Maria Elena Gonzalez de Guzman
S “May I Tell You a Story?” BY DICK DUERKSEN
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he arrived at the rural clinic just before lunch, trudging barefoot through a mountainside raspberry field steeper than the Eiffel Tower’s stairway. The triage nurse, a teenager on her first mission trip, greeted her and her silent husband. “Name?” “Age?” “Married?” “Where does it hurt?” She spoke no English or Spanish, only the Quechua she had learned from her grandmother. Her voice was as soft as rabbit fur. “Maria Elena Gonzalez de Guzman.” “More than 80—at least.” “To him. Forever.” “Everywhere.” Maria Elena Gonzalez de Guzman touched his elbow lightly, guiding him to where two cold wooden chairs sat together. They sat and waited. Together, just as they had done everything since before the volcano made the mountains. Together. *** The clinic manager, a United States Air Force medic who had chosen to retire
October 2021 AdventistWorld.org
so he could teach teenage kids how to care for ancient women, stopped by her chair and stopped breathing. It wasn’t the woman’s perfectly brushed bowler hat or her layers of woolen clothing that brought him to a halt. It was her feet. They were bare. They were ugly. Maria Elena’s well-used feet had gnarled like the roots of an ancient tree. Wherever she set them down, they blended deeply into the muddy ground, as if they were more earth than human. Her ankles, burnished to the rich hue of ironwood burl, rose above the cartoonish feet, their toes pointed forward as if urging the feet to follow. She waited her turn, feet planted deep on the concrete floor. Their numbers were called together, husband and wife having blended into one person on the hillside, and they shuffled into the physician’s circle of cold chairs. Together, just as they had always done everything. From here on, the mountain clinic had two lines. One for men and another for women. He looked deeply into her eyes and then finally let her go, uncertain that it was wise, but reluctantly agreeing to follow the rule. Image: Dick Duerksen
