‘The doctor will tell you.’ He motions me to a chair and says something quietly to his daughter. I look down at Emmy fretfully, her skin has a greenish tinge to it, her eyes are two muddy hollows, then I catch sight of my own face in the mirror and realize it’s just the harsh strip lighting of the pharmacy washing us both with its tubercular glow. Out in the street, music blares from a boombox. The pharmacist’s daughter returns with two paper cones of Coke. She hands one to me and the other to jack.

‘It’s going to be okay, Jack.’ I give him a one-armed hug.

‘Can I have a quarter to weigh myself?’ Jack says.

The doctor is large and sweaty with a small moustache that curls under his nose and droops down either side of his mouth lending him a mournful expression. He shakes my hand limply and introduces himself as Louis. He makes little grunting noises as I relay each of Emmy’s symptoms to him, examining her with an air of tired resignation. As a character in a movie, he is the abortionist who has been struck off, the alcoholic local doctor who digs bullets from the shoulders of heroes with a blunt instrument and a slosh of whisky to dull the pain. ‘I also have two children,’ he remarks conversationally, hooking the stethoscope into his ears.

‘That’s nice.’

‘Yes, I like it,’ he agrees amiably. ‘My wife is a very good mother and an excellent housekeeper, she mops the floor five times a day.’

‘Oh, well.’ That’s a lot. I can’t take my eyes off Emmy’s face.

‘To me it looks clean after the first time, but I know the rules.’ He bends over Emmy’s chest. ‘Women are always right. Please . . . turn her round.’

‘Is she okay?’

He puts a stethoscope to Emmy’s back. ‘Did you take her to the doctor before?’

I go through the whole saga. The medical centre had been closed, Tucson had been too far.

‘Ahhh,’ he says, ‘you live in America,’ and I’m reminded that I am now in a different country. ‘You are very fortunate.’ He pulls gently down on Emmy’s chin to open her mouth. ‘You know what they say, “Poor Mexico, so close to the US, so far from God.”’ He shines a torch into the cavity of Emmy’s throat. His hands are soft and hairless, small as a child’s. ‘In America you make money but you’re on your own. In Mexico you are poor, but you are subsidized.’

‘You speak really good English.’

‘I had US residency once.’

‘So why don’t you work on the other side?’

He sighs weightily. ‘I lost it when they bust me for running drugs.’

‘Oh.’