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"But the girl knows things--" the Iowan started to say.
"Not things that will help her," Pepe quickly said.
"The orphanage will take these kids, won't they?" Senor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.
Pepe was worried about the nuns at Lost Children; it was not necessarily the dump kids the nuns didn't like--the preexisting problem was Esperanza, their cleaning-lady-with-a-night-job mother. But all Pepe said to the Iowan was: "Si--Ninos Perdidos will take the kids." And here Pepe paused; he was wondering what to say next, and if he should say it--he had doubts.
None of them had noticed when Lupe stopped crying. "El circo," the clairvoyant girl said, pointing at Brother Pepe. "The circus."
"What about the circus?" Juan Diego asked his sister.
"Brother Pepe thinks it's a good idea," Lupe told him.
"Pepe thinks the circus is a good idea," Juan Diego told them all, in English and in Spanish. But Pepe didn't look so sure.
That ended their conversation for a while. The X-rays took a lot of time, mostly the part when they were waiting for the radiologist's opinion; as it turned out, the waiting went on so long that there was little doubt among them concerning what they would hear. (Vargas had already thought it, and Lupe had already told them his thoughts.)
While they were waiting to hear from the radiologist, Juan Diego decided that he actually liked Dr. Vargas. Lupe had come to a slightly different conclusion: the girl adored Senor Eduardo--chiefly, but not only, because of what had happened to the seven-year-old's dog. The girl had fallen asleep with her head in Edward Bonshaw's lap. That the all-seeing child had bonded with him gave the new teacher added zeal; the Iowan kept looking at Brother Pepe, as if to say: And you believe we can't save her? Of course we can!
Oh, Lord, Pepe prayed--what a perilous road lies ahead of us, in both lunatic and unknown hands! Please guide us!
It was then that Dr. Vargas sat beside Edward Bonshaw and Brother Pepe. Vargas lightly touched the sleeping girl's head. "I want a look at her throat," the young doctor reminded them. He told them he'd asked his nurse to contact a colleague whose office was also in the Cruz Roja hospital. Dr. Gomez was an ear, nose, and throat specialist--it would be ideal if she were available to have a look at Lupe's larynx. But if Dr. Gomez couldn't have a look for herself, Vargas knew she would at least lend him the necessary instruments. There was a special light, and a little mirror that you held at the back of the throat.
"Nuestra madre," Lupe said in her sleep. "Our mother. Let them look in her throat."
"She's not awake--Lupe always talks in her sleep," Rivera said.
"What is she saying, Juan Diego?" Brother Pepe asked the boy.
"It's about our mother," Juan Diego said. "Lupe can read your mind while she's asleep," the boy warned Vargas.
"Tell me more about Lupe's mother, Pepe," Vargas said.
"Her mother sounds the same but different--no one can understand her when she gets excited, or when she's praying. But Esperanza is older, of course," Pepe tried to explain--without really saying what he meant. He was struggling to express himself, both in English and in Spanish. "Esperanza can make herself comprehensible--she's not always impossible to understand. Esperanza is, from time to time, a prostitute!" Pepe blurted out, after checking to be sure that Lupe was still asleep. "Whereas this child, this innocent girl--well, she can't manage to communicate what she means, except to her brother."
Dr. Vargas looked at Juan Diego, who simply nodded; Rivera was nodding, too--the dump boss was both nodding and crying. Vargas asked Rivera: "When she was an infant, and when she was a small child, did Lupe have any respiratory distress--anything you can recall?"
"She had croup--she coughed and coughed," Rivera said, sobbing.
When Brother Pepe explained Lupe's history of croup to Edward Bonshaw, the Iowan asked: "Don't lots of kids get croup?"
"It's her hoarseness that is distinctive--the audible evidence of vocal strain," Dr. Vargas said slowly. "I still want to have a look at Lupe's throat, her larynx, her vocal cords."
Edward Bonshaw, with the clairvoyant girl asleep on his lap, sat as if frozen. The enormity of his vows seemed to assail him and give him strength in the same riotous millisecond: his devotion to Saint Ignatius Loyola, for the insane reason of the saint's announcement that he would sacrifice his life if he could prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single night; the two gifted dump kids on the threshold of either danger or salvation--perhaps both; and now the atheistic young man of science Dr. Vargas, who could think only of examining the child psychic's throat, her larynx, her vocal cords--oh, what an opportunity, and what a collision course, this was!
That was when Lupe woke up, or--if she'd been awake for a while--when she opened her eyes.
"What is my larynx?" the little girl asked her brother. "I don't want Vargas looking at it."
"She wants to know what her larynx is," Juan Diego translated for Dr. Vargas.
"It's the upper part of her trachea--where her vocal cords are," Vargas explained.
"Nobody's getting near my trachea. What is it?" Lupe asked.
"Now she's concerned about her trachea," Juan Diego reported.
"Her trachea is the main trunk of a system of tubes; air passes through these tubes, to and from Lupe's lungs," Dr. Vargas told Juan Diego.
