Two weeks without running

Dr. Ruelas, from orthopedics, looked at my knee on Thursday in the hallway, between a broken wrist and a man who had fallen off a ladder while painting his house. He didn't book me into his office because that would have meant paperwork, and we both knew I wasn't going to fill out any paperwork. He bent my leg, stretched it, pressed a spot under my kneecap that made me swear, and said: "Two weeks without running, Ortega. Ice, no crab-walking down stairs, and no heroics."

I asked him if walking counted as running. He looked at me over his glasses. I took that as a no.

Five in the afternoon, with nothing

What I hadn't figured out was what I'd do with my afternoons. Since January my day had had a very clear shape: wake up at four, coffee, sneakers, an hour at Querétaro 2000 park or the Alameda, shower, eat something that is technically breakfast, hospital. Ten months of that. The training didn't just fill my legs, it filled the gap between waking up and going to work, which is the only part of the day when the world and I are awake at the same time.

On Friday I woke up at ten past four, put my sneakers on out of habit and sat on the edge of the bed with one shoe tied and the other one not. I had no idea why I was putting them on. I took them off. I washed two mugs. I watched an episode of something without paying attention. By six I was bored in a way I hadn't felt since middle school, that Sunday-afternoon boredom with your homework still undone.

I texted Andrea: "What do normal people do at five in the afternoon?" She answered within a minute: "Homework with crying children." And then: "Wouldn't recommend it."

The La Cruz market

On Saturday I went to the La Cruz market. I didn't need anything, which is the best reason to go to a market. I walked there slowly, since Dr. Ruelas hadn't actually forbidden walking, he'd just given me a look, and it took me twice as long as usual because I stopped at everything.

The marigolds are in. I hadn't noticed we were so close to November. At the entrance there were mountains of orange flowers tied in bunches, and the smell, which is a strange smell, a little bitter, like wet soil with some pepper in it, went all the way down my throat. A woman in a checkered apron was sitting on an upturned bucket, taking bunches apart and putting them back together, prettier. I asked how much. She told me one price and then another, lower one, without me saying a word. I think it was my freshly-woken-up face.

I bought two bunches with no idea what for. Then I bought a pan de muerto at the next stall, the first of the season, still warm, the sugar sticking to the paper bag. I ate it on a bench outside with the flowers in my lap, watching people go by with their shopping bags. Nobody was in a hurry. It was Saturday, it was six in the afternoon, there was a man selling balloons nobody was buying and a dog asleep under the juice stand. I thought: this has been here every single day, and I spent ten months counting kilometers and missed it.

Who the flowers were for

I took the bunches to my mom on Sunday, because my apartment has no room for an ofrenda and her house in Cimatario has always had a spot for one: the little table in the living room, the one that spends the rest of the year under a crocheted doily and the landline nobody uses anymore. She took them as if I'd promised them to her. "Oh, good, I was about to go get some." She wasn't. She said it so I wouldn't feel strange about buying flowers for no reason.

She took my grandmother's photo out of a drawer, my grandmother from Guanajuato, the one who gave us pinole atole when we visited as girls, and set it on the little table, propped against the phone. Day of the Dead is two weeks away and she's already there. I said it was early. My mom said her mother always liked to arrive early everywhere, so better she finds everything ready.

We sat in the living room with café de olla, her with her new phone and the screen protector film still on, me with my leg up on a stool like the doctor said. She showed me forty pictures of flowers with inspirational quotes that her friends had sent her. I showed her the photo I'd taken of the marigold stall at the market. She liked mine better, she said, because "those are real flowers."

At seven I left for the hospital. At the light on Constituyentes I found an orange petal stuck to the steering wheel. I left it there. Eleven days to go.