not really. This had been her home.

I loved this city. I never wanted to leave.

But now Cochabamba seemed full of unknown stalkers and haunted memories. For the first time since she arrived in Bolivia five years ago, Wara wanted to go home.

Chest still tight with emotion, Wara exited the elevator upstairs and turned towards the room she shared with comatose Alejo. The halls were dim and empty and a faint, urgent beeping drilled the walls. From the direction of Alejo’s room.

Wara swallowed hard, just as the buxom nurse from this morning pushed past her, practically tearing up the tiles in her white clogs. Wara froze, then hurried after her with clipped steps, as the nurse dove into the open door where Wara had left Alejo.

She ducked inside to find Alejo convulsing on the bed and the blood pressure machine going wild. Dr. Ortega had his back to Wara, punching a syringe into the plastic of Alejo’s IV bag. Five or six nurses in white were framing the bed, grim and sober. Every single set of eyes flickered to Wara as she entered, and none of the gazes were friendly.

“What’s happening?” she asked stupidly, knowing they all must hate her for disappearing the whole day while her fiancé was hovering between life and death.

“He’s dying!” the nurse with the clogs snapped, then turned back to Alejo.

“It’s the swelling.” Dr. Ortega’s face shone slick with sweat above a bushy black beard. “It’s gotten worse, making him convulse. His heart’s racing. It’s like I told you, señorita. The only way to relieve the swelling is to operate. We can’t do that here.”

Wara wandered closer, ignoring the cool glances of the nurses. Alejo had stopped shaking and lay flat on the bed, face the color of white clay. “He’s dying?” she repeated, moving so close one hand touched the edge of the bed near Alejo’s elbow.

“The bullet didn’t enter his brain,” the doctor said, speaking loudly over the frantic beep of Alejo’s heart rate. “But