There's nearly an entire month you can't account for, when (you were told) you were confined in the hospital. First or second grade, scabby-kneed, hard to feed, breaking out in hives and blisters; nose bleeds almost every day. Confine—a word that only brings up images of a high bed with a metal frame; a drafty room, the old-building smell (like yellow piss, like peeling paint and antiseptic. Nurses came at intervals to check your temperature or bring a glass of water to your lips, bitter liquid in little dosage cups. In the hallways, the sound of wheels rolling across tile. Years later this is the same hospital where you give birth to your third child— every single time the resident pushed her thick fingers in to check the progress of dilation, she'd say 2 cm. Unreal. It's the same hospital where your father passed away on a makeshift pallet, the walls having collapsed in the aftermath of earthquake. You can't remember how many days and nights there was no running water, no power, no gas, no telephone service. A drama of tents sprang up in parks. There was rain and mud, and makeshift stoves into which you pushed torn newspapers. Box of matches, black- bottomed pot from the ruined kitchen; tins of sardines, can opener. Grocers handing out bread through a hole in the wall. Flies led rescue teams to bodies. The dead got their coffins. For such things, there are actually records.