“Do you mind if I ask where your accent is from?” I say kindly, hoping that I don’t offend her with the question. Usually, when people ask me where I’m from, I take it as a compliment. Technically, I’m from the Bay Area. I was, after all, born here. But I like the idea of people looking at me and thinking I was born in Mexico or somewhere else entirely. I like that my appearance contradicts my backstory.

“Argentina,” she responds. “But I moved here in my twenties.”

“So, like, five years ago?” I joke. If I had to guess, I’d say she was in her fifties. But maybe I’m off. Maybe being a nurse in an unrelenting pandemic has aged her prematurely.

“Exactly,” she says with a wink.

“Do you speak Spanish?” I know the answer is probably obvious, but I ask anyway.

“Yes, but I get worse and worse at it every day. Most of my family is still in Buenos Aires, so I speak more English these days.”

“Do you think maybe you could translate something for me? I mean, if you have time?”

She glances at the clock. The hospital is still crowded these days and the nurses and doctors don’t have the ability to linger, but I can tell she wants to be helpful and wouldn’t mind a break from the chaos. Or maybe she just feels guilty that, before today, she treated me like a ghost. It doesn’t matter anyway.

Before she has a chance to respond, I have already reached for my phone and am scrolling through my text exchange with Parisa until I land on the video of my abuela. The one I’ve watched at least a hundred times, and though I understood some words and phrases, I haven’t been able to decipher the essence of what she’s trying to say to me. There are lots of lo sientos uttered while she wipes at her tears, but I’m more interested in the sentences in between.

“It’s only a few minutes,” I add, as I press PLAY.

I keep my eyes trained on the nurse as she listens to my grandmother. I can tell by the way she’s biting her lip that she’s moved by whatever is being professed. When the video ends, she shakes her head as though she’s willing away any show of emotion.

“Sorry,” she says. “This just makes me miss my family. It’s been hard being away from them right now.”

“Believe me, I understand.”

She asks me to play the video a few more times, and she carefully writes down the English translation. When she hands me the piece of paper, her penmanship beyond impeccable, she tells me how glad she was to hear that I was going home.

“You go have yourself a beautiful life, Gabriela,” she adds on her way out.