Allyson Larkin is a family physician specializing in wound care.  She reads and writes voraciously in her spare time.

 

Dryfall

 

Matt Still retreated to the tiny sliver of shade provided by the emaciated salt cedar growing behind his trailer. This day was shaping up to be the same as every one that had preceded it in Dryfall, Texas. The sun baked the asphalt, cracked the dirt, and leeched the spirit out of every living thing. The air was so hot and dry it burned the back of his throat.

He watched the three men readjusting the huge truck-mounted drill bit in his back pasture, driving it into the rocky soil. They’d been at it since seven and hadn’t hit a drop of water. He’d sold his father’s F-250, the only thing with any cash value on the place, to raise the money to drill. He’d been sure they’d hit water if they just went deep enough. The Sandovals had and so had Mr. Smith down by the river—and Smith didn’t know his ass from his nose.

When Rudy, the drill mechanic, lumbered over wiping his face with a dirty rag, Matt knew the news wasn’t good. 

“Nothing at 200.”

Matt frowned, “Of course not. Nothing with this place is ever easy.”

“You want us to keep on?”

Matt worked the stubble on his chin, his gut churning. He was gambling on water just like his dad used to gamble on Eight Liners, and it looked like his luck was shaping up to be just as crap. If this well came up dry, he was flat broke. Maybe Ally was right. Maybe he was following his dad’s footsteps straight to hell. 

“Too late to back out now,” Matt peeled ten twenties out of his wallet leaving one lonely bill behind. Rudy and his guys were working off the clock as a favor, so it was a cash deal. 

“Keep on to 350. But that’s the end of my money, so make it count.” 

Rudy slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll find it, boss. I feel it in my bones.”

Matt snorted. “When was anybody ever your boss?”

“The man with the dinero is always the boss. Even when he’s a candy ass like you.”

Matt shook his head, “Whatever you say, but I can’t watch. I’ll be in the shed. Let me know when you hit it.”

When, not if, as if believing could make it happen. What was it his mother used to say? If wishes were horses… 

******

True to form, Matt’s father had died at the worst possible time, right in the middle of finals in the fall term of his senior year. Matt was just one semester away from his mechanical engineering degree. This had surprised no one more than Matt, himself, who’d pretty much only gone to college to follow Ally.

Her mom had gotten him the college admission and scholarship applications and stood over his shoulder until he filled them out at her kitchen table. Mrs. Sandoval didn’t have a high school degree herself, but the woman believed in education. After Matt’s mother left them, Mrs. Sandoval picked him and his brother, Dave, up at the bus stop along with her own four kids every day and sat them all down at the kitchen table to do homework—every bit of it, no breaks, till they were done. Then she fed them dinner and dropped Dave and Matt at their front gate in time for bed.

Her efforts for education succeeded. All of her own kids went to college, and Ally was now an intern in emergency medicine in Lubbock. Dave was the lone holdout refusing college; but even there, Mrs. Sandoval managed to get him enrolled in a welding program. Now he made damn good money working offshore.

Matt, it turned out, was good at math. More than good. Numbers and engines made sense to him in ways people never did. He’d kept the pumps, trucks, and generators going on his place and the Sandoval’s from the time he was twelve. So at West Texas State, engineering was a good fit. He managed to slog his way through, working on the side to pay his bills.

He had been planning to drive to Lubbock to visit Ally after exams, when he got the call from Mrs. Miller, the owner of Dryfall Feed and Hardware.

“Matt, I’m real sorry to tell you, but your daddy passed,” Mrs. Miller said in her low smoker’s growl.

“Dad? Dead?” Matt stopped cold in the middle of the walkway sure he’d heard wrong. The throng of students parted and pushed past him like a rock in a river. “You’re certain?” 

“Wouldn’t call if I wasn’t. Sometime on Saturday we think.” Mrs. Miller continued, her words reaching Matt like echoes down a long hall. “Your dad went to the annual Wild Game Supper at the general store and was stewing himself in Jack Daniels per usual, when he got in a fight with Mr. Garza. Called him a wetback.”

Matt winced. The Garza family had lived in Dryfall at least as long as the Stills, but his dad considered them interlopers by virtue of their last name and preferred language. 

Apparently, Mr. Garza’s son-in-law didn’t know Mr. Still was famously full of shit and took offence. A fight commenced pretty much along racial lines, and at some point, his dad took a beer bottle to the head. He was off his rocker after that. So Greg Ferguson, the closest thing his dad had to a friend, dragged him home and put him to bed. The next morning, his dad didn’t get up to move his horse or fill his troughs, so Greg looked in on him. His Dad was dead, stiff in bed. 

“We need you to come home right away and make the funeral arrangements,” Mrs. Miller finished. 

Matt closed his eyes struggling to make sense of it all. He’d had a huge blowout with his dad the last time he saw him. He’d been planning to propose to Ally after graduation, and for reasons beyond all reckoning, decided to share his plans with the old man. His dad hadn’t liked the idea, and one thing led to another, and he ended up giving Matt a black eye. Matt hadn’t spoken to him since. Matt had figured things would blow over. They always had. Now, he’d never get the chance to say sorry or even screw you for that matter. It left him feeling unfinished like a half-eaten meal. 

Matt called Dave right away. “Just fly back and get things set with the funeral home,” Matt pleaded, “I’ll come as soon as I finish exams.”

“Screw em,” Dave replied. “Bastard can rot where he lies for all I care.” 

It was the response Matt had expected. The old man had been shit for a father with a heavy hand, and Dave was not the type to forgive. So Matt arranged to take the rest of his finals after break and headed home that same day. 

As soon as Matt arrived in Dryfall, the sheriff, their cousin from way back along the family tree, came to see him. He wanted to know if Matt wanted to pursue an investigation. According to the pathologist report, his dad had died from a bleed in the brain. There was confusion as to who’d struck the fatal blow, but it was likely Garza’s son-in-law. The pathologist’s report also noted that his father’s liver was shriveled and his right lung had a mass the size of a baseball. He’d have been dead in a year, two at the outside, regardless. 

Matt shook his head. “Done is done. They probably saved him some suffering.” 

It was more than the old man deserved. He’d driven Matt’s mother away, and even at ten years old, Matt couldn’t blame her—except for leaving him and Dave behind to face things alone. 

Matt wondered if she knew about Dad. He supposed he ought to tell her. It might come as a relief. He’d heard from Mrs. Smith that she’d married a rancher and moved to New Mexico. Matt had always meant to look her up, but up to now hadn’t. If she didn’t have a damn good reason for never sending him a word, he might end up hating her too; and there just wasn’t enough room inside him for that. 

The funeral arrangements were made, and the body was cremated two days later. Mrs. Sandoval even managed to scrape together a few mourners for a short service. Then, surprisingly quick, it was  over. 

Dave finally showed up at suppertime, and they sat alone in the trailer with the shiny, gold urn Ally had picked out. It was bizarrely out of place in the dingy gloom of the trailer and seemed to glower down at them from on top of the entertainment center. Matt and Dave escaped to the back porch and finished the last of their dad’s Jack Daniels.

Matt stared at the sky. “I wonder if Dad is up there, somewhere.” 

Dave snorted, “I’m pretty sure he went straight the other way.” He spit a gob of tobacco into the fire. It flared and sizzled as if making his point. 

“I asked Mom once why she fell in love with Dad,” Matt said. “She told me he two-stepped his way into her heart. She said he was the best dancer in Terrell county and told jokes so funny she laughed till her ribs hurt.”

Dave shook his head, “Hard to imagine.”

Matt had to agree, where does so much laughter and dancing disappear to? “What do you think about fixing this place up? With solar panels and a well we could run a full-scale goat operation here.”

“Hell, no. Sell this patch of weeds.”

“Think about it, Dave. We could finally make this place good for something besides bad memories, like the Sandoval place.”

“You’re a colossal dumb ass if that’s what you think. But do what you want. I don’t give a shit.” 

“It wasn’t all bad you know.” 

Dave shook his head and retreated back inside, the screen door banging closed behind him. 

He was three years younger and couldn’t remember the good times like Matt did. And there had been good times, especially before their mother left. Cool nights they made blazing bonfires and lay on blankets staring up at the huge black sky. Matt liked to trace the slow paths of satellites from horizon to horizon. The stars were so bright they seemed to reach down and tag him with their twinkling tails. 

Hot summer afternoons they lounged on the couch in their Superman Underoos luxuriating in the cool breeze of the window AC and watched movies with their mother for hours. Matt’s favorite was about a little long-neck dinosaur whose mother died protecting him from a sharp tooth. After her death the tiny dinosaur wandered frightened across a desertscape full of danger until he made friends who helped him along the way. Matt watched the movie so many times it grew scratchy and finally snagged in the VCR. 

Looking back, Matt wondered if his mother had known, even then, that she would leave him one day; and if maybe, somehow, he’d known it too, and that was why he’d loved that poor motherless dinosaur so much. 

When Matt and Dave were older they spent entire days outside playing cowboys and bandits in the huge expanse of desert. They explored the hidden valleys and brown flats becoming junior naturalists without even realizing it. Matt, who’d always liked lists, counted the deer, hogs, and coyotes, that teemed in the arroyos and hidden canyons. Dave captured lizards, mice, even snakes and kept them as pets in two old, cracked aquariums they rescued from the trash heap behind the general store. Dave would sneak up behind the snakes, even corals and diamond backs, and snag them with an old swimming pool skimmer undaunted—no—excited by the danger. 

This lack of fear had scared Matt about Dave even as a kid, but he admired his brother for it, too. Dave was a man of action and opinion. Angry often, happy only sometimes, but he was never overwhelmed by the whirling blackness of his own thoughts as Matt so often was.

Rain was rare, but roared when it came, forming roiling rivers in the dry creek beds. Afterwards Matt and Dave scavenged through the heaps of debris left behind, finding railroad ties, horseshoes, old forks and spoons, bottles and cans, once even a Spanish doubloon. Lost treasures, Matt had imagined. He still had a box full of the stuff under his bed. 

As a boy it gave him a sense that he owned a place in the history of the land; and he had to admit, in his heart, he believed it still. Maybe that was why he couldn’t let the land go. He owed it to their great, great grandfather who had homesteaded the place after the Civil War, and their grandfather who had doubled their acreage, and even his dad though the only legacy he’d left behind was a trailer pretty much held together with plywood and duct tape.

The next morning when Matt woke, Dave was already gone. Matt knew he wouldn’t be coming back. Matt climbed back into bed and stayed there all day. Then he slept in the next day and the next. Before he knew it he’d missed a week of classes. Then it was too late to take his finals or start the next semester. 

Ally lost it when she learned Matt hadn’t gone back. She drove back to Dryfall and literally tried to pack him up herself. 

“If I leave now I’ll never come back. It will all be lost. Look at Dave,” Matt tried to explain.

“This whole thing is nothing but an apology to a man who doesn’t deserve it. Your dad was a total shit. I’m sorry to say it, but you know it’s true. You staying here and drinking yourself into a pickle will never change that fact.”

“Just give me a year,” Matt pleaded. “If I can’t make a go of it by then, I’ll go back to school.” 

“Take as long as you need. I’m done.” 

Ally cried as she got into her car and pulled out slowly, giving Matt plenty of time to stop her. He almost grabbed his bag and ran after her; but some freak gravitational pull locked him in place. He watched Ally’s car until it was a dot on Highway Ninety, knowing full well he was making the biggest mistake of his life. 

*****

Now, six months later, Ally was still so pissed she wouldn’t answer his phone calls or texts. Matt glared at the brown flat curve of horizon melting into nothingness all around him. He felt a chill despite the blazing heat and the ground seemed to tilt beneath his feet. Matt, grabbed a wrench, and slid underneath the 4x4 Bronco he had up on blocks. 

Ally was right. If he wasn’t careful, this place was gonna lift him up and drop him right off the edge of the world like it had his dad. Matt drained the oil out of the pan then went to work on the spark plugs. Ally was the light in the dark spaces of his mind. Without her it was all for shit, regardless. Once he got the Bronco back running, water or no, he’d drive to Lubbock and talk to her. She wouldn’t ignore him if he came in person. And if she made him choose, he would—the right way this time.

Matt was popping in the last spark plug when Rudy sauntered around the corner. 

“We’re in business.”

Matt jumped so fast he slammed his head on the hood, “You serious?” 

Rudy gave Matt a thumbs up. “Never doubt the Rudinator.”

Matt grinned, “The Rudinator is not a compliment. You know that, right?” 

Rudy snorted. “Come see your water, Jefe.” 

Matt forced himself to keep Rudy’s slow pace as they walked to the well. He bent down and inspected the gauge. The needle was all the way right, full pressure. Tension uncoiled inside him. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face, embarrassed by the moisture that filled his eyes, then bent closer to see. The depth on the shaft was 450 feet. “Aww Dude, you went way deeper. I’m not sure-”

“No worries. The Rudinator takes care of his compadres-but keep it on the down low.” 

“You bet, thanks.” Matt grabbed the big man by both shoulders and tried to give him a hug.

Rudy shoved him away. “Get off me white boy. I’m not your girlfriend. But it’s good to have you back. This place will be real nice with you working it. It’s good land.”

Matt laughed. “If you like rocks, snakes, and heat.”

“Exactly.” Rudy folded his oversized body into the cab of the truck and saluted. “See you.” 

He pulled out, leaving Matt coughing, in a cloud of dust. Matt fumbled for his keys, then headed straight for the Bronco. It was a long drive, but if he booked it he might make it by dinner. Ally liked pizza… 

 

 

Chupacabra

 

The school bus sped away in a cloud of dust. Tony started up the steep drive to the ranch house. The afternoon sun baked the back of his neck. His backpack bit into his shoulders and sweat dripped into his eyes. 

Tony wiped his face and rolled his neck. He swallowed hard. Ever since his mom died in the car wreck six weeks ago, he felt like he couldn’t take a full breath. It was like an invisible hand was wrapped around his throat choking him all day long. 

He kicked a rock. It ricocheted off a stump and hit him in the knee. It figured. Tony was mad all the time but couldn’t figure out at who. His mother for dying? His father for dishing him off on his grandpa? His grandpa for living so far out in the country that he had to ride the bus an hour to school? 

When Tony finally reached the house, he was surprised to see the sheriff’s truck parked out front. The sheriff and Tony’s grandpa were deep in conversation.

“Two sheep. Completely drained of blood on Wednesday,” the sheriff said. “And last night, three calves and Mrs. Smith’s Blue Heeler. All dead, with nothing but puncture wounds on their necks.”

“No other injuries?” Tony’s grandpa asked.

“None.” The sheriff shrugged. “It’s the darndest thing.” 

“It’s a Chupacabra,” Tony’s grandpa said. “They’ve been round these parts before.”

The sheriff laughed. “I’d not jump to that conclusion, Mr. Saenz. More likely a cougar wandering out of the mountains. Still, you’d best pen your stock tonight.” 

Tony’s grandpa didn’t argue. “Thanks for letting us know.”

As soon as the sheriff pulled away, Tony said, “Grandpa, you can’t go talking like that. People will think you’re crazy.” 

Grandpa shook his wooly, grey head. “Crazy is denying what’s right before your eyes. Cougars eat their prey. They don’t suck their blood.” 

Inside, his grandpa pulled a faded photo from a drawer. It was Tony’s mother. She was about his age and had long brown pigtails and was cradling a baby goat with a pink collar in her arms. 

“The Chupacabra killed Lulu, your mother’s favorite goat, last time it was round these parts. Your mother cried for days.” 

Tony walked away. He didn’t want to talk about his mother. It felt like the blood was being sucked out of him every time he tried.

After dinner Tony headed outside to round up the goats. Once there had been a whole herd on the ranch. But now his grandpa only kept a nanny, a billy, and a baby goat born last spring. 

The baby was black with white patches above each hoof and looked like she’d stepped in a can of paint. She followed Tony around when he did his chores, chewing on his sleeves and begging for treats. 

Grandpa had told Tony he could name her, but Tony hadn’t. He didn't want to care about a baby goat—or anything else for that matter. Still, he fed her the best scraps and made sure she got her fair share of oats and hay before the bigger goats moved in. At night he brushed her till her coat shined.

The nanny and the billy were dozing under the porch and refused to come out when Tony called. He had to crawl underneath and pull them out by their collars. The billy gave Tony a sharp nip on his hand to show his displeasure, but both were happy enough when Tony filled their troughs with fresh hay and water. 

Then, Tony searched the yard for Baby Goat calling and shaking a cupful of Cheerios, but she didn’t answer. He walked the entire back pasture, but she wasn’t there, either. So he headed down the hill to the meadow by the river, carefully avoiding the family cemetery that stood on its edge. 

The meadow had been Tony's favorite spot on the ranch when he was a kid. It was shady and next to the river with a nice fishing hole. But now, since his mother had been buried there, a fresh mound of brown dirt marking the spot; he hated the place. He hadn’t fished a single time, even though Grandpa had bought him a new rod and reel.

Tony scoured the underbrush walking up and down the river’s edge calling for Baby Goat, but she was nowhere to be seen. He gave up when it was too dark to see.

“Any luck?” Grandpa asked when Tony returned. 

Tony shook his head. 

Grandpa squeezed Tony’s shoulder with his strong, gnarled hand. “She'll wander on home when she’s ready.”

Tony nodded and headed to bed. He hadn’t slept well since his mom died. During the day he could barely hold his eyes open. But at night his brain ran on overdrive replaying memories of his mother. 

Grandpa had brought her old comic books and baseball cards down from the attic. Tony pored over them. Baseball was Tony’s sport, and his mother had loved it, too. They both played third base. She’d played softball in college and after that on a woman’s league. She'd been on her way to a tournament when her car was hit by the tractor trailer. 

He was staring at the clock at midnight, when he heard an urgent, high-pitched bleat. He hopped out of bed slipping his bare feet into his boots, grabbed the flashlight on the counter next to the door, and ran outside toward the sound. The cries continued frantic and shrill. 

Tony sprinted through the yard and into the pasture wearing only his boxers and boots. Brambles tore his skin, but he didn’t slow. The bleating led him to the top of the hill. He hesitated, wondering if he should get his grandpa. But then Baby Goat cried even louder. There was no time. 

As he raced down the slope, a cloud passed over the moon. The darkness became so deep, Tony couldn’t even see his feet. He stumbled on rocks and ruts but didn’t slow. He followed Baby Goat’s maws into the meadow then skidded to a stop. The bleating was coming from the cemetery. 

He shined his flashlight inside the stone walls, but the thin yellow light couldn’t penetrate the thick mist.. It hovered over the ground hugging the tombstones like a living thing. It seemed to breathe.

Tony wanted to help Baby Goat, but his feet were frozen as if chained to the ground. He looked around for someone, anyone, to help him. But he was all alone.

Baby Goat shrieked again, higher now, desperate. The sound made the hairs stand straight up on Tony’s arms. But, somehow, released the lock on his feet. 

Tony opened the gate and ran inside. A huge beast like a hairless, coyote with thick, grey skin crouched over baby goat pinning her tiny body to the stone wall with a giant paw. 

“Get out of here!” Tony yelled.

The beast looked up at Tony with angry yellow cat eyes. Blood dripped from its two long, curved incisors. Tony smashed the beast’s muzzle with his flashlight. The beast roared and raised up on its hind legs towering over Tony. 

Tony turned and ran. The ground shook as the beast pursued him. He could feel the beast’s hot, rancid breath on his neck. It was gaining on him. Tony focused every ounce of his energy into running as fast as he could toward the river praying the beast could not swim.

But barely a foot from the water’s edge, the beast roared and leapt onto Tony’s back, knocking him to the ground. As he fell he glimpsed a girl running towards him through the mist. She held a baseball bat in front of her like a club. 

Then, Tony’s head smashed the ground. The beast pierced his neck with its razor incisors. Tony screamed as blood began to flow out of him. In that moment the girl reached them. She struck the beast with her bat. It roared, releasing Tony. The girl whacked the beast again, swinging the bat as if she was hitting a line drive. Tony heard the crack as the bat impacted the beast’s skull. 

The beast yelped and took off running along the river’s edge. The girl knelt next to Tony and pressed her hand against his bleeding neck. 

“Don't worry. I'll take care of you.” 

Tony wondered, briefly, why she seemed so familiar. Then he blacked out.

When Tony came to, light shone through the barn window. His grandpa was crouched over him. 

Tony sat up. “Grandpa, how did you get me up the hill?” 

“I found you here, just now.” 

The events of the night rushed back to him. Tony brought his hand to his neck. A thick dressing was taped to his skin. 

“Grandpa, a chupacabra killed Baby Goat. And there was a girl—”

“Baby Goat is fine.” Grandpa pointed. “She’s here with you.”

Sure enough, Baby Goat lay curled next to Tony with a bandage on her neck that matched his own. She had a collar, too. It was faded pink but clearly read, “Lulu.”

Grandpa sat back on his heels. “Isn't that strange?” 

Tony scratched Lulu’s chin. She mawed and butted him gently with her baby horns. 

Every inch of Tony’s body ached, but he didn’t care. For the first time since his mother died, the invisible hand had released its grip on his throat. He could breathe again.

​

 

Jesus Lopez Mows His Lawn

​

Jesus Lopez mows his own lawn. So do I of course. So do most of us; but Mr. Lopez is paraplegic. Twenty-five years ago, a bullet lodged in Jesus Lopez’s back severing the neurologic connection between his spine and legs. Now no signal reaches the muscles below his waist. Paralysis and deformity ensued. His feet are contracted and twisted upside down so that they look like curved bowls -- no good for walking or even standing for that matter. So, Mr. Lopez mows his yard in his wheelchair. 

***************************************************************

Mr. Lopez’s home health nurse keeps calling me, complaining that his dressings are dirty or have fallen off when she goes out to care for him three times a week. She can’t figure out why. So this visit I’ve got to have a “heart to heart” with him about his role in the healing process.

“Mr. Lopez, you won’t heal unless you are compliant with our wound care plan. If your dressings are dirty or wet when the home nurse sees you, you will never heal.”

“Sorry Doctora.” That is what he calls me. “I think it might be the mowing. I’ll tie a grocery bag on my foot from now on to keep the bandage clean.”

“Mowing? How do you manage that?”

“I pull my chair right up next to the mower so I can pull the crank at the same time I squeeze the start paddle on the handle.”

“It’s a push mower?” I cannot believe what I am hearing.

“You bet, self-propelled. Once I get it started, the mowing is easy.”

I shake my head.

“I pull my chair up behind the mower and push it with my left hand. I drive the wheelchair with my right.”

“That doesn’t sound safe,” I say as I inspect the horseshoe-shaped ulcer on top of his right foot, which due to his contractures, is actually resting on the footplate of his wheelchair. 

“I tie that belt around my legs to keep them from flopping if I hit a rut.” Mr. Lopez points to a frayed brown leather belt draped on the edge of his seat. A jagged tear in the cushion has been repaired with silver duct tape and a shopping bag chock full of gear -- a sack lunch, an umbrella, a blanket -- hangs off the handles. “I’ve never had a bit of trouble.”

The wound is pink and shallow. It looks like it should heal right up; but never does. It is maddening. “Dirt and debris getting into your dressing isn’t doing your foot much good either,” I say.

“I have to do it, Doctora. I have a big yard and if I don’t keep it cut, the city will fine me $75. I’m not made of money. ”

That’s true. He gets to my office by bus, but unlike a lot of my bus patients, he is never late. I should have Mr. Lopez give a class: “How to Master Public Transportation and Arrive On Time.” I didn’t even know he took the bus until one day I ran so late that I made him miss the last pick-up. He had to borrow the phone at the front desk to shift around for someone to pick him up. 

*********************************************************

“Jesus Lopez’s mother died,” my medical assistant warns me before I go in for our next visit. 

“I'm so sorry, Mr. Lopez,” I say as I look at his foot. 

“Thank you Doctora. I miss her. We were very close, but she was old. It was her time.” 

“You lived with her?” 

“Yes, just her and I. The house is very quiet now.”

“How are you managing? Have you had to move?”

“Doctora,” Mr. Lopez pauses waiting until I look up and give him my full attention. “My mother couldn’t get out of bed this last year. I managed to take care of her. I sure can take care of myself.”

I blush. This is the closest to an angry word I have ever had from Mr. Lopez, and I deserve every bit of it. I’ve been treating him for a year, but I don't understand a thing about his life.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean -- I just assumed.” I struggled for words. I did not want to offend this man, always so courteous and patient. “But how do you possibly manage? It’s not just your paralysis, but your feet. You can’t even -- ”

“Doctora. I got shot over twenty years ago -- and it was pretty much my own fault. For a few weeks I thought all about ‘I can’t.’ I couldn’t get out of my mind all the things I would never do. But then I decided, ‘Hey, I’m alive. The Lord is not done with me.’ So, every day I just do everything I can do.”

I am humbled and have no response. 

“So I took care of my mother. I owed her that. She gave me life and I wasn’t gonna put her in a nursing home.”

“You’re like MacGyver,” I say. 

“Oh Doctora,” Mr. Lopez laughs, “I love that show.”

I have an idea. “Do you think if I put home health on hold, you can figure out how to you reach down to your foot and dress the wound yourself everyday?”

“I’ll find a way if you tell me what I need to do.”

***************************************************************

“Jesus Lopez is healed.” My medical assistant moon walks in the hall outside Mr. Lopez’s room at his follow up appointment two weeks later. 

I walk into the room, hoping but not convinced. I shine the spotlight on his foot. Indeed there is a thin, translucent layer of pink tissue over the wound.

“Mr. Lopez, you are healed.” I can’t help but grin. 

“I thought you’d like that, Doctora. Thank you for healing me.”

“Mr. Lopez, are you kidding? You did it. I’m just sorry I didn’t have you change your own dressings months ago.”

“That’s OK, Doctora. You always did your best. Sometimes it takes trying different things before you get them right.”

Copyright Allyson Chavez Larkin

About Allyson Larkin

Allyson Chavez Larkin is a family physician specializing in wound care. She lives in Corpus Christi, Texas with her unfailingly patient husband, a Midwest transplant who still cannot get used to the heat, and three lovely children who are turning into amazing people right in front of her eyes. She reads and writes voraciously in her spare time. Middle grade and young adult fiction are her guilty pleasures.