The ensuing weeks were heavy with silence. The clinic had done everything they could for Gabriel, but months passed instead of weeks, and his eyes would not open. He breathed, but his body no longer heeded him. He lived, but he was not living.
Naomi took him home, not allowing him to endure the cold, lonely ward. She gently laid him in their creaky old bed, where they had shared hushed dreams and laughed together before. Now, there was only the faint rhythm of his shallow breathing in the silence.
Leon, though yet a little baby, wept through the nights, his hunger increasing as Naomi lost her strength. She was no longer able to sleep. Every morning saw her in the fields, collecting herbs, washing for neighbors, or bearing heavy water jugs for a few pennies.
When she returned home, her fingers ached, her clothes soaking sweat and mud. But even before sitting down for a meal, she would feed Leon, then wash Gabriel’s face, change his bedding, and speak softly to him — as if speaking softly to him would call him back.
“Please, Gabriel… open your eyes. Just once. I don’t know how much longer I can do this alone.”
Certain days she felt that she saw his jerky fingers, or his lips tighten a bit, but hope was gone at the arrival of the twilight.
The villagers first sympathized with her. They presented maize flour, firewood, or vegetables they did not consume. Some of them helped her wash Gabriel or fetch water. But sympathy has limits — and poverty, though it was shared, is a burden.
Years went by, and the people who visited her fewer. Gossip began.
“She’s cursed,” someone would murmur in the market.
“She ought to have left him to die that evening,” another would reply harshly.
“Maybe she did invite such upon herself...