Concepción left Alex in the treatment room to wait for Dr. Mirabi. Alex was quite sure that Dr. Mirabi was doing nothing of consequence. Having Alex wait alone in a closed room was simply medical etiquette, a way to establish whose time was more important. Though Dr. Mirabi’s employees were kept on the hustle—especially the hardworking retail pharmacists—Dr. Mirabi himself hardly seemed oppressed by his duties. As far as Alex could deduce from the staff schedules, there were only four long-term patients in the whole clínica. Alex was pretty sure that most of the clínica ’s income came from yanquis on day trips down from Laredo. Before he himself had checked in last April, he’d seen a line of Americans halfway down the block, eagerly picking up Mexican megadosage nostrums for the new ultraresistant strains of TB.