“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.

Without no explanations as to what he planned to do, he and his wife started to work on Loca. Out of his black bag la Mrs. Doctor took out a vial of holy oil and some cotton balls in a plastic bag. Doctor Tolentino rubbed the holy oil on Loca’s exposed tummy. Sofi continued to hold her hand. With his hands over her stomach, Doctor Tolentino asked Loca to breathe deeply, which she did. There was a popping sound, then Sofi fainted.

La Mrs. Doctor had soaked a handful of cotton balls with holy oil and squeezed them over Loca’s tummy. Doctor Tolentino dipped a cotton ball in a pan of warm water and as he dripped the water on Loca’s stomach with his right hand, his left hand made an opening through her flesh and disappeared right up to the wrist inside her stomach.