Dying is a way of life on the border.

And if her true identity ever became known, she'd be dead before the sun again rose over the Rio Grande. But here in the colonias on the outskirts of Laredo, she was just the Anglo nurse who made house calls. Not that the residences qualified as houses. They were just shanties constructed of scrap material-plywood, sheet metal, cardboard, even discarded garage doors-but they provided shelter from the hot sun if not the dry wind that blew in from the Chihuahuan Desert. It was early September, but it was still summer on the border. It was always summer on the border.

She ducked her face against the dirt that never ceased to blow and walked down the road to her next house call.

Barefooted children played in the gray dirt that was the road or in the foul water that was the river. Potbellied pigs lay in what shade they could find. Chickens pecked at the bare ground, and goats wandered aimlessly. Vultures circled overhead, waiting. Always waiting for death. Young women who looked old cooked beans and tortillas over open fires and wielded straw brooms in a losing battle against the dirt. They smiled and waved to the pretty nurse wearing a white lab coat over a bright yellow peasant dress and pink Crocs; a stethoscope hung around her neck. A scarf concealed her famously red hair from the world and a wide-brimmed hat her light complexion from the sun's harsh rays that had burned the land to a crisp brown. Everywhere in Texas, she was considered a glamorous forty-four-year-old woman.

Everywhere except the colonias.

Over her shoulder she carried a black satchel filled with medicine and supplies and hard candy. Small children ran to her and gathered around as if she were the Pied Piper, a dozen little voices pleading in Spanish and twice as many hands reaching up to her. She searched inside the satchel and dug out a handful of candy; she placed one piece in each open hand. Their brown faces beamed as if she had doled out diamonds, then they ran back to their madres. The sight of an Anglo in the colonias would normally send the women and children scurrying into the shanties and shadows. But she was welcome now.