They sat in an outdoor café having a latte and a ham cachito. Her boss talked about the weather, how the government wanted to subsidize payroll, which was their way to get inside the company and eventually take it over. He put a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to Alejandra. She declined. She didn’t smoke. And while she enjoyed watching the clouds above the Avila mountain, the spacious sidewalks covered in tables, and people playing an afternoon game of chess, she was still wondering why her boss asked her to lunch.

Her mind drifted in and out of his conversation until she heard the words, “We’re going to have to let you go.”

Suddenly her world came to a stop.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “We value you, but we may not make it to the end of the year.”

These words reverberated as she took the subway home, wondering what she was going to tell her mother. How was she going to buy her mom’s insulin now? She went up the elevator, entered the apartment, and rushed to the balcony hyperventilating.

She remembered when her father was fired along with over two thousand other employees from the national oil company. The government made sure they got nothing – no pension, no insurance. It had been difficult for the whole family after that. Her father could no longer get his hypertension medication, had a heart attack and died. Her mother deteriorated quickly. Then a few years later, her brother, Joaquin, who was in the military, got arrested.

Alejandra looked down the nine floors at the ground below. If she jumped, she would hit a little brick wall by the bushes. Who would have to clean it up? Who would mourn her? She felt claustrophobic, even on the balcony. To one side she could see the Avila mountain now shrouded in clouds; to the other side, buildings and the smog of the city; in the distance, the ranchitos that covered the smaller mountains surrounding the city; and below, gravity and concrete. It would be fast and painless. What would her last thoughts be? She held to the rail and cried. Back when she was in school, they had prescribed her anxiety medication. But those were the years before the rationing, the apagones, the lack of water, the lack of medicines, basic foodstuff like toilet paper, flour, soap.

“Alejandra, Alejandra,” her mother, Doña Carmina, said opening the sliding door to the balcony. “What’s going on?” The two women hugged, and as Alejandra sobbed, she told her mother that she had lost her job. How were they going to make it?

“We will make it,” her mother said, patting her on the back as if she were still five years old.

*

That night she conversed with Antonio through Facebook or feisbot. Her boyfriend had left the country after a Guardia National shot him in the knee and left him there to bleed. He lived now in Houston. He got around on crutches but soon would be able to walk. He asked her when was she coming up. That had been a point of contention between the two since it was she who wanted to leave, and yet it was he who ended up in the States.

“I got fired.”

They were silent.

“Now you have a reason to leave,” he said.

“How about my mother? Who’s going to take care of her?”

“You can send her dollars from here.”

*

Alejandra looked for work, standing in long lines to fill applications, but got no response. She read on the Internet that the unemployment rate for Venezuela was at fifty percent, worse than South Africa and Somalia. After a month and a half of not finding anything, there was almost no money left in her bank account. She had tried to ration herself, eat less. She bartered a bar of soap for toilet paper, but little by little her savings vanished. The neighbors in the apartment next door had it very hard as well, but one of their kids lived in Chile and the other in the United States and they wired money. It was amazing what five dollars a week could buy in an economy where the Bolivar was worthless.

Antonio sent money and told her to go eat at his parents’ house. She did but did not feel like doing that. They were upper middle class, and Alejandra was obviously not of the same class. His family was nice to her, but they always made her feel like she was a recojidita, or a cachifa, a maid. She stopped going. Antonio could not find regular work in Houston, and he stopped sending money. Alejandra couldn’t buy food.

Alejandra went to the lot next to their building to visit the homeless kids she had befriended and had been camping there. The kids passed among themselves something wrapped in paper that looked like a hamburger.

“What are you guys eating?” Alejandra asked them.

 “Food,” Oscar, one of the boys said.

“Whatever we can find,” Elisa added.

Oscar passed the hamburger to another kid for them to take a bite and pass it along. A hand presented the package in front of Alejandra as a voice said, “Want some?”

 “No, thank you. Where did you find it?”

They told Alejandra that if she wanted to eat, she could go with them, and they would show her where all the rich government officials ate. “You should see what they throw out,” Elisa said, eyes wide. “Once we found almost a whole steak.”

Hyperinflation, no jobs, crime, demonstrations and lack of food in the markets made it difficult to survive with a full-time job. Without a job or prospects, things got desperate. She finally decided to go with them.

Alejandra tried to follow them, but they ran too fast and she had no energy. The first time they found food in a dumpster behind a restaurant she almost threw up just looking at them. The smell of rotten garbage between the things they found and the visual of them taking bites of the food made her sick to her stomach. She hadn’t eaten in almost three days.

Back home, her mother had not eaten in days either. One of the neighbors visited and offered some soup.

“Mamá, here, have some soup.” Alejandra set the table the way her mother liked with placemats and serviettes, and spoon-fed her.

“Mija, don’t worry,” her mother said, slurping the soup. “Soon everything will be fine.”

“Mamá, are you in pain?

“It’s nothing. Nothing a good café con leche will not solve.”

“Where does it hurt, Mamá?”

“Only my pride hurts. I’m okay.”

Even finding garbage to eat was becoming difficult. Many times, when they arrived at a restaurant’s back alley, other kids had already raided the bins. People stood in line waiting for whatever they were going to discard. Sometimes fights broke out with older kids, as they bullied their way into whatever they found.

Alejandra was so hungry she took some scraps that Oscar and Elisa offered her. Soon, she was moving food around bags to find something worth eating. Other times, the food was so repulsive that she gagged and threw up and threw it away.

*

Alejandra met with Señor Esequiel from the sixth floor in their building’s parking deck and walked to where her father’s car was parked. It was an old Dodge Dart. Back when her father was alive, he kept it in immaculate shape, but now it was in a state of disrepair.

“How’s your mom?” Señor Esequiel asked Alejandra.

“She’s tough. She’s a little weak but hanging in there.”

He looked through the car, opened the hood, tried to start the engine, checked the tires.  Alejandra watched in silence since she didn’t know much about cars. After her father’s death, her brother used it when he came back on the weekends from the military. With the traffic in Caracas, Alejandra preferred public transportation over driving the car.

Señor Esequiel made an offer, indicating that the car needed a new battery and who knows what, and he would even pay her some money to use their designated parking space to keep the car. Alejandra could use the money. They were behind in bills. She could buy actual food or even enjoy some luxuries such as toilet paper or a nice bar of soap. But the offer felt too low to her.

“Let me think about it, but thank you for caring.”

*

Alejandra and her brother’s girlfriend, Yolanda, were allowed to see Joaquin in Ramo Verde, where they kept political prisoners. He had been charged with treason. Joaquin had refused to burn ballots from an area where the opposition party had a large following, so they charged him with a conspiracy to overthrow the government and threw him in jail. The government kept him incommunicado for over a year, but recently they allowed families to connect. Yolanda reminded Alejandra to be careful about what they said to each other because they had cameras and microphones everywhere. They wanted people to feel comfortable when they converse so they could extract whatever they could use.

They arrived at the jail and moved through the gates. The place smelled like a poorly cleaned toilet, with strong disinfectant barely masking the smell of sweat and feces. They sat in a room with a table in the middle and several chairs. The door in front of them opened, and a skinny version of Joaquin appeared. Yolanda moved forward to hug him, but the guard said, “No contact. We don’t want any contraband.”

Alejandra didn’t know what to say, what to ask. She told him about how their mother was doing, about losing her job, about the offer to sell the car.

“The Dodge Dart,” Joaquin repeated, looking distant then producing a faint smile.

She wanted to tell Joaquin about the demonstrations, the shields, the gas masks they made from plastic two-liter Coke bottles and that she had a boyfriend, but she had to hold back, aware that they may be recording everything.

They were not allowed to hug when it was time to go.

“Te amo,” Yolanda said.

“Te quiero mucho hermanito,” Alejandra said.

On their bus back home, Alejandra felt empty. She wanted to remember the memories from before the dictatorship when her father was alive, when they took road trips around the country, ate golfiados on the road to the beach with red sand, cachapas in foggy mountains with horseback riding trails, or goat arepas on the road to gold sand dunes with camel rides. And just like that, she began to sob. Yolanda gave her a hug.

“When was the last time you had your hair done? Vamos to the beauty salon where I work.”

At the beauty salon, Yolanda washed Alejandra’s hair, trimmed her ends, applied a fresh dye of blue to the strand Alejandra kept in front and had cafecitos while listening to music.

*

They had hit gold behind a panaderia after the baker told the homeless kids they were throwing away all their old stale bread. Usually, bakeries mixed the bread with milk, eggs, vanilla extract, cane molasses, which turned it into bread pudding. But they had no milk or extra eggs, so it would have to be thrown away. Alejandra and the homeless kids picked several bags of the bread and headed back toward their own neighborhood when they saw a demonstration of nurses and hospital workers holding signs demanding an increase in pay, medicines for their patients, and proper equipment to do their jobs. Alejandra and the kids stood to the side and watched, not able to cross the avenue.

Memories of the violent demonstrations that she participated in with Antonio flashed through her mind.

Yet, this was the total opposite. To one side stood a line of National Police in riot gear, with their clear plastic shields and batons. They looked stoic as many of the demonstrators stood inches from their faces screaming at them. She was surprised that they were not as aggressive as they had been in the national demonstrations.

A group of ten motorcycles with paramilitary colectivos dressed in fatigues, red berets and vests arrived. They held guns, semiautomatic weapons, and communicated with one another through walkie-talkies. More motorcycles arrived until they formed their own wall. The men shot into the air and screamed at the protestors, calling them traitors not worthy of the revolution. Some cars and trucks managed to get through the mostly blocked avenue and sped out of the way.

The two groups confronted each other, and one of the paramilitary men screamed “de aqui no pasan,” you don’t pass this point. The protestors continued chanting and screaming and packing the frontline, but the National Police, who usually would have their tanquetas spraying water and shooting plastic bullets, stood there in a line to the side as the people pushed forward, chanting. More motorcycles with colectivos paramilitary arrived. One of them pointed a gun at a small, refrigerated delivery truck and told the driver to get out. They moved the small truck to the middle of the road and flipped it to its side. One of the motorcycle men shot at the gas tank and set the truck on fire. They did the same with another car that had most of the avenue blocked.

The driver of the truck moved to the side and stood next to Alejandra and the kids, and they watched the small truck burst into flames. Just as the colectivos shot their weapons in the air and pushed the demonstrators down the avenue, the truck fire turned into a long column of black smoke from the burning tires. Then, the door to the back of the truck had pried open and packages of cheese, hams, and other charcuterie products lay on the ground. People rushed to the truck, and like locusts, began grabbing at whatever food they could carry. Some of the kids with Alejandra rushed into the frenzy and gathered big pieces of cheese covered in plastic. In a few minutes, the content of the smoldering truck was gone as the driver held his cell to his face and watched. Alejandra, too, was watching the kids that had taken the loot.

“Muchachos, you need to give it back. This is not ours to take,” Alejandra told the kids.  They all moved close to the man and extended the packages they had taken.

“Que mierda. Keep it. Keep it all! How in the hell am I going to get any of it back?” the man said to the kids.

As they walked back to Alejandra’s neighborhood, the kids passed around salami and chorizos. They ate like stray dogs gnawing at a bone, carrying the large chunks of white cheese under their arms. They were stuffed by the time they arrived at the lot next to Alejandra’s building. Now they had a dilemma: what to do with all that white cheese. Eat it, or save it for later. But it required refrigeration, something not available on the street.

“This is the best type of cheese for making tequeños,” Alejandra said. “I’ll make you some when I get flour” and then visited her apartment and packed her refrigerator with the white cheese.

“Did you steal this?” Alejandra’s mother said with a stern voice.

“No,” Elisa said. “The man, well…he let us have it.”

*

When Alejandra rode down the elevator, she held a large pot filled with freshly cooked tequeños and called the kids from the street, who then grabbed a couple and ate with abandon. A few people walking by the street noticed the kids eating the tequeños and asked how much for one. Alejandra threw a number at them, and a woman paid her the price for one tequeño. Several other people in the crowd walking by did the same.

Alejandra decided to make more tequeños, but this time she decided to walk down the avenue to see what would happen; she wasn’t begging and anything was better than eating out of garbage containers. To her surprise, her tequeños sold well. So, she recruited the kids to sell the tequeños on different avenues, and after a few days, they gathered around the lot next to her building, counting their money and talking about their new adventure selling tequeños. Alejandra bought more cheese, more eggs, more flour and continued to sell tequeños.

Business grew but they ran into a problem with the police. When the cops saw the kids, they told them to go away or they would arrest them for loitering.

“Muchachos, don’t run away. Be nice, walk up to them, smile, and give them a tequeño,” Alejandra said.

“Why? They are nasty to us.”

“Do it. Smile and tell them gratis.”

“But they threaten us every time we see them.”

“Give them the tequeño and walk away. Do it every time. Don’t ask for money.”

But they had another problem besides the police. Where would the kids keep their money? When they kept it with them, they got mugged by older kids. So, they decided that each kid would be given a tin can where they could put their money and keep it in Alejandra’s apartment.

Alejandra’s mother had a refreshed sense of purpose and vitality now that Alejandra had a business selling tequeños, and she ran her kitchen like a drill sergeant. She made sure everything was mixed properly; the cheese cut to the exact dimensions, the dough kneaded to the perfect thickness, each strand rolled tight so no cheese was exposed. Still, she had to take breaks when she was out of breath, holding her hand to her stomach.

“Te duele?” are you in pain, Alejandra asked.

“It’s nothing. I’m old, don’t worry about it.”

Business was growing, but because Alejandra never knew when she could get flour or cheese at the markets, she started to buy all of her ingredients through the black market. She went online, placed an order, and had it delivered, but the vendors refused big orders. They told her that if the police stopped the car with produce, food, and groceries, the government would fine them and sometimes even arrest them, calling it contraband since they were not an official vendor.

Then, some of the older boys from the barrio where the homeless kids lived beat them up, stole their money, took the tequeños and trashed their containers.

Alejandra, Oscar and Elisa met on a road at the edge of the barrio. As they walked around, they came across a policeman. Alejandra unzipped the thermal cooler and offered the man a tequeño wrapped in paper.

“This is the sunshine to my day,” the man in uniform said. “These are by far some of the best tequeños I’ve ever had ­– and I’ve had plenty.”

“Thank you. We are glad you like them, but we may have to stop bringing them to this area,” Alejandra told him.

“How is that so?”

Alejandra, politely explained what the other kids were doing to them.

“I know who you’re talking about. Well, don’t worry about them anymore.”

*

Buildings and street lights lit up throughout the city and the mountains covered with shanties blinked like Christmas trees. A pinkish glow filled the sky and then, pow! As if a flashlight turned off, the whole city went dark – all lights out. The apagón happened right at dusk. The whole country was without electricity. In the dark city, the only light came from the highways as cars moved like veins and arteries ­– one side bright red, the other yellow. Cars honked in perpetuity. Sirens wailed up and down the avenues. Alejandra saw all this from her window. She noticed that in some of the buildings people had lit candles. Her phone rang. It was the cheese man. He was downstairs.

“I can’t take the cheese. There’s an apagon. No electricity. It’s all going to go bad,” she told him.

“The delivery is made. I’m just the courier. The cheese is yours.”

Alejandra descended the nine flights of stairs to the lobby using her phone as a light. She signed the receipt, and the man plopped six large blocks of white cheese wrapped in plastic on a side table of their lobby.

“Lo siento, señorita. If I keep it, I can get arrested. Let’s hope this apagón does not last.”

With Oscar and Elisa’s help, they placed a block of cheese in each arm and climbed the stairs in the dark. Every now and then they heard voices of people echoing on the staircases and saw people lighting the walls with their cell phones, going up and down.

No electricity meant constantly climbing nine floors taking oil, candles, fruits and vegetables and food for her mother, then going down with containers filled with tequeños to sell.  Since water pumps were electric, the whole city was out of water as well. Alejandra and her mother tried not to overuse water as much as they could.  Instead of showers, they wetted a rag and cleaned themselves. They didn't flush the toilet when they peed, only when they had to defecate. Many people in their building only had electric stoves, so they could not cook.  Alejandra was lucky because her mother had always insisted on cooking with gas.

Most of the time, Alejandra was so busy she could keep her anxieties and depression at bay, but eventually, they surfaced. She headed back home from selling her tequeños, happy that she had sold many of them for dollars instead of Bolivares. She crossed a bridge that overlooked the Guaire River, the city’s sewer, with its traditional smell of cloacal putrefaction. People stood in a line almost all the way down from the steep concrete embankment to where a small creek poured its waters into the murky stream. Men, women and children filled their buckets with water and then climbed out of the forty-five-degree embankment. The line of people went down the street, and it made her realize that even with all her struggles, these people were having a much more difficult time. They had to carry buckets up a mountain, heat the water to kill the contamination, or use it as it was.

That night overlooking the darkness of the city, she felt a tremendous dread that went to the core of her being, as if it were all her own fault and she was to blame, even though she knew that was not the case. She remembered her father talking to her brother Joaquin while they worked on their car telling him that if anything ever happened, he had to be the man of the house, he had to take care of his little sister and their mother. She was allowed to be feeble and emotional, while her brother had to be strong. But now her brother was in a political jail, and she had to be the strong one. Her anxiety and dread began to consume her as she held tight to the metal rods of her balcony overlooking the nine floors of her building. She imagined her own flight into the thin air and plunging and splattering like a watermelon on the ground below, leaving a large pool of blood, broken bones, mangled flesh all over the concrete. Her hands held tight to the metal rods as she sobbed, feeling the pull of gravity. She knew that what she was feeling was stupid, but she also knew she should not feel this way, and she felt this way, nevertheless. She couldn’t do anything about it, other than hold tight to the rods, with all her heart, with her dear life.

#

Her cellphone ran out of battery. She found many places around the city with generators, but they demanded money to plug in and charge them, so she traded tequeños for a charge. While selling a second batch of tequeños, she ran across the policeman who had helped her when the boys were being beaten up and robbed.  Alejandra offered him a tequeño, but the man almost didn’t take it.

“Is everything fine?” she asked.

“Busy, there’s been a lot of looting.”

“How’s your family?”

“No clean water. Spoiled food. Hungry-angry kids. Diarrhea.” Alejandra listened, and then knowing how much she could fetch for each morsel of food she had, she offered the man six tequeños.

“No. You don’t have to do this.”

“I insist.”

#

Just as it had started, it ended. All of a sudden, lights that had been left on emanated beams of sunshine. She searched through social media for news. The government blamed the apagón on the CIA and the United States. Someone in Miami had perpetrated the cyberattack. A different article indicated how ridiculous the president and the government’s propaganda were to even think that. The Guri dam, the hydroelectric power plant where the electricity was stored and delivered to the city, was built in an era of levers and switches and was analog. Computers couldn’t touch the dam.

#

It took a few days for the water to come back. It came out first yellowish, smelly and dirty. Alejandra offered the kids who worked for her to clean up in her place. They washed clothes and took showers. Doña Carmina made arepas and empanadas for everyone to eat.

That night Alejandra contacted Antonio for the first time in a while. The second surgery on his knee was scheduled, and if everything went well, he was going to be able to walk normally with no limp or any pain. He asked her when was she planning on coming up to the States and mentioned that she was the one who wanted to leave the country, not him.

She didn’t know what to tell Antonio since she had her own conflicting emotions. She wanted to leave, be with him, but somehow she felt a sense of purpose. Maybe there was hope.

#

Alejandra’s mother fell to the ground, exhausted. Alejandra helped her up and realized that she was in a lot of pain.

“Where does it hurt, Mamá?”

“Aqui, aqui,” her mother responded, pointing to the lower right side of her stomach. Alejandra barely touched her dress, and her mother rolled her eyes in pain.

“We’re going to have to take you to the doctor.”

“We don’t have money for doctors. I will be fine.”

Alejandra asked Señor Esequiel if he could take them to a hospital.

They arrived at a public hospital where a guard in a National Police uniform frisked them.

“Cuidado, cuidado,” Alejandra screamed as her mother jerked in pain when the man touched her. A nurse took their information, and they sat in a waiting area. She noticed people on IVs lying on a cloth on the floor. People stood in hallways, sat in corners, gathered in every available space. A couple of medics brought in a man on a stretcher bleeding with cuts, scratches all over and a cracked helmet to the side, what looked like a motorcycle accident.  They rushed him into a room. Moans and screams echoed through the walls.

A doctor finally entered the waiting area, and instead of taking the mother and daughter to a private room, he started to examine Alejandra’s mother right there. He touched her gently and moved his stethoscope. He asked her to lie on the ground and to lift her right leg. Her mother tried but stopped in pain, and the doctor and daughter helped her mother off the floor to sit in a chair.

“As you can see, we have no room. This is a war zone,” the doctor said.

The doctor took Alejandra aside and told her that her mother had appendicitis. She needed to be operated on as soon as possible. If it ruptured, she would die. He recommended that she take her to a private clinic. If they did the surgery in the hospital, Alejandra would need to buy a list of materials, tools, anesthesia, antibiotics, pain medication and bring it to them. Alejandra was in shock listening to the doctor, not because she didn’t know that you had to bring your own materials, which she had heard about through the internet, but because she never thought this situation would happen to her, to her family, to her own mother. The doctor finished telling her that the nurse would provide a list and places where she could get the materials. The doctor then moved to where Alejandra’s mother rested, patted her on the shoulder, and strolled down to see someone else.

The nurse gave Alejandra what looked like a copy of a copy of a copy and on the side, she wrote Internet websites where she could get the materials, explaining to Alejandra what she needed to do. Alejandra told her that she had been getting insulin for her mother for years, so she knew how it was done.

“Corazón, we need this list filled by no later than next week, so we can schedule her surgery. In the meantime, here’s a prescription for right now. Call me the moment that you have everything. Okay, Corazón?”

When they arrived home, Alejandra helped her mother change into a nightgown and put her to bed. She researched the list online and realized that she did not have the type of money to buy even half of what they required. She hyperventilated and felt a panic attack coming. She took deep breaths and tried to focus. She ran across a story about a pregnant woman who had jumped off a four-story-high hospital to her death because she didn’t have the money to get all the supplies they wanted for her cesarean delivery. Alejandra was shaken to the core. She could no longer control her own thoughts. She went to the balcony and opened the sliding glass door. A breeze poured in. As she stared down the nine floors, the metal railing became invisible. She felt vertigo and the weight of the universe on her shoulders. She could just jump and finish it all, end the pain, not have to deal with any of this anymore. But how selfish. She was really, really a bad person, a bad daughter. How could she be thinking about those things when her mother’s life was at stake? She did indeed deserve to die if anything for her selfishness, for thinking this way at a crucial moment like this.

Climbing on a chair, she put a foot on top of the railing. She held onto a metal planter for balance and tried to prod her other foot up. The planter slid and she fell backward and hit the floor. She slipped and held to the railing as if they were bars in jail and began to wail. The panic, the pain, the anxiety filled every pore of her body. The ground beneath dissolved as she floated in midair holding the metal rail. Tears and mucus poured out, but the pain would not go away. The air beneath her feet beckoned; it was just nine floors – and peace.

#

Alejandra told the kids about the situation with her mother, and they all offered the money they had accumulated in their cans to her.  Still, it was not enough money, so she talked to Señor Esequiel about buying their car. She was going to need more money than he had offered.  He told her he would have declined under different circumstances, but he understood that her mother’s life was at stake, so he conceded to the deal.

Alejandra made all the connections online, agreed to meet at a public place, a panaderia or restaurant. She felt like she was in a movie, buying illegal drugs when all she was doing was getting anesthesia, gauze, surgical quality clamps, scissors and a whole range of tools. When she picked those up, the man told her that for every tool that she brought back to them, there would be a partial refund. Whatever was stolen, lost, misplaced or damaged was none of their business and no refund.

She called the nurse and let her know that she had all they asked. The nurse told her to bring it to the hospital, but not to come until the end of her shift at five a.m. and to meet her outside of the hospital. After that, they would do a checklist, and if everything was there, she would tell the doctor to schedule the OR.

It was almost impossible to find anyone to take her at that early hour to the hospital. So finally, a friend of a friend drove her there. Alejandra arrived an hour late with her box. At the entrance, the guard with the national police uniform asked her what she had in the box. She told him that it was for the nurse only, and it was the list the doctor gave her. She showed him the piece of paper. He looked through the box and asked her where were her official prescriptions and forms.

“The doctor gave me this,” she said, pointing to the paper, with the handwritten websites.

“No, no, no. What you have here is illegal contraband, you can’t bring this to the hospital. You have narcotics, prescription antibiotics, tools. You’re going to have to pay una multa, a fine if you want to bring this in.”

“What?  You don’t understand. I don’t have any money. I spent every penny I have, sold my car to afford this. Otherwise, my mom will die.”

“You broke the law. This is all black-market contraband.”

The guard tried to take the box from Alejandra. She forcefully tried to keep it in her hands. The guard motioned with his head to other guards. They restrained her as the man took her box away. She turned red, anger filling every pore of her body. The guard came back to her with a smirk on his face and a piece of paper with her fine amount written on it.

“You either pay the multa or…"

He leaned forward and whispered to her. “There’s a little mop room by the entrance. We can go over there and this offense will be forgiven.”

“I’m not going to allow this insult,” Alejandra said. “Unless you bring my package back, I will tell the doctor and the administrators.”

“Ahh, go ahead. They’re breaking the law giving you lists like this. Go. Go, tell them.”

Alejandra pushed through them inside the hospital, looking for the nurse, who was already off. She found the doctor that she had spoken to about the surgery and told him everything that had transpired. He nodded as she spoke, looking at the floor, then making eye contact with her, then looking really angry, then trying to smile.

“Sons of bitches. How many times have I told Elena, your nurse, to tell patients not to even speak to the guards. Those hijos de puta. Look, listen to me. I’m sick and tired of what they do. They make our job impossible. My wife is a pediatrician and makes more money selling cupcakes than doing a whole month of rounds helping kids. I survive on the money my younger brother sends from Miami. The last time one of our doctors complained to them, put them in their place, he got arrested and beaten. He can’t do surgery anymore. I lost him. He left the country. I’m losing so many doctors… and look around, we do surgery without anesthesia, in filthy quirofanos.  Please, talk some sense into the guard, I beg you. I’ll do everything I can for your mother.”

The doctor stopped talking and placed the tip of his fingers above Alejandra’s ears, looking straight into her eyes. She could see inside his world of pain, anguish, helplessness, of anger and frustration. He let go. She felt that no matter what, he would take care of her mom.

A nurse interrupted them, holding a clipboard with information about another patient. He looked at the file, then back at Alejandra, and as he started to walk away, stopped, held Alejandra’s hand for a second and then let go.

#

Alejandra arrived home. She was angry, her mind buzzed. She went to the balcony, stood by one of the walls and held to it. The ground did not dissolve. She felt like jumping. A panic attack began to creep in, but the image of that guard winking at her burned through her consciousness. She had tried everything, hadn’t she? Would her brother know people who could perhaps beat that guard and get medical equipment back? How about the policeman who worked around the barrio, perhaps not the same rank? She wished she could beat the man herself.

Alejandra called Yolanda and told her what had happened. They made plans, but it would take probably a week for her to see her brother and figure out what to do.

Alejandra went to her mother’s room. Her mother slept, her mouth agape with a little drool. It meant she was not in pain. What was she going to tell her? That she had failed her?  That she was going to die? That she had failed her father, taking care of the family? Why was she late? Not that it mattered, everyone in Venezuela was always late. But this time, it was her mother’s life. She cried, holding her mother’s hand.

The next day she reached the nurse on the phone.

“I’m so sorry. I should have told you what the guards do and that is why you had to give it directly to me.”

The nurse sounded exhausted, and like the doctor, simply told her that when the time came, they would do their best for her mom.

#

The amount the police guard wanted was exorbitant, and she would never be able to get that kind of money. She even asked Señor Esequiel.

“Look, Alejandra. I knew your dad. He was a good man. We drank many beers down here fixing our cars. I’ve known your mother all these years. I wish I could help you, you’re good people. But I gave you all the money I have when you sold me the car.”

Her mother developed a fever. The medicines no longer stopped the pain. Alejandra called the nurse and was told that there was no more time. She needed to bring her mother in.  When they arrived at the hospital, the nurse was waiting for Alejandra outside. The guard was there. The nurse pointed a finger at him.

“Her mother is about to die, so get out of my fucking way,” the nurse said.

They placed Doña Carmina in a wheelchair and took her in.

“I need my medicines or my mom will die,” Alejandra told the guard.

He winked at her and motioned with his face to the door.

“I want all of them back. My brother is in the military.”

They walked towards the storage room. The guard pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. Brooms and cleaning tools rested to one side, on the other side shelves held cleaning supplies and a number of boxes with packages they had taken from patients. Light came out of a high window with metal bars. The guard looked around and pulled a box down.

“Is this the one?” he asked.

“Yes. Is it all in there?”

As she looked through the box, the guard closed the door and returned to where she was looking. He stood behind her and placed his hands around her waist. She stopped looking at the box but did not say a word. She noticed through the window the Avila mountain. The guard undid his belt. He tried to turn her around but she did not budge. He placed his fingers around her pants and pulled them down. She sensed him pulling her underwear down. Then touching her. He placed a hand around her neck and penetrated her. Alejandra held tight to the box and tried to recollect a mental image of all that had been originally there. The box shook with every thrust. She could smell his bad cigarette breath and disgusting body odor. She noticed out upon the mountain how a whisper of a cloud hovered over the top, and as it went over the peak it disappeared. He moaned and stopped. Alejandra heard his breathing. She turned around and looked at his face, at the smirk he had plastered all over himself. He leaned forward to kiss her. She turned her face to the side. He stopped. Alejandra pulled her pants up, grabbed the box, and headed to the door.

“Like I said, my brother is in the military. For your sake, it better all be in here,” Alejandra said, walking out the door.

She delivered the box to the nurse. They stared at each other with anger, then they hugged.

#

It was going to be the last time she would see her beloved mountain – the Avila. Tomorrow she would get up at about four a.m. and go to the airport and fly to the States. She originally wanted to go to Houston, where Antonio lived. But he now resided in an apartment with six other guys so they could afford the rent. A relative bought her the ticket; she was going to Atlanta to stay with her cousin Elena. Someday, she would be back to the smells and sounds and mayhem of her beloved city, under the Avila mountain with the little cloud hovering over the top and fading into nothing.