He had always been something of a useless weakling, he knew it and so did the whole of Santa Cecilia, it was just one of the facts of life, the sky was blue, the sun was hot and Héctor Rivera was an unfit for life feeble man who had as much strength in his twig like body as a butterfly had in its wings.
He had been prone to sickness ever since anyone could remember, his own earliest memories full of the nuns at the orphanage he grew up in taking care of him during bouts of fevers and ill health. Priests and doctors alike had reassured them he was likely to grow out of it as he got older and he had sorely disappointed everyone when it didn't happen. At the ages of sixteen and seventeen he and Ernesto moved out of the orphanage together into a rented room shared between them. Ernesto going off during the day to help out in the fields while Héctor stayed put, his best friend had roughly clapped him on the back and laughed that it was perhaps for the best this way, that he wouldn't last five minutes out in the boiling afternoon sun and Héctor was inclined to agree.
He could join his friend out to play to the patrons of the bar though, or any street corner where they could pull in a small crowd, the pair of them playing second hand, or in his case, fourth hand guitars. Their life was fine enough for a while, Ernesto had been like an older brother to him for years and for all his hulking masculinity and friendly jabs he didn't treat him with the same frustrated annoyance the rest of the towns people did.
There was one other person who was just as good to him, Imelda. She didn't look at him with the same wariness the others did like he was a lame horse that needed to be shot and they were trying to figure out if it was kinder to let death have him. She didn't do anything like that, she did something completely different, she glared. She eyed him with the same level of disgust she gave every young man who tried to approach her for a kiss while showing off large muscles and boasting about largeness in other areas as well. He couldn't make any claims of strength, not that he could see it impressing her anyway but he could sing and play his old guitar for her. At first she threw rocks at him but after a few times when she passed where he had set himself up to play in the streets he would change whatever song he had been playing idly to something he had written for her, she paused and listened when she realised he wasn't teasing her.
When they first began courting all of Imelda's friends told her she could do way better than the sickly boy, they agreed he was cute and pleasant enough but he clearly wasn't husband material, how could someone who could barely work provide for her?
She never did like anyone telling her what she could and could not do so she asked him to marry her herself and never felt as at peace when he began to cry tears of joy, at last someone truly wanted him.
Her friends continued their concerns right up to their wedding, she was going to depend on the weakest man in town? Did she really want to have children with him? What if he passed on his inferior genetics? What if he couldn't even perform in bed? After their wedding night she had sauntered back to them and snarled that he could perform just wonderfully, thank you very much, and that he was just as gifted with his hands as his guitar playing would suggest.
They moved into a home together and as the man of the house, Héctor had to start looking for work that paid a bit more than drunk patrons at the bar, first he went with Ernesto out to work the crop fields and was dragged back home to Imelda near every other day when the sun had gotten to him and he collapsed down into the dirt in a dead faint. Still he tried to get up and go every morning until she told him to find something else. He asked to go with the miners out to the pit a few miles out of town, the miners point blank refused to let him go with them, saying that he would be a danger to everyone else just as much as himself down there.
She had him assist her when she went around their neighbours and collected their laundry to wash for a bit of desperately needed money, she watched as his knees buckled as he carried a basket that matched her own behind her, his face flushed as he slid down the wall by their front door and hunched down on himself, the basket abandoned on the floor as he trembled.
"I'm sorry, Imelda..." he groaned, his face hidden in his hands.
With a sigh she left her own basket and perched herself beside him and tugged him to rest curled up against her with his face tucked into her neck. "It's alright, mi amor." She spoke gently, she could already feel the beginning of another fever burning through his skin.
She took him inside and tucked him into bed, watching over him as he shivered in a cold sweat then vomited his lunch into a bucket that never seemed to leave their bedside.
"I'm useless..." he sounded so distraught, his fever glazed eyes locking onto hers as sweat dripped down his brow.
She reached in with a damp cloth, wiping at his face. "You're not useless, you can't help it if you get sick, it doesn't change how much I love you." It was something she had to tell him frequently, reminding him that she chose to stay because of the way she felt for him, not because she was only looking for someone who could bring home a wage.
"I don't deserve you." His warm hand groped out from under the sheets to clutch at hers.
"Hush now and just rest, that's all I want, for you to get better." Her thumb stroked across his knuckles lightly, a worried smile on her lips.
After being rejected from nearly every trade in town he went back to playing in the streets while she continued to wash clothes and even do some light sewing repairs to add a little more to their income. They managed well enough and she was even able to save up to buy him a brand new guitar for his eighteenth birthday.
He never looked so proud, in her opinion, as that first time he sat out in the plaza with his new flashy white guitar and sang for her.
When Coco was born Héctor was an anxious wreck, he had been full of nerves the entire pregnancy and so worried for his wife but when their daughter was born he had a whole new fear, what if she was like him? What he really could pass down his fragility like the towns people insisted? But their little girl only seemed to grow stronger every day with no sign of the perpetual ill health and weakness he was cursed with.
Yet as she grew older he found providing for his girls harder, playing on street corners and at the plaza just wasn't making enough and with Imelda taking care of their daughter while he was out the money she earned was less than before. He turned to his best friend for advice, Ernesto telling him promising fantasies of touring the country, possibly the world. They both knew his music was good and people would pay for it but they just needed a bigger crowd than the tiny community of Santa Cecilia.
He agreed, kissed his wife and daughter goodbye before following Ernesto to the train station.
He spent the next ninety-six years regretting ever leaving.