6
Julio Martinez—they learned his last name was Martinez—bled out on a lounge chair near the Maize Pool south of Building C. By the time Dan got there with all the food, Julio was covered with a towel, and there were runny spots of yellow and red swirling toward the drain. The six folks who tried to save him just stood there silently, shoulders sunken. When Mara saw Dan, she shattered, wept into him, and said they did everything they could, and Dan said, “Of course you did, babe, of course you did.”
No one from Building A—the building most likely to house doctors—was there.
They weren’t sure what do with the body.
The guy who slept in the bunk above Julio said he had had family in Atlanta—or maybe Miami—and that Julio would call his grandma every Sunday to talk about the Falcons, so yeah, it must’ve been Atlanta. And he said Julio only wanted to work at Tizoc for a year, because that was enough time for him to save some money and finally buy his girl back home a ring. He had at least had a couple people somewhere in the world who cared about him, people who’d want to be there for his funeral, who might have a few things to say about him beyond that he was real quick with the coconut rum and pineapple juices at the pool.
In the end, the decision was made to bury him in the garden behind Building B, but not too deep in case they needed to retrieve him. Alan called it a battlefield grave, but Charles hushed him and said it was a pop-up grave, like a boutique at the mall that could pack up and leave any day, so everything felt more special. The grave was only three feet deep, if even, and the ground was harder than anyone thought it would be, so they took turns digging.
Nobody from Building A attended the afternoon ceremony, probably worried what might happen to them if they did, but Lilyanna Collins sent trays of finger sandwiches and a letter of condolence, and Dan heard some of the B and C women saying, Actually, you know what, despite everything, you have to admit she is a class act. Mara read aloud a passage from the Bible, and Dan, who everyone turned to because he’d been the one with the megaphone earlier, felt obligated to say something. He and Alan had found a bottle of rum before the service.
“How do you bury a friend you’ve only just met?” he asked those gathered. “You do so with a promise that you will seek them again in the next life, to create the memories you were robbed of on Earth.” He wasn’t sure it made sense, not really, but everyone said, hear, hear, and Mara squeezed his hand the way she did when she loved him a lot, and the guy whose beard was his whole personality played “Bubble Toes” by Jack Johnson on the ukulele because it was the only song he knew the whole way through.