“What are you saying? Speak clearly, please, doctor! What is my daughter … ill from? What does she have?”

“Have you heard of the human immunodeficiency virus, Sofi?” Mrs. Doctor asked.

Sofi stared at the wife and then at the doctor. Of course she had. And she only knew two things about it: that there was no known cure for this frightening epidemic and … there was no way that Loca could have gotten it. But Doctor Tolentino was a doctor so he couldn’t be wrong and she said nothing. Yet to herself she said, tomorrow we will call doña Felicia, and then we’ll go to the hospital for tests, and then …

“Sofi,” the doctor stopped her thoughts. “Before you do anything else regarding your daughter’s condition, do you have enough trust in me to try my own last efforts? I can’t promise anything, Sofi, but if you have faith, we can all try. She is your only surviving child y me duele mucho to think of you losing her too … We could talk it over with her father about it first, if you prefer.”

Sofi shook her head but did not look up from her fluorescent pants. “You know I am a great devotee of our Lord, Su Hijo y La Virgen, doctor, and I resign myself to Their Will. I’ve known you all my life and I trust in your knowledge.”

“In this case, Sofia, you must put your faith in the Holy Spirit. I cannot and will not promise you your daughter’s recovery. If it is God’s will, there is nothing anyone can do for her …”

“But pray, dear,” La Mrs. Doctor added, with a little smile which la Sofi noticed cracked a little of the powder along the cheeks.

The doctor, whom Sofi found out only then, always having been too polite to ask anything personal about him, had been born at the foot of a place called Mount Banahaw, and though he had followed in the footsteps of his own father’s profession, and like his father attended Northwestern University Medical School in the coldest city in the world, it was from his mother that he learned the tratamiento he gave Loca that night.

“We are now in the age of the Spirit,” Doctor Tolentino spoke, using the same confident tone that in years past he used for advice as to how to alleviate Esperanza’s sprained knee, Fe’s skin rashes, or Caridad’s ovary problems. “If we do not have faith altogether, there is no hope for any of us—es decir, en todo el mundo. So we will begin the treatment by praying together.”

Doctor Tolentino kneeled at the side of Loca’s bed where she lay as still as she had as an infant in her little coffin, when she had looked to her sisters like una Crismas wrapped doll. He took her hand in his, in his other hand he held his wife’s, and Sofi held his wife’s hand and Loca’s, all connected, in other words. Then they closed their eyes and prayed an Our Father.