1 - Γέννηση - Génni̱si̱ - Birth

Chapter 2


"¡Digan whiskey!"

Alexis scrunched her face in delight and the sound of her iPhone camera going off only made her laugh harder. "Whiskey?" she managed to ask once she'd calmed down.

"Sí, whiskey," Ana grinned. "¿Cómo se dice en Inglés?"

"We say 'cheese'." Ana repeated the word, pulling out the 'ee' sound for a few seconds longer than necessary, and they both laughed again.

At the beginning of June, Kate and Martha had bid Alexis a tearful farewell at La Guardia airport. She hadn't really wanted to leave her family behind but staying at home in the loft, in the city her dad loved so much... it was breaking her heart without him there, even with Kate steadfastly refusing to give up the search for him. So they decided, as a family, that – excepting the honeymoon – it would be a good idea to stick to whatever plans had already been made.

For Alexis, this meant a summer placement in a mental health institution in Mexico City. She'd arrived two weeks before the placement started to attend an intensive language course. In spite of spending the summer before in Costa Rica, and her minor in Spanish, she felt the need fully immerse herself in the culture and what better way to do so?

She'd been assigned a host family, and she didn't think she could be more grateful that she and her host sister, Ana, had become so close so quickly. She had been taking her to see a different part of the city every evening after her school lessons, and they would converse in a mixture of English and Spanish, both improving in the other's language the more time they spent together.

"¿Tienes hambre?" Alexis asked and Ana nodded. "Yo también."

"Let's go home," Ana suggested. "We cook quesadillas today." Alexis' tummy rumbled and the girls laughed as they headed for the bus.


"Bienvenido al Centro de Asistencia e Integración Social, Alexis, soy Doctora Hidalgo."

The doctor beamed as she welcomed her new assistant and began to explain a little about the work she would be helping with during her placement there. Alexis took in as much of her surroundings as she could while they walked from the front gate across the exercise yard towards the main structure, two separate L-shaped buildings connected by a covered alley at the shorter end.

The centre was crowded, dirty in the common areas from layers of mud and dust, and the only actual windows were in the small office area – a building which seemed to have been erected years ago as a temporary structure – which was through the alleyway, forming the fourth side of a neatly-kept garden in the centre of the patient wings.

She was to be working in both sides of the facility, segregated as it was by gender, and always with the supervision of a doctor. She met the other assistants and some of the auxiliary workers, and was surprised that there were so few – with around seven hundred patients, she had expected almost a hundred staff but in reality it was more like half that.

Alexis had known from the reading she had done that the mental health system in Mexico was relatively new and resources were stretched but they were spread more thinly than she had realised. The majority of the patients suffered physical as well as mental disabilities, though the graveyard of broken wheelchairs made her wonder if there were more people in the hospital that were in need of one. She got through her first day with wide eyes and was more than grateful for the hugs from Ana and her mama, Señora Francisco, when she got back to her placement family.

"Alexis, what you are doing is very selfless, you and all the assistants who come to stay with us. Everyone comes back from the centre on the first day with eyes like saucers." Alexis giggled at the last part, ojos como platos. Señora Francisco bustled around the kitchen while she chatted on in Spanish and Alexis tried to keep up, doing better now than she had been when she first arrived.

She could feel it getting easier though, and by the end of her third week in Mexico City she was confident enough to venture out to the market with Señora Francisco's shopping list. Her skin had broken out in tiny freckles almost everywhere the sun could get to it – despite the copious amounts of sunscreen – but she was still almost as pale as a ghost compared to the locals. She had gotten used to the nickname Blanca, and found she didn't mind it at all. Better that than something about her hair.

Most of the staff had even started to call her Blanca at the centre, and she answered to it with a smile. Even some of the patients would say "¡Hola Blanca!" as she passed them in the corridors and she would give them a cheery wave and say hello back.

"Vale, hoy vamos a trabajar con unos hombres sín voz. No sé si ellos no pueden hablar o si escogen no hacerlo, pero igual necesitan nuestra ayuda." Alexis nodded, taking it all on board. Men who either can't or choose not to speak, they needed help too.

Everyone needs help, she thought.

She accompanied the doctor through the labyrinthine corridors of the centre, navigating to where their first patient usually was at that time of day. Where he almost always was, in fact. Doctora Hidalgo told Alexis that this man came to the centre only a few weeks ago. He'd been found lying on the doorstep as if he had been dumped there. He didn't seem to understand anyone, hadn't said a word – not even his name – and although he had made some eye contact with the staff at first, that had quickly disappeared until he simply sat in his room all day, only moving when someone came to tell him it was time for a meal or that he had to take some exercise in the yard.

It was like he had imprisoned himself within his mind, the doctor had told her. He barely ate, he didn't shave and only performed perfunctory ablutions once daily. Alexis nodded sadly, finding herself sympathising with this man more than any she had yet encountered at the centre.

Doctora Hidalgo knocked on the door and entered the small single occupancy room slowly, smiling and calling out "¡Hola José! ¿Cómo te va hoy?" The man sat on the edge of the bed facing the open gap in the wall that served as a window, his shaggy hair wafting in the slight breeze. He neither moved nor acknowledged the doctor, except for a heavy sigh which made his hunched broad shoulders shift under the dirty, threadbare t-shirt he was wearing. The doctor turned to Alexis to give her a nod, as if to say this was to be expected. "Tengo una asistente conmigo, su nombre es Alexis."

The doctor watched as the man's spine stiffened and he sat up straight, causing her eyebrows to raise in surprise at the first acknowledgement he had made of anything she had ever said to him. He stood slowly and turned as if bracing himself for disappointment, but when his eyes alighted on her assistant his jaw dropped. From the corner of her eye, she could see Alexis' face mirroring her patient's.

And finally, the man spoke, his voice cracked and parched. "A-... Alexis?"

Doctora Hidalgo turned to her right in surprise, to see tears streaming down her assistant's cheeks. She glanced back at the man and then back to Alexis.

One word, emitted through a whispered sob, made everything suddenly clear.

"Daddy!"


As he held her in his arms she wept the most sublime and joyful tears she could remember. He stank of sweat and dirt, and he was much harder at the edges than the last time they hugged, but she didn't care if his collarbone was bruising her cheek, he was alive.

He was here. Alive. In Mexico. And of all the places in Mexico he could have been, he was in the mental hospital she was volunteering at. If she wasn't clinging to him for dear life, and he to her, she would never have believed it.

She could hear his heartbeat in one ear, and in the other his hoarse whisper, "I love you, baby, I love you."

"¡Es un milagro!" Doctora Hildago whispered, her hand still over her mouth in surprise. It truly was a miracle.

The doctor's phone beeped, announcing a text message, and the noise broke the reunion in the room. She looked at the message and then looked up at Alexis and her father, speaking in almost perfect English. "I am needed in the other side of the hospital. Alexis, take your father to the office and call your family. I am sure they will want to know he is safe." With a growing smile she turned and walked out of the door, both Castles watching her leave with matching expressions of surprised joy.

"Come on, dad, let's go call Kate and Grams." She grabbed his hand and dragged him through the corridors as fast as she could without running, the patients they passed greeting her with her nickname, smiles and waves.

She was so focused on getting to her phone she didn't have time to wave back and when they finally reached the small office she rushed straight in, still towing him along. His head whipped around when he heard her speaking Spanish to the people there, and she laughed at his surprised expression, "Yes, Dad, I will tell you what I said later." She gently guided him to the bench seat along the wall before she went to her locker and got her phone from her bag.

He started trying to ask something but was interrupted by a coughing fit. One of the staff brought him a bottle of water and he took it with a grateful nod, sipping with care while Alexis turned her phone on and waited for a signal; as soon as the bars appeared at the top of the screen she dialled Kate's number, putting the phone on loudspeaker as she sat next to her dad on the bench, as close as she could get without sitting in his lap like a toddler.

After a couple of rings, the call connected and Alexis saw tears forming in her dad's eyes when he heard his fiancée's voice.

"Hey, Alexis, how's Mexico City?"

She reached up to wipe the tears from his stubbly cheeks as she almost shouted into her phone.

"Kate, I found him! I found Dad! He's here! He's safe! I found him!"


Thank you for your enthusiasm, especially the guest reviewers who I'm unable to thank personally.