Remedios is a mother. She rolls to her side and hugs the cave as if it still housed – the invisible, water-baby, before name, sex, lungs… as she wakes on a rolling stretcher parked between others full of waking women, the lot of them resembling a junk yard. In the middle of the room is a frigid block of silence. The women look at the block instead of each other. Her palm spans her abdomen, the infinite space below her navel, the flat expanse of taut muscle. Her middle finger traces a line down, down, down the unstretched skin, then crossing it. Thermometer is inserted, needle removed, arm cuff unstrapped. Remedios re-dresses; she is free. She carries a brown lunch sack of white pills. Outside the silent and a cardboard Virgin stand where she hails a cab. She dreams a gray alien wailing; she imagines a blood red bean floating in a jar.