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Luis couldn't help but to stare at the fly that was moving over the TV screen, rather than focus on the actual picture of the baseball game he was watching. Regardless of the flashing colors underneath its legs, the fly kept moving. It moved left. It moved right. Undeterred by the game action, it made its irregular circles on the screen. The only thing that could stop the fly from moving would be someone swatting it with a rolled-up magazine. But Luis wasn't going to.

Luis wasn't going to do much at all, by necessity and happenstance. He had been lying in a hospital bed for a while, and he was going to continue to lie in a hospital bed for a bit longer. The top half of the bed had been propped up so that he was nearly sitting, but not quite, and the bottom was also raised to elevate his legs. This was more or less how he had spent the last two weeks. Leaving the bed was off limits, for several reasons, not least of which was the fact that he couldn't move those elevated legs, or much of anything else, since getting himself into an accident three weeks ago. One week he had spent in ICU, and two weeks in this room, this bed, watching that TV, but probably not that same fly.

The flies and the teams playing on the 'Game of the Day' kept changing, but Luis' days apart from that pretty much stayed the same.

That included the regular rounds made by hospital personnel. Luis' eyes wandered to the clock above the door to the hallway, which was to his right. Four minutes to 3pm. Any second now...

The fly kept wandering over the back of the Blues' reliever, while the broadcasters were whittling away the time in another lopsided game the Blues were suffering through. Their starting pitcher had been blown up by the third inning, and after their long man had given up another four runs in the fourth inning, the opposing team, the Arrows, had proceeded to carve bits right out of the soft underbelly of the Blues' pitching staff, consisting of perennial journeymen, underdone rookies, and grizzled veterans on their last leg. At least one leg they'd stand on, though. Luis wished he could say as much about himself.

"This will be the 15th appearance by Otávio Marimón, the Blues' 20-year-old left-hander", the play-by-play announcer narrated.

"Not going well so far", the color guy chimed in. "He has been lit up for a 5.87 ERA in his 14 previous games, and an ERA of flat nine in the last five!"

"He is also one of three 20-year-old players on the Blues right now."

Luis closed his eyes and tried to groan, but all his body was ready to release was a tortured gurgling noise. Luis was also 20 years old. But while other 20-year-olds were being fed to the lions, or Arrows, in the major leagues, this 20-year-old was propped up in a hospital bed, with his legs in splints, his arms in braces and placed on small pillows to either side of his limp body, and his head was only held up by an upper lip sort of extension to the blue cervical collar he was wearing.

"Chuck Cassidy singles up the middle", the play-by-play voice declared. "No chance for the middle infielders to make a play, and the Arrows will have runners on the corners with nobody out against Marimón."

That ERA was probably going to be raised. Luis' body wasn't. His body was lying right where they had placed it, in the braces and splints. Also, with a catheter in his penis and in diapers, since he had lost bladder and bowel function when he had tumbled down an embankment into a large rock, shattering three vertebrae in his neck, and instantly rendering him completely paralyzed from the neck down. He could not move a muscle underneath his chin, could not swallow, could hardly talk, and could not breath at all. A mechanical ventilating machine that made all sorts of repetitive noises was to the right side of his bed and kept breathing for him, pumping and sucking air through a pair of transparent plastic tubes that met again near the base of his neck and the bottom of the cervical collar, and from there a single tube led into the base of his neck through a tracheostomy, which was one of several words Luis had heard in the last couple of weeks that he couldn't hope to write correctly even if he could still move his hands.

But his hands lay limp on the small cushions by his diapered pelvis, and failed to show any sign of reaction to the booming 3-run home run hit off Marimón by the next Arrows batter. No fistbump, no shook fist. No thumbs up. No dismissive wave. Nothing.

The fly remained indifferent, too.

Seconds later, the door to the busy hallway was opened and one of the nurses came in. It was Diego, probably Luis' favorite nurse. They had a sort of bond. Both had been born in El Salvador, and had made it to the US as young men, but there the path had split. The first one, ten years ago, had made a successful asylum claim and had become a nurse, but the other had been denied, had gone underground during an ICE sweep, but had been discovered anyway working construction as an illegal alien, which had led to the rather short and tragic chase that had seen him tumble down the embankment near the construction site, and which had left him in the pity state he was in now.

"Everything alright, Luis?" Diego asked while pulling a Kleenex from the box standing on the small table next to Luis' bed. He gently held Luis' head, topped with short black hair, with one hand and wiped the younger man's sweaty forehead with the other.

"No. I can't move", Luis said. He made terrible, garbled noises, and other people could barely understand him, which was one of the side effects of the particular type of tracheostomy he had been inserted. Luis also tried to fake a smile to add to his black humor, but largely failed.

Diego checked the trach and the tube, then looked at Luis' diaper, which had been changed only recently and was still clean. The collection bag for the urine on the other end of Luis' catheter was also not yet in need of emptying. "Can I do anything else for you?" Diego asked him.

"I have an itch", Luis coughed.

"Where?"

"Right eyebrow."

Diego reached over and began to gently rub Luis over and around the thick black eyebrow, carefully trying to not move his head so much as to cause him any more pain as he was already in from the catastrophic neck injury. There was a break in the action in the game on TV as the Blues, getting their skulls caved in to the tune of eleven runs, were assembling their manager, pitcher, catcher, and infielders for another mound conference out of despair. None of which moved the fly, which had moved up into the top left corner of the screen and meandered across the little score box where it read 'Arrows 14' and 'Blues 3'.

"Better", Luis gasped after a bit.

"Okay." Diego looked over to the other bed. "Your room mate was taken outside by his family?"

Luis blinked once, which meant yes. He was too exhausted to say anything anymore. The other guy was a spoiled rich white boy, 16, who had flipped his sports car into a ditch and had also broken his spinal cord, but lower down. He had no function in his hands, but if sat into a wheelchair was able to move himself around, inch by inch. He was complaining about the lack of customer service in the hospital a lot.

Luis had nothing to complain about. He was taken care of enough not to die. What else could he ask for, he often wondered to the regular beat and puff of his ventilator. He also wondered whether being a paralyzed cripple nobody would care for back home in El Salvador would have a good influence on another asylum claim.

"Alright", Diego said and went around Luis' bed and towards the door. "I will check on you again in an hour."

The fly stopped in its circling motion. There was a certain tension in the air all of a sudden as Diego stopped after making another step towards the door, then looked to his left and to the middle-aged man with the gray pants, blue shirt, and sharp haircut who had silently sat in a chair under the TV the entire time and was browsing a magazine.

"And you, Sir, can I get you something?"

"No, thanks."

"Thank you…", Diego's eyes narrowed as he looked down on the agent that was posted to the room to prevent Luis from escaping. "Thank you for your service, agent, for protecting us from … 'dangerous criminals' like him."

The agent turned his head up to him with an equally annoyed look. "That would be all. Nurse", the agent hissed. Diego angrily stepped through the door. That was not their first encounter on this day, and not the ugliest one.

Luis closed his eyes. Sweat had already reappeared on his forehead. Oh right. He was under arrest after all. The only reason he was not on his way to El Salvador right now was that he was listed as 'in critical condition'. The irony of him being completely paralyzed, but ICE employing three agents in eight-hour shifts to watch over his immobile body. He wanted to show the agent the middle finger. His hand refused to move.

Marimón allowed another single up the middle. The fly was square in the middle of the screen, cleaning its wings, oblivious of and undeterred by anything that had happened in the room in the last few minutes.