Chapter 1 - The Church Steps Under The Blistering Sun
The world around me vanished into pure survival mode the second Lulu’s fingers locked rigidly around my wrist. Her jaw clenched tight, a low, guttural gasp tore from her throat, and her eyes rolled up into her head, disappearing beneath fluttering pale eyelids. The blistering Mexican heat radiated off the stone steps of the parish courtyard, thick and suffocating at ninety-four degrees.
""Lulu, baby, Mama's right here. I’ve got you,"" I barked out, my voice dropping into the clinical, practiced cadence I used on coding patients in the intensive care unit back in Charlotte. Every ounce of emotional shock was forcibly shelved; panic was a luxury my daughter could not afford.
""Ay Dios mío, virgencita,"" the elderly Mexican woman gasped, crossing herself frantically as she instinctively tried to hold Lulu’s flailing shoulders down against the flagstones.
""No, no, señora! Don't hold her down!"" I shouted in fractured Spanish, gently placing my palms beneath Lulu’s head to shield her skull from cracking against the concrete. ""Déjela moverse. Turn her on her side. Side! De lado!""
The local police officer who had driven me from the cruise terminal sprinted toward his patrol cruiser, barking into his radio for an ambulance. I checked the digital watch on my wrist: 4:38 p.m. In the distance, a low, resonant rumble echoed across the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. The cruise ship was blowing its departure horn. The massive floating palace was slipping away from the pier, carrying my mother, my sister, and my father into the open sea, completely indifferent to the fact that they had left a sick child to die on a dusty sidewalk.
I tore open the zippered nylon pouch I had ripped from my mother’s purse just twenty minutes earlier. My fingers were trembling, but my training guided my movements. The regular maintenance pills were useless right now; she was in the throes of a full tonic-clonic convulsion. I ripped open the sterile foil packet containing her Midazolam nasal spray rescue medication.
""Come on, Lulu, stay with me,"" I whispered through gritted teeth. I positioned the tip inside her right nostril, braced my thumb against the plunger, and pushed firmly until it clicked.
Her convulsive jerking was violent, her sneakers kicking against the stone steps, scraping skin raw against the mortar. The elderly woman, whose name was Rosa, quietly took off her cotton cardigan and wadded it into a soft pillow to place beneath Lulu’s knees. Rosa looked at me with profound, heartbreaking empathy. In broken English, she explained that she had seen my daughter sitting alone by the fountain across the square for nearly an hour. The poor girl had looked dizzy, disoriented, clutching her yellow sun hat, asking passersby in tears if they had seen her grandmother and cousins. When Lulu had begun stumbling and vomiting from early heat exhaustion, Rosa had guided her across the street into the shade of the parish archway.
""Grandma said wait,"" Rosa repeated, her weathered face lined with disgust. ""The woman told the poor child... wait here five minutes. Then they walked away into a silver van to the port.""
A cold, burning fury ignited in the center of my chest, unlike anything I had ever experienced in my forty years of life. This had not been an accident. My mother hadn’t simply lost track of Lulu in a crowded artisan bazaar. She had deliberately abandoned a thirteen-year-old child in an alleyway thousands of miles from home, confiscating her life-saving medication simply because my daughter’s illness was an inconvenience to their anniversary celebration.
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At forty-eight seconds, the violent tremors began to subside. Lulu’s body went completely limp, her breathing turning heavy, ragged, and stertorous. She was slipping into the deep postictal phase, completely unresponsive, her skin burning with fever.
The wailing siren of a municipal ambulance pierced the sultry air, skidding to a halt by the church gate. Paramedics jumped out carrying a stretcher and oxygen tanks. I climbed inside the back with my daughter, holding her limp, sweat-drenched hand tightly against my cheek, watching the port disappear in the rearview mirror. My family was on vacation; my war had just begun.
