The moment she saw her husband’s face, Lani began to cry. That evening, Lopez and Robert worked out how he and Collin could tend to the outfit’s fields. At dawn, Lopez and his wife took their daughter, two rifles, and a horse, and they left.
It seemed like a story Lopez’s mother would tell—a quest for a magical flower that would save a girl’s life. Periwinkle. Vincristine. Old technology. Old magic.
After two days they reached the Old Freeway and joined the traffic of mule caravans, travelers, drifters. A few men eyed Lopez and his two women. They also eyed his rifle.
Two days later they reached the Golden Gate. Fog obscured all but the tops of its towers. All the fabled gold had fallen off, leaving only rust and patches of orange paint. Lopez wondered at how it must have shone in the lost world.
A hundred yards before the ancient monument, one of the Bridge People with wild brown hair and a long aluminum spear stopped them. When Lopez showed him the papers from the Sebastopol doctors, the man looked at Olivia and waved them past.
The bridge was riddled with holes. In some places nearly half the concrete had fallen out. Beneath these gashes swirled white air obscuring a view of the long drop to twisting currents.
On the other side, Lopez paid a few Bridge People to guide them through the city of crumbling streets, rusting cars, hollow-eyed men standing around oil drum fires. Toward night, their party reached the city’s southern edge and looked back at the sunset glittering on decaying buildings shrouded in fog. “It’s beautiful,” Olivia said from horseback. “It must have been even more beautiful.”
“You don’t remember it?”
“In my last life?”
“Everyone in the heavens was from the Valley of Melted Sand. You’ve seen it before. You’ll see it again.”
“Papá, are you angry at reincarnated people?”
“No, no.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze but then pulled his hand back, worried that he might bruise her.
She continued to look out at the city, her expression softening. She had been growing up so fast, too fast for Lopez. Now she had discarded the joy and petulance of childhood for…Lopez couldn’t say what exactly. She hadn’t suddenly become an adult, but now she carried an air of solemnity, which she never had before.
“I think…” she said, her tone experimental, “I think I had this cancer in my first life. I must have been cured and grown up to become one of the technology magicians who made the heavens.”
“Maybe.”
“But in every reincarnation since then, I might have died of the cancer.”
“Or maybe you were cured each time. Maybe you’ll recognize the hospital and you’ll say ‘Hey, doctor, do this or that because that’s what worked last time.’ And they’re going to groan when they see you’ve come back because they know you’ll end up running the place.”
She laughed and the solemnity hanging about her evaporated. She gave him her bright, mischievous smile and said, “Maybe.”
As they continued down the peninsula, Lani pointed out landmarks that she remembered from childhood. That night they camped by San Andreas Lake. The next morning, in the blue hour before dawn, Lopez woke to pee among the bushes. On the way back, he saw Olivia sitting by the shore. The water was so smooth that the lake had become a mile-wide mirror. He sat beside her.
“Papá,” she said, her face miserable. “I’m not going to remember the hospital. I don’t want to go.”
He took her hand. “Mija, it’ll be okay. It’s just scary.”
“It is, but…not for the reason you think. I mean…it’s frightening because of what they might do to me and because you might die.” She paused. “It’s not scary because I might die.”
He nodded. “You’ll go to your heaven. You’re not scared about that. That’s good.” For the first time since Dr. Lo had suggested she might have cancer, Lopez felt an emotion twisting in his heart, something hot.
“I mean…I mean…” Olivia started to say.
He let go of her hand.
The hospital was smaller than Lopez expected. Three stories tall and circular, it enclosed a small garden of poppies and a pool of green water. Most of the glass windows had been replaced by paper screens. In every room, at least one small rectangular window was left open. Lopez started when he realized that this was to provide an escape for reincarnates returning to their heavens.
In the midmorning, Lopez and Olivia sat in a room on the third floor. He stood by the window and looked down on the poppies. Olivia sat on a bed, fussing with her gown. They had seen several nurses and three physicians. He had lost track of how many times he had told their story. No one seemed to know if they could get vincristine or if it could cure Olivia.