FÉNIX RISING

PART I – THE REBIRTH

HAVING finally risen, Alejandra “Fénix” Ayala wanted to talk. She had, in fact, wanted to talk for some time. Fluent in Spanish and English, and in the process of learning French, she had tried talking back when she was “asleep” – her code for a 10-day coma – and she had tried later, too, when awake, but was unable to produce anything remotely coherent, regardless of the language she chose.

She had, due to being silent for so long, plenty to say, yet no way of saying it. She also had all these faces in front of her, their mouths moving, words flying from them like bats from a cave. Some belonged to people wearing medical scrubs, while others – those she had known all her life – wondered when the day would come that Alejandra would be able to not only speak once more, but finally recognise them again.

The process, like everything else, would be slow. At first, all Alejandra could do was reach out and touch the face of the man who day after day hovered above her. A face once familiar, it was one she now treated both with suspicion and like braille, studying it, taking in parts of it suddenly strange to touch.

“When I woke up,” Ayala told Boxing News, “it still took me a long time to even recognise that my parents were there.

“Even when I started to remember them, they never said anything about how bad the past couple of months had been for them. They were just constantly trying to make me feel better. It wasn’t until much later, in fact, that I started to realise everything they had gone through. I couldn’t believe it. Unlike them, I don’t remember my operations or the fact the doctor said I was going to die.

“They’ve been stuck in a country far away from home, where they couldn’t see anybody, and I’m just very grateful for them.

“They’re now to eat, when I want to eat, where I want to go, and how I am feeling. It’s like I’m a little kid, but I’m 33. They’re so wonderful.”