The life of Zacarias Poncho

[Zapp]

Twenty-nine years ago....

"I'm afraid he's regressing," the counselor said, steepled fingers in front of his face. "The medication is not only wearing off, but it seems to be having adverse effects on him."

"But how?" Zacarias' mom asked, slightly trembling. She loved her son more than anything in the whole world. "The doctors said that it would work and he could be normal again."

The counselor looked out the window of his office, obviously collecting his thoughts. The room had a theme geared to put children at ease, but it was having no effect on Catalina, a full grown adult.

"I'm afraid that since the medication has worn off," he started slowly, obviously looking for words that wouldn't alarm her,"that it's been happening again. During the cardamine breaks," it was a public school, therefore it didn't have the funding to buy a cardamine-filtration system," he has been having allergic reactions to the cardamine."

She looked skyward for a second, then asked why this was happening.

"The doctors don't know. We've had him examined by some of the top researchers in the field of cardamine, and they say they've never seen anything like it. They say that there's a few gene sequences that are wrong, which is making his body try to reject the cardamine. The medication was only temporary, apparently, and his body has begun to reject that too."

Catalina didn't want her son to suffer, and she would do anything to shield him from it, but now she realized that he would have to learn to suffer without his mom there to protect him.

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