Pandora’s BoxThe next time I woke up, I wasn’t alone in the pea-green room full of easy-to-clean furniture.
My mother sat into a chair next to me, as did another familiar face… Hector. They were both sleeping, but by some weird instinct, they seemed to sense that I was awake because their eyes opened.
Sucking in a breath full of the cloying perfume of disinfectant, I burst into tears. And for a long, long while, that was all I could do.
Later on, Hector would tell me what happened: there’d been an unexpected clash of two gangs in our street, and one of the stray bullets had hit Marco in the chest.
He said it had been quick for him. That he hadn’t suffered. He said he was in a better place now.
But how could he be in a better place when I wasn’t there with him?
Over the next couple of
