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LUCÍA
“Qué te pasa.”
Not a question. A bold statement. And it was coming from somewhere behind my head, so far that I had to squint my eyes to see if I was hearing correctly. Not that the sense of hearing would be enhanced by narrowing my sight at the wall in front of me, but… yeah. I thought I was making sense. At least in my head, I did.
“Huh?” I turned around, completely confused by whatever was going on in my own office. Valentina was leaning against the door frame, chewing her gum loudly and twirling a lock of auburn hair that had fallen out of her messy bun between her fingers.
“I’ve been talking to you for, like, five minutes, Lu,” she said, moving into the office and immediately jumping on the exam table. She was wearing bright pink scrubs, aspecific set that she usually reserved for gloomy days because they made her feel happy. “What’s going on?”
It was like time froze. As if we were in the eye of a storm, and everything was moving in slow motion. I was hyper-aware of my surroundings: the door to the cabinet where we stored our gloves and masks sitting a little askew, the paint chipping around the hardware where it had been pulled day after day in our practice.
“Lucía,” she repeated, her brown eyes wide.
I blinked a few times to try and focus on her. I coughed quietly and swallowed. The only thing I could distinctly hear was the beating of my heart, comparable to how it felt when I used to go for runs back in the day. “Sorry, spaced out for a minute.” I gave her a weak smile, but she didn’t return it. She was on to me, because these things, these blips, were happening more and more in recent weeks.And this time, it was a patient file that had the same last name. That was all it took.
Flatline.
The constant beep had been singed into my brain since that night many moons ago. Despite the fact that years had passed since that moment. Despite the fact that I moved back to my hometown to get away from it all. Despite the fact that my direction changed, my ambitions reduced. Which was fine. Absolutely fine.
But every December, as we inched closer to the date, I went back to her. To the time when she died alone in her room, with unfamiliar faces around her.
I took a deep breath and walked towards my desk, wincing at the amount of stuff covering the tabletop. It was almost the end of the year, and the practice would soon close so that the staff of two—Valentina and I—could take some time off for the summer.
We had a handful of regular patients, but the practice was growing, and some families from the neighboring towns started coming over with their children, and what was once a dull andnormal—in every sense of the word—office was now a colorful and cheerful place. The previous summer, Valentina and I had done a sloppy job painting the walls, adorning them with mediocre drawings of animals that our patients seemed to love. The corner of the waiting room featured an assortment of colorful children’s books and toys, and for some reason, the collection kept growing, despite us not investing a single cent in new stuff during the year.
“Okay,” she said, her eyes squinting in my direction, apparently not believing a single word that was coming out of my mouth.
I started hanging out with Valentina when I first moved back to Tres Fuegos three years before, after finishing my pediatrics residency at a big hospital in Buenos Aires. I heard through the rumor mill—fine, my parents—that Dr. Martín was getting ready to retire, so I took it as a sign from the universe that I needed to go back to my hometown. I blamed it on the sounds and smells of the big city. I claimed a bad breakup, a boyfriend who couldn’t deal with therhythms of my career, and so he bailed. But that wasn’t entirely true.
Although Iwouldtell anyone who would listen that there was nothing like the smell of this town after a rainstorm passed by in the middle of the summer. The rain in the city never hit the same, and it made me homesick. So I returned and slowly but surely made a name for myself.
The town was small, still, despite new people and the younger crowds returning to make a life here after they were away for college. Like Lourdes, one of my close friends from high school, who was moving back next spring and was going to work for my brother Santiago at the inn. Or, for example, in Valentina’s case, ending up here because of her family issues.
I looked up and saw her studying my face. I was clutching the tablet in my hand, my knuckles going white at the effort. Nowadays, closer to that date, it didn’t take much to make me remember. It happened every year like clockwork.
“What?” I said abruptly. I pinched my eyelids tightly and rubbed them with my hand, taking long, deep breaths to calm myself down.Five, four, three, two, one.Deep breath.
I could feel my hand holding on to that tablet for dear life, and I could hear my friend’s consistent breathing in front of me. I opened my mouth to say something, then thought better of it. For a flash of a second, I felt like screaming at her for no apparent reason. Maybe just in irritation. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
Valentina shook her head and scowled. She wasn’t used to my irritability. Because outwardly, I was bubbly, like most of my brothers. But today, my patience was thin. As a matter of fact, this month, it was nonexistent. This year needed to end, fast.
“Nada.Calm down, crazy,” she said with a freaking tone. I knew exactly which one because that was how she talked to some of the moreextraparents at the practice. Those who felt that their children should be the priority over others.
I rolled my eyes and took a big breath, letting it all go quickly. “Fine. How can I help you, dear?”
“Bueno, tampoco para tanto,” she replied with a big smile on her face. She had the eerie ability to let things go immediately, not holding on to anything that really didn’t matter. She never got angry, and it was incredibly annoying. She reminded me so much of my youngest brother, who just existed on vibes alone, and the guy got shit done. Exhausting. “Your mom called.” She looked at her nails, then looked up at me, blinking a few times like she was expecting a response from me.
I blinked.
She blinked back. “She wanted me to remind you that?—”
I furrowed my brows. “Why would I need reminding? I live there.” I turned and dropped the device on the desk and moved some things around so that it was buried under the largest pile of paperwork the tabletop could handle.
“No sé,” she added, her legs moving in a specificrhythm that was starting to increase my heart rate. She jumped off the table and stood straight, her nose going up in the air as she spoke. “Anyway, you have three more patients today, and then you are free to go. Your mom said that Victoria was getting ready at the big house, and she was walking there from work at around four if you wanted to join them.”
I looked at her with my most impatient look. She knew it well, so she immediately raised her hands and said, “What? I’m just giving you your messages!”
