Today I got to hold L’s hand and tell her that people all over the world, people she will never meet, care enough about her to pay for her surgery and pray for her recovery. Although she can barely move, she was able to nod her head and give my hand a good squeeze. In the midst of the tragedy and suffering of her situation, your response has been astounding. We are so grateful for your overwhelming kindness.

After Saturday’s attack, L was taken to one of Guatemala City’s two major public hospitals. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: this place is a vision of the most hellish suffering. It’s filthy, overcrowded, and reeking with despair. This is the same hospital where, just a couple of years ago, our Jaqueline and her mama were waiting for an appointment when a grenade was thrown in through the main door, and they watched in horror as frightened strangers died around them. People would rather die than go to this hospital. For many, it’s often a better option.

Three times a week, visitors are allowed a scant ninety minutes of access. Men and women must form separate lines and enter by separate doors. The lines are long and miserable as everyone bakes in the afternoon sun. Visitors have travelled from all over the country for the chance to see their loved ones. Outpatients fill the entryway, exposing colostomy bags, weeping sores, and fresh wounds. They’re pleading for help and gore goes a long way to convince the waiting crowds that they should dip into their pockets. Screeching vendors, selling everything from toilet paper to adult diapers to soap and sponges, compete with the voices of the pleading poor. Bags and bodies are searched, and children turned away. There’s a fear that the young will bring disease to the sick.

Once inside, the divided sexes are thrown together in a chaotic search for their patient. The press of people is terrifying. Everyone is frightened. Everyone is intimidated. The only signs demand months of back pay owed to the doctors and nurses, or advise visitors and patients alike that they must not pay for any services provided. Garbage and blood compete for floor space. It’s a place of staggering misery.

We found our sweet friend. Three days after her assault, where she was raped and shot seven times, and two days post surgery where her arm was pieced together with temporary pins, – she had received no pain medication and no i.v. fluids. Her jaw, let me remind you, has been pulverized by a bullet. Her teeth are wired together to keep everything in place. Obviously she couldn’t speak, but her eyes and her desperate whimpers told us everything. She was in agony.

Zack went in search of a doctor. He was gone for a long time. No one, it turned out, had the authority to prescribe her anything for the pain. There’s only one doctor who can do that…and he was busy. So she lay there, helpless.

The family had been given a prescription for the surgical plate that she must have inserted to repair her ruined arm. The doctor had told them it would cost about a thousand dollars. He may as well have told them they needed a ladder to the moon. This hospital is filled with people whose only hope for help or healing is way beyond their grasp. Patient’s families beg in the hallways as their loved ones slip further towards death for the want of a few hundred dollars.

We told L’s family that we would try to get help. When we showed up today with the receipt for the surgical plate (which, it turns out, cost more than twice what we’d originally been told), L’s son burst into tears. You have done an amazing thing in paying for this for her. I know she’ll have a lot more expenses, but this is a huge part of her recovery process. I can’t overstate how grateful we are.

Yesterday, three days post surgery, she had still not received any pain medication. She still had no i.v. fluids. She was still hissing at the pain. Since visitors aren’t allowed in on a Wednesday, I spent the day trying to coach her family via phone messages. Frightened, uneducated, marginalized people are too overwhelmed to fight for themselves. They don’t know their rights, and they don’t know they’re allowed to insist. A friend joined me in the coaching effort, encouraging the family to fight for L. When they finally managed to speak to her doctor, he told them he had other patients to see and walked away.

L. came from La Linea. No, I can’t prove deliberate discrimination, but I’m pretty sure it is there.

Finally, last night, they caved and gave her a single dose of pain medication, and L. was able to sleep after so many days of suffering.

Zack and I spent the day buying the plate for L’s arm. Yes, the entire day. And this is another part of the process that makes it impossible for the poor to get the help they need. We had to make multiple, complicated phone calls, stand in endless lines, find enough cash to pay for the plate (because why would a medical equipment company take a credit card?), wait for an hour to pay for the plate in a bank, drive deposit slips and medical forms from one end of the city to another, park in sketchy places, and deliver piles of photocopied pages into the hands of bemused medical staff. I’m exhausted, and yet I had money, education, a telephone, Google maps, and a vehicle on my side. The poor have none of these things. No wonder the families of the sick so often pick them up and carry them back home to die. The alternative is just too complicated and beyond their reach.

So, thanks to many of you, we were able to prove to the hospital that L’s plate has been purchased. Now we wait for them to schedule her surgery. They do surgeries on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They can’t tell us if she’ll even make next week’s list.

I’m speechless.

Now we wait. L. has had one more dose of pain meds. That’s two doses since her first surgery. The other patients in L’s room have been moved, and a police officer has taken their place. I asked why she was there.

“Oh, we have to guard her twenty-four hours a day now,” said the nice lady, beaming.

“So, she’s in danger?”

“Yes. She’s in a lot of danger. She lived, and that wasn’t supposed to happen. We have to stay with her now. They are probably going to come for her.”

I’m really going to try not to write a novel every time I post an update. But , once again, I apologize for my lengthy rant.

Thank you for caring for the stranger beside you. I know that many of you are likely thinking you have done too little. But you have loved a woman who represents the most despised, the most rejected members of this society. This matters to her and to her friends. You have done a very good thing.

This is far from over.

Let me tell you a little bit about Bea.

Bea is amazing. Like, for reals.

In a world where understated really isn’t a thing, Bea shines, no, glows, like a meltdown at a nuclear power plant. She’s a woman you can’t fail to notice. She’s loud – fairly bellowing her demands for coffee when a hangover is particularly bad. She’s brazen – “I’m wearing a thong, so I’m dressed for the outdoors!” And she’s pretty much always up to no good. Yep, she’s our very own Latin American Three Mile Island.

We love her.

A while back she told us that her birthday was on September 15 – Guatemalan Independence Day. That’s a big deal around these parts. Duly noted, her special day was entered into Google calendar.

Shawn loves Google calendar. He puts things in it for me. Bless him. He has it linked up and doing sharesies so that we can all know the same stuff. Sigh. I never bother to look. He’ll tell me what I need to know…and I remembered Bea’s birthday, so…

Instead of taking our coffee cart and visiting all of the ladies, on the big day we showed up at her door with nothing.

“Why are you here? Where’s the coffee?”

She’s as subtle as a punch in the head.

Shawn threw open his arms. The men gathered around her room all turned to stare.

“No coffee, Bea. We’re only here for you. Happy birthday!” said the hubby. Then he wrapped her nearly naked self in a big ole hug. He’s good like that. Love lavishly – we mean it.

Bea was all kinds of tickled. “You remembered my birthday! That makes me so happy.” Oh, bless her heart. Seriously, this woman looks and acts like she’d skin you alive if she needed to, but her smile was just stunning. Birthdays matter.

After lots of kisses and hugs and all round happy lovin, Shawn told her we were there to take her out for lunch. Cuz, you know, birthdays.

And Bea was silent. That was a first.

She looked confused, the leering hoards looked confused, even the fella slithering out of the urinal that sits right outside her door looked a little taken aback.

“You’re what?” She was a teeny bit slow on the uptake.

“Lunch,” he said. “We want to take you out for lunch.”

“But why?”

“Because it’s your birthday. We want to celebrate.”

“But…”

“You should probably get dressed though. Do you have any actual clothes?” My husband – he has to say some odd things.

“I have clothes! But are you serious?”

“Yes we’re serious. Get changed. We’re leaving in five minutes.”

“With me?”

Sigh…this was more challenging than we’d expected.

“Yes with you. Bea, we’re taking you to lunch. To eat. For your birthday. Put some clothes on.” He can be very patient.

She disappeared into her tiny room and we waited outside while things banged and thumped.

Bea is one of the few women who actually live on La Linea. Her room is barely more than the width of a single bed, and all her possessions are stored in there. The walls are covered with garish posters of the Virgin of Guadalupe, plastic flowers, candles, and seemingly never-ending rolls of condoms. Bea does a healthy trade with the ladies on the Line. Men are always gathered near to her door – either waiting to visit or waiting for the urinal. Men pee on her doorstep all day, everyday. It’s disgusting.

She burst through the door – a vision transformed.

“Bea,” Shawn yelled, “I didn’t know you owned pants!” She slapped him, laughed, and threw her arms around me as we headed to the car.

I wish I could describe it to you. The look on her face, the sweet, childlike grin, the constant giggling, the many hugs, and the skip in her step, but I really can’t. There are no words for the person she became as we made our way to McDonalds. Yeah, I know, but it was a holiday, and everything was shut. It was as beautiful as it was heartbreaking.

Bea is hard. Friends who’ve visited La Linea with us are often afraid of her. She kinda does that to people. She’s lived an extraordinary life, and seen things that I cannot begin to imagine. Her skin is marked with gang tattoos, and her face and body bear machete scars and all the signs of a life lived in cruel depravation. She has been there, seen it, done it…and definitely has the scars to prove it.

But this woman, whose glare could stop a speeding bullet, became a sweet, delighted child. Not kidding. Not exaggerating. Over and over she said, “I will never forget this. This is the best birthday ever. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

You guys, it was a burger. I wanted to cry, but she kept making me laugh.

When we got to a packed Micky D’s she told us she’d only been there once before in her life – when her daughter, now twenty-six, was four years old. We were just a couple of blocks from her room, yet she had no idea where she was. She never leaves that horrid little hole. She’s too scared, she said. There are just too many bad things that happen. So she lives her entire life, in a tiny, squalid room, on a disused railway track populated by broken women and greedy, drooling men. I was shocked to hear that anything made her afraid. What kind of life is that?

So we ate, and we laughed, and we poked fun at her. She asked if she should take off her earrings, (Guatemalans are funny about jewelry and makeup), but we told her to wear whatever she wanted. Honestly, the earrings weren’t really the first clue for the onlookers.

We got a few looks from the good people at McD’s. Not disapproving or contemptuous – just confused. But it was okay because Bea was just so stinkin happy, that no looks, and no disapproval could have changed the joy of the moment. We talked about life. She shared some hard things. She asked questions. She laughed a great booming, raucous laugh. And she hugged us long and hard and often.

On the way back to the Line, Shawn stopped to buy her a slice of birthday cake. She carried her little baggie of frosted gooeyness like it was a treasure. More hugs at her door. More kisses. She giggled and skipped behind the door. Time to get into her work clothes.

How lucky am I that this is my life?

“My name is …”

Words to bring tears to my eyes and make me weak with the honour of hearing such a simple, precious truth.

The sex trade is all about illusion.  The illusion that women are free to sell their bodies…that it’s empowering…that Prince Charming will walk through their door…that sex with strangers is fun.

That’s the biggest illusion of all, I think: that it’s fun…that they like it and like the men they service.

They don’t.

Some of them like the money.  None of them like the work.  They blush, they cry, they justify; but they never say how much they like it.

So they lie.  They say they have no choice.  They say that other work is impossible to find.  They say they’ll only be there for a few more days, or weeks, or months.  That they’ll leave as soon as they’ve paid off whatever noose has been tied around their tired necks, but everyone knows it’s just another lie thrown like a dirty blanket to hide the mess of broken lives.

They arrive early, leave late, and in the hours in between they paint on garish faces, remove their mother clothes, and hide behind a working name – the flimsiest of deceptions to keep the truth of who they really are hidden from clients and colleagues.

It’s all just a big, deadly game.

I get it though.  At least, as much as any privileged, protected first-world princess ever can.  I’d lie too if it was me.  I’d paint my face and change my name and pretend that it just wasn’t happening.  I’d escape into the illusion if I believed the lie that there was no way out.  Of course I would.  It would be the only way to survive.

We ask them a lot of questions – hard questions a lot of the time.  The ladies of La Linea are game to talk about pretty much anything.   They’ll tell us about their kids, their clients, their hopes, their heartbreaks, but we never ask them their real names.  It’s the only thing they have left that is really theirs.  The only thing that isn’t exposed, sold, and pawed by drooling strangers.  So we never ask.

And yet, in the midst of all the illusion, surrounded by the lie of the deadly game, every so often there’s a tug on the arm, a shy smile, and a whisper:

“Today I want to tell you my real name.”

I am humbled every single time.

Sometimes they say it as an apology, as though they feel bad that they’ve kept this part of themselves hidden.  Sometimes they say it as a gift – knowing that they are giving us something we don’t expect or deserve.  It’s beautiful, and every time it happens I feel as though my heart will burst.

It’s taken me fifty years to understand the privilege of hearing a person’s name.  When we say our name, we say what is true about ourselves.  Of all the things that are not true, of all the lies we tell or illusions we hide behind, we all know the truth of our own name.  I hope I never take it for granted again.