The woman leads us down the slip thin alley, a
welted concrete and barbed wire lined street hung with a firestorm of clothing
set to dry, her feet beating an urgent rhythm against the dust. My sister
hurries after her, moving with the same focus. The pockmarked sidewalk of San
José has given way to dirt paths cluttered with
thin-ribbed dogs and decaying houses, tin roofs rusted in a patchwork of
scalding reds. My throat is parched with the tang of exhaust fumes, my nose
stinging from the mercado we just left, where the wet iron
stench of warm meat cannot be masked by a burst of bloodshot spices sold by the
scoopful. We had been drifting through switchbacks sheathed in leather bags
that grow like barnacles up the high walls, when my sister had stopped to
inspect the wares of the woman. They had spoken only for a minute, until she
had all but dragged us from the marketplace.
"What's going on?" I shout ahead, but
nobody answers.
Soon we slow at a crude mortar shanty, chickens
huddled on the roof, and follow the woman inside. I gag on my first
breath. The reek is sharp with the taste of sour sheep innards and cheese. I
see a man, dark skin stretched across the landscape of his bones, drum-tight
and dry, his chest rising in a shallow metre as his hands shudder with
pain.
"Oh god," I whisper, finally
understanding. "She thinks you're a doctor."
"I don't know how to say "I'm a med
student" in Spanish," my sister says, already kneeling by his
side, fingers at his wrists. Hands steady, she crushes painkillers, moistens
his cracked lips with balm, helps him swallow water. I try the ambulance
four times with no answer before I hail a taxi, assuring the sobbing woman I
will pay.
"I do not cry at the money," she
says. "Look at his hands."
I look. They have
stopped clawing; the drugs are working. My sister grins at me as she stokes her
patient's hair. I smile back weakly, and try to hide my own trembling fingers as
we wait for the taxi driver to help us carry him out.
