There was no music the night Santo died. It was later than the children had ever been up and awake, outside in the streets Esperanza called unsafe. But despite the dealing, the occasional shoot-outs, the loud music they heard from their apartment windows, Broadway was asleep. They imagined everyone was sleeping, tucked away in their beds; and if people were outside, it was because they had an emergency. And the Colón family had an emergency that night, and to attend to that emergency they had to walk over to the emergency room.

The seats in the waiting room were filled with people who were trying to find refuge from the cold, people who smelled like dried piss, old wounds, and alcohol. People holding brown paper bags, hyperventilating, vomiting. Children crying, people slashed, with broken limbs, sneezing, coughing, waiting. Everyone was waiting.

—I don‘t care if there‘s a fucking line, let me see my husband, Esperanza screamed at anyone who would listen to her. She screamed louder than the babies crying, than the old man wailing, sitting by the wall, than the vacuum cleaner, than the lady screaming from withdrawal, louder than the ambulance siren.

—I want to see my husband!

The police officer guarding the entrance grabbed Esperanza and tried to wrestle her down. Bobby held on to Dallas. His skinny arms pressed up against her as strongly as his thirteen-year-old body could bear. That night, Bobby‘s lips quivered and his neck tightened up as he held back the tears. Dallas was too busy looking around to feel anything. Too busy looking at people waiting in line, sitting in the waiting area, banging on the soda machines, talking on the pay phone. She was looking at the lines of fluorescent lights that raced across the ceiling. She was listening to the ladies.

—Ay por Dios, why don‘t they let the poor woman see her husband? said a lady sitting in the waiting area.

Esperanza kicked and screamed, punched the cops, the janitor, a guy who was also waiting.

—Let me see my husband. Por favor!

Bobby and Dallas had never seen their mother cry. It made Dallas want to cry to see her cry. She prayed her mother would calm down so people could stop staring at them. Esperanza was wearing a scarf over her head. Not a scratch of makeup on her amber skin. Esperanza only screamed in Spanish, because that night, she didn‘t have the energy to translate herself. No one understood her pain. No one knew her husband, Santo, who was a good man, who didn‘t deserve this. Not Santo. Not her husband, not their father, not the man who worked his whole life for something better.

And then a nurse emerged from reception and said Esperanza‘s name in the most soothing voice she had ever heard. To Esperanza, the nurse, la morena americana, came to her like an angel.

—Mrs. Esperanza Colón, please come with me.

And this lady Esperanza didn‘t know looked at her as if she had lived many more years and seen many more things than Esperanza could‘ve ever imagined. And the black nurse, who was wearing the white dress, the white stockings, the white shoes, opened her wings and Esperanza did quiet down, as babies do when someone holds them. The nurse opened her arms and Esperanza breathed in the scent of fresh-baked bread right out of the oven. She held the nurse as if walking into the light of heaven, as if through her she would see her Santo again.