Hilcias and Dr. Maria

 I.

The picture of Dr. Huda Sayed-Johnny at the bottom of this post comes from the amazing artist Andrea Floren (quietlyfiery.com). 

You can learn about it and other works of art in the story “Denver Doctor Starts A Portrait Series To Honor Black And Women Of Color Physicians” from June 27, 2020 on Colorado Public Radio’s website (https://www.cpr.org/2020/06/27/denver-doctor-starts-a-portrait-series-to-honor-black-and-women-f-color-physicians/)

You will hear and see beauty, genius, wonder and courage in that story and in those works of art.

II.

Here is a fiction story I wrote to go along with the picture of Dr. Huda Sayed-Johnny.

I hope it does justice to that beautiful piece of art.

Hilcias the Quiet

Dr. Maria came to Charleston from El Salvador. 

She practiced medicine at the Barrier Islands Free Medical Clinic on Johns Island, and gave care and compassion to migrant workers who passed through there to pick peaches and tomatoes during the long, hot South Carolina summers as they followed the growing season on down the coasts of Georgia and Florida.

She was short with coffee bean colored skin.

Her brown eyes were as deep and beautiful as the newly turned soil on the spring land.

She was a good soccer player and often played with the workers during their lunch break.

She was kind and brilliant.

That made her the best doctor for many, many miles around the lowcountry of South Carolina. 

She lived in a two room house beside the clinic.

“Ella es un angél ella misma, como el arból,” said the people.

She was an angel, but not because she was perfect.

Nope, she was an angel because she cared so deeply for the people and helped them as best she could.

And that is the best kind of angel of all.

Hilcias, his mamí and his abuelo were migrant workers in those peach orchards and tomato fields around the clinic. 

They were from El Salvador, too. 

Dr. Maria noticed that Hilcias’ hair was cut in a wonderful crooked line across his forehead. 

She noticed that his face was always serene. 

If she was a saint, she was the patron saint of noticers.

Of the many patients she saw at the clinic every day throughout the planting, growing and harvesting season, Hilcias was her favorite.

Hilcias liked Dr. Maria very much, too.

He liked that her skin was the same color as his skin. 

He liked that her jeans were patched and holey.

He liked the battered old Converse Chuck Taylor tennis shoes she wore.

He liked her brown eyes and the way they looked deep inside of him when she was examining him.

He liked the way she doctored.

The first time she met Hilcias and his family, she tap, tap tapped on the door of the windowless room in the clinic.

“Buenos Dias, mis amigos,” she said. “¿Como Estas?”

She sat down in an old wooden chair beside the examining table.

“Bueno,” she began. “Let’s talk about Hilcias.

We looked over his brain scans and studied them very carefully. 

We didn’t find any organic reason why he doesn’t talk. 

(He hadn’t spoken a word since he had crossed the Mexico-US border at Matamoros, Mexico into Brownsville, Texas when he was a toddler. Since then he had only communicated in a series of clicks and whistles).

The tests on his ears, nose and throat came back normal, too. 

So all of the parts that help him talk are well and good inside of him.”

His mamí put her arm around his shoulder, held him close, and breathed out a long, slow, quiet sigh of relief.

“But we still haven’t answered the question,” continued Dr. Maria. “Why doesn’t Hilcias talk?”

She leaned her face close to his face until her nose gently brushed against his nose.

“So now we’ve got to walk together down a winding path into places we don’t know,” she smiled. 

“The only person who can tell us why he’s not talking…is not talking.”

Hilcias smiled back at her and looked away from her eyes and down at her feet.

Suddenly, he whistled the most beautiful notes Dr. Maria had ever heard in her life.

They reminded her of the joy she felt when she was a little girl standing in the fields with her family on their farm in El Salvador.

At the same time, they reminded her of the sadness she felt as she lived in the middle of the hard lives of the migrant workers around her.

The music brought a stillness and a quietness to the room.

After a moment, the old abuelo spoke.

“He does talk, I think, but not many people listen.”

And it was true.

- Trevor Scott Barton, from Fragments of Hilcias’ Notebook, 2023