She could hardly get up by herself without my help. Her breathing came in small, struggling efforts—the kind of breathing that suggests every inch of air is negotiated for, purchased at some internal cost. Her appetite disappeared. The meals I prepared for her went largely untouched.
One morning the doctor at the community clinic—an older man with gray at his temples who had clearly been working in similar neighborhoods his entire career—pulled me aside after Carmen’s appointment and told me bluntly, without the kind of softening language that sometimes comes when delivering bad news:
“She’s very weak. I don’t think she has much time left.”
That afternoon, leaving the clinic, I helped her slowly into a taxi, my arm around her waist, feeling how light she had become, how her body seemed to be made of increasingly smaller things. Carmen stayed quiet during the entire ride, looking out the window as if she were seeing a city that no longer belonged to her, as if she was already beginning to say goodbye to the streets and neighborhoods she had inhabited for decades.
