Angél

7-26-08 – Esmeraldas, Ecuador

“Do you remember me?”

“No ma’am, I am sorry I do not.”

“I was here two months ago with my boy.”

Nothing clicked. Two months is a long time, filled with hundreds of patients – I cannot remember them all, let alone their families. I cannot remember their faces. A few of their stories, however, I will never forget.

“He was 12,” she said.

Yes. There it is. It exploded on that one tiny detail. Funny that should be the first clue she offered, because his age is burned into my mind. Yes, it would have been about two months ago that he lost his breath and turned cold.

I let my head drop as if words of confirmation were about to come out, but they couldn’t - so my head kept falling, slowly, coaxing the next bit to let itself be heard. The icebreaker. Either I hit the nail on the head, or I was absolutely wrong… but if I was right – if I was thinking of the right patient – then for his mother’s sake I had to ask the question before getting any more information. So it came out slowly…

“He… died that night,” I confirmed, double-checking my memory.

“Yes, that was my son.”

We knew each other in that moment, his mother and me.

She lost his death certificate and wanted another – and wanted it in my handwriting. It did not occur to me until right then that when we ask families to fill out the personal information, forever the death certificate has their handwriting staring back at them. Of course I’d fill out the rest of the pages for her. His name was Angél - I’ll never forget that name.