Now, Loca had never been sick before, and aside from when she suffered that abrupt death she never got no other medical attention. Since el Doctor Tolentino was out on a ranch that night delivering a breach birth, Sofi had rushed her infant to the local clinic where a young intern nobody knew had pronounced Loca’s death.

Surprisingly, as the girls were growing up, Loca was the one daughter who missed all the childhood diseases and all the colds and flus that the others passed on to each other so generously, quickly driving poor Sofi to exhaustion tending to them night and day until each one recovered.

Even if she had gotten sick, she would never have let no one get near to examine her. But now, as she admitted to Sofi, aside from the sudden unexplainable weight loss, Loca also had a sore throat all the time, not to mention that she couldn’t stay awake or do nothing no more. She just plain did not seem to care much about nothing, so that, as I said before, she did not have it in her to refuse to see el Doctor Tolentino and la Mrs. Doctor, with her oh-so-very-wrinkly-white-powdered-smiling-all-the-time face.

When they were done with their brief examination of Loca in her room, Doctor Tolentino lit his cigar in the living room and asked Sofi to sit down. La Mrs. Doctor sat down next to Sofi and took her hand. “Señora Sofi, hija,” Dr. Tolentino said, almost as if it pained him to speak, and then as if something else had just occurred to him, he looked around and asked, “Where is your husband? Didn’t I hear that Domingo was back home?”

“We’re divorced now,” Sofi answered, not wanting to beat around the bush about it. Besides, no longer thinking that her marriage or divorce was anybody’s business, she wanted to get to the point about Loca’s health, “Doctor, is my daughter just depressed? You know, losing the girls, as we have …”

“No, she is not just depressed,” Mrs. Doctor said. “Although understandably, Sofi, I’m sure she must be heartbroken about losing her sisters … as we all are, you know.”

Sofi lowered her head and prepared herself now for the worst. She fixed her gaze on the pattern of her leopard-print leggings. Ever since she started working out at the jazzercise class at the local Y, partly out of a desire to tone up and partly just to get some nervous energy out of her system that she no longer knew what to do with, she had taken to wearing spandex. (“¡Ay, comadre!” her comadres teased her. “Who do you think you are, anyway, una teenager?” Sofi ignored them because deep down she knew they all wished they had her naturally petite figure.)

“Your daughter is very ill,” Doctor Tolentino finally declared, taking a deep breath. He waited a few seconds to see if Sofi was ready to hear the rest, and seeing her more or less composed, went on, “Only about twenty percent of my terminally ill patients survive my efforts, señora Sofi, but I am willing to try if you and she want me to …”