This guest bedroom in Don Fidel’s centuries-old casa is a respite that seems impossibly far away from the real world, like my own private Shangri-La. The stucco walls are whitewashed and latticed with cracks, making the room bright and sparkly. An old wooden chair that looks more like a medieval torture device takes up one corner. The other corner is filled with a gigantic Christmas cactus spilling out of its pot. Sunlight filters in through the interior courtyard window, framing a verdant jungle of fan palms and bougainvillea and gorgeous flowering orchids. I can smell their fragrance seeping through the open doorway, which is tall enough for Mexicans but forces Nick and I to duck.

The IV drip is gone now, and so are my headaches. The only reminder of my brief freefall is a lingering knot on the side of my head, just above my left ear. But Dr. Samesh still has me on a steady diet of pills. Bactrim to kill anything causing Montezuma’s Revenge. Decadron to end the nausea and help me eat and drink again. Lomotil to stop everything from leaking right out my bottom.

Chirbampo seems to be inhabited by people with huge hearts, or just an abiding fascination about the fate of a wayward gringa. I’m a story arc in the local paper, pushing the new mayor and his inauguration off the front page. Schoolkids make get-well-soon cards filled with crayon scrawls and neophyte English. Kind faces suddenly appear at the foot of the bed, saying fast things in Spanish that I almost-but-not-quite understand, then vanish again.

There are a couple fixtures in the bedroom. Like Don Fidel, whose bellylaughs wax and wane depending on how I’m feeling. And Tia Dotela, his elderly and widowed sister, who knits entire wardrobes in that wooden chair. Also Maria, the slinky teenage secretary from the mayor’s office — the one Nick claims is really just a glorified ho, doing anything to get away from her new boss.

I’m in the habit of studying her surreptitiously, peeking out from behind my veil of bangs while she flips through avant-garde fashion mags from Spain or Italy or whatever. She must be five years younger than me, but she’s way more experienced in life and love. I can see it in her jaded eyes, her bored gaze, her cynical slouch. Nothing can threaten her anymore. She’s already been to all the bad places that frighten girls like me.

But something complicated happens whenever Nick walks into the room. Then Maria watches him more than me, a subtle but appraising stare that ripens into flirtation whenever they interact. Not the fakey on-demand flirting she employs with Mexican guys, but something more earnest. Even her hair-flips become a little desperate, which sounds stupid when I write it down but that’s what I observe. I think she has a crush on him.

Maybe I should feel threatened, but I don’t. And not just because everyone in Chirbampo thinks I’m married to Nick. There’s something easy and special and most of all genuine between us, something Saman and I don’t have and never will, not even if we waited for death to finally part us. The way Nick pierces me with his undivided attention, it’s like entire conversations happen without speaking and the world glimmers with our connection and heaven isn’t something you have to wait for. I could survive on his look of…

…well, I was going to say love, but that isn’t the word he wants to hear. In fact I suspect that’s the word he runs quickly from. So I’ll just say I could survive on his look of intimacy. Life is a happy thing when I melt the arctic oceans of his eyes, and talk about anything and everything with him over a meal, and bask in the warmth of his kisses and friction, and feel him shudder inside me. That’s all I want, really. Him. Life with him, instead of my husband. Is that so much to ask on Valentine’s Day?