That night he had dreamed of bodies and trees; of bodies hanging from trees. When he ate with his family, he felt dirty sharing the table with the twins, smiling at them, rinsing their pacifiers when they threw them on the floor. He felt the mummified body on his skin, so still, that otherworldly night. Julieta seemed to notice his discomfort: she’d made a pointed joke about his family. She’d asked him again to keep living with them. It was a dance, Gaspar thought now. A way of pushing him away by insinuating the desire to keep him, a very smart way of going in circles. Julieta loved him. Julieta had saved him just as much as his uncle had. But now she wanted to get away from him.

When he told Vicky about his avalanche of symptoms, she asked for a meeting to speak with the epilepsy specialists at the hospital. They came in rarely, and were very strange. Mad scientists, she called them. And they’d told her things that sounded impossible. Patients who, during seizures, would see fields laid to waste, bombings. They’re called oneiric landscapes. If you talked to them and told them about your episodes, you’d have no doubt this is epilepsy.

“My neurologist already tells me, Vicky. He’s a pretty mad scientist too.”

“Take the medication. This is no joke.”

“I’m actually taking it now. And it turns out, it’s worse. I hadn’t seen Adela in a long time. The other day I rode in an elevator with her. She cursed at me, and she didn’t have teeth. Plus, how can you explain what happens to you guys? You say you hear voices when there’s no light. Pablo is grabbed by a hand, he feels it. Epilepsy isn’t contagious.”

“Our stuff could be just in our heads. Trauma. Plus, our symptoms don’t keep us from functioning. Yours can be incapacitating.”

Pablo, who was stretched out on the sofa at Vicky’s apartment, said: I don’t feel like it’s in my head. I know the hand now. I don’t seek it out, but I’m not afraid of it. If I let it hold on to me for a while, it lets go. As if it didn’t know what to do. Poor thing.

“That could be your imagination,” Vicky insisted, and Pablo snorted.

“That attitude is going to kill us, my friend. I know you want to have a life. We all do. Lately, I even want a boyfriend. God, how ridiculous.”

“It’s my fault,” said Gaspar. “Tell me the truth: have you gotten worse? The things you feel happening to you, are they worse now?”

“It’s more frequent,” said Pablo. “Not worse, because I’m not scared of it anymore.”

“It’s worse,” said Vicky. “But the good stuff happens more, too. I’ve made better diagnoses than ever recently.”

Pablo sat up on the sofa and said:

“Hey, why don’t you try to diagnose Gaspar?”

Vicky crossed her legs, uncomfortable.

“It’s not like that. I can’t decide, it’s something that just happens.”