“You will be responsible for their hygiene and nutrition,” she said, reiterating Magdalena’s tasks, “but you must never, ever cuddle them, or even speak a word to them. Physical contact must be kept to a minimum.”

Magdalena nodded, wondering whether the residents were affected by some sort of medical condition. She hadn’t mustered the courage to ask.

“And be careful with the subject in cot thirty-nine,” her supervisor continued.

Magdalena’s unease turned to worry.

“Why?” she finally asked.

Nurse Braun looked away, her eyes on the lake that could be seen beyond one of the windows.

“You’ll see,” was all she said. She gestured at Magdalena to pull over her head the piece of fabric she had been holding. Together, they lowered white veils over their faces.

“Remember,” she said just before she pushed the door handle. “Observe, record, forget.”

-12-

-12-

There was something distasteful in how quickly one could return to the habits of day-to-day life so soon after having laid eyes on a dead man—a kind of ignominious vitality, a sense of relief for having been spared a similar fate.

It felt aberrant, diving back into an everyday routine while a fellow human being’s mutilated corpse lay trapped in a steel box inside a morgue.

People die every day, Teresa reminded herself. It was just another aspect of life. And yet, it was an uncomfortable thing to witness. It had you savoring every breath you took even while somebody else mourned a person who would never breathe again. It was cruel and inexorable. It was human.

She pulled her front door shut behind her, shrugged off her shoulder bag, and kicked off her shoes. The warmth of the wooden floor beneath her feet reminded her that sometimes it was the simple things that could soothe the soul, like those summers when she was a little girl and ran barefoot through the vineyards, stirring up dust and laughter. She could still smell the mineral scent of sun-baked earth and salt-rich stone, the sour odor of the green vines, the sweet flowering acacias. Sweat, the bitterness of dandelion flowers, drops of wine on her lips, stolen from her grandfather’s glass. The essence of happiness.