Chapters (24)
They did not stop their psychic surgery to tend to Sofi, and Loca did not seem to notice that her mother had fainted, so fascinated was she to see the doctor’s hand disappear into her body. She felt no pain, although she did find it hard to breathe deeply, as the doctor was telling her to do while the right hand also went inside her stomach, the opening maintained by the left one. In a few seconds he pulled out his right hand holding a bloody coagulation which he held up for Loca’s appraisal, explaining that it was a blood clot and then dropping it into the bowl of water his wife held out for him.
He continued this treatment two more times, maintaining his left “material” hand in the opening, while the right “spirit” hand sought out the maladies. He next pulled out some cystic fibroids and finally a tumor that had lodged itself to one of Loca’s ovaries.
By this point Sofi had recovered and though she steadily held Loca’s hand, it was apparent that the hand-holding was more for her benefit than for La Loca’s, who, though she looked more glazy-eyed than usual, appeared very calm about the whole procedure.
When the doctor finally removed his left hand, la Mrs. Doctor wiped up the slender line of blood that was left on the red mark across Loca’s belly as the only sign that any surgery had been performed.
He wiped his hands on a towel and lit his cigar stub. “How do you feel, hija?” He asked Loca. Loca grimaced for the first time, sensitive to the smoke, or maybe it was the fact that her people allergies were reactivating and she was finally responding to the presence of the doctor and la Mrs. Doctor. Either way, La Loca wasn’t the same Loca no more and she only said politely, “I’m okay. Just a little tired, nomás, like always,” and then sat up.
Since the “Amen” when they had prayed together, Sofi had not uttered a word. But gradually, as she saw that her daughter was indeed “okay,” she convinced herself for the moment that what she witnessed was nothing more than a hallucination. Then, as if Doctor Tolentino had stuck his hand into her head and pulled out her thoughts he warned, “Don’t forget your faith, señora …”
But as el Doctor Tolentino had told Sofi before his tratamiento, there was no guarantee of saving Loca from AIDS, because this was still a time in which the cure was as mystifying to all of society as was the disease. Even as wise a doctor as el Doctor Tolentino knew that although sometimes a disease could be stopped, death ultimately could not be.