Chapter 11: The Suffering Woman – Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Paola, a makeup artist in Buenos Aires, receives voice messages meant for a cancer patient. Despite her attempts to contact the sender and block the number, the messages continue. She confides in her friend Luismi, who dismisses it as a hoax. Later, Paola discovers she can see ghostly figures in her mirror: first a crying man, then a bald, pregnant-looking woman with cancer. The visions grow more intrusive: she hears screams and smells hospital odors. After the suffering woman appears in Paola's bed, Paola flees her apartment, destroys her phone by throwing it under a bus, and walks to her mother's house, deciding she must leave the dying woman alone.

Key Events

Paola receives a series of audio messages from an unknown woman worried about a friend with cancer; Paola replies but the sender ignores her.
She blocks the number after discussing it with Luismi, who recounts a prank involving photos of a child with pyoderma gangrenosum.
Paola’s sister visits; Paola secretly searches for medical information about gangrene and cancer symptoms.
While in the bathroom, Paola sees a crying man in her mirror—a reflection of a different room and a ghostly figure.
At work, she accidentally injures a client with an eyelash curler and is sent home by her colleague Liliana.
Back home, she hears voices and sees the suffering woman in her mirror and later in her bed; she touches the woman’s swollen, feverish body.
Paola packs a bag, throws her phone into the street where a bus crushes it, and walks to her mother’s house.

Character Development

Paola: Starts as a detached, solitary makeup artist who avoids intimacy. Her curiosity about the mistaken messages evolves into a morbid obsession with cancer and death. She becomes increasingly anxious, loses professional composure, and ultimately abandons her home and technology to escape supernatural intrusion. Her final act—throwing away the phone—symbolizes a rejection of the digital world that brought the ghost into her life.
Luismi: The grill owner’s son acts as a pragmatic voice of reason, yet his story of the gangrene hoax plants a seed of compulsive searching in Paola.
Paola’s sister: Offers grounded advice (“Don’t obsess”) but inadvertently fuels Paola’s fear by mentioning the mirror reflection looks like a crying man.
Liliana: The lead artist is dismissive of Paola but shows unexpected concern when sending her home.
The Suffering Woman: Never named or given dialogue; she exists only as a silent, pain-racked vision. Her physical condition—bald, swollen belly, IV tubes—becomes the focal point of Paola’s fixation.
The Husband: Seen only as a sobbing silhouette in the mirror, representing grief and helplessness.

Themes, Symbols, and Motifs

Illness and Mortality: The chapter is saturated with cancer imagery—chemotherapy, ascites, hospice. Paola’s research mirrors her own fear of death. The “suffering woman” embodies the universal dread of terminal disease.
Mirrors as Portals: The mirror connects Paola’s apartment to the suffering woman’s home. It functions as a liminal space where the dead or dying can be observed, reflecting Paola’s own psychological boundary breakdown.
Digital Haunting: Unsolicited messages, misdirected calls, and online forums create a modern ghost story. The inability to block the messages—even after blocking the number—suggests technology amplifies rather than contains fear.
Empathy and Alienation: Paola’s initial empathy for the unknown cancer patient turns into self-protective flight. Her decision to leave the apartment because “she had to leave her alone” reveals a twisted compassion: she recognizes the woman’s need for privacy in dying.
Obsession and Hypochondria: Paola’s compulsive searching for symptoms mirrors her own latent health anxiety. She begins to imagine her own cancer, illustrating how fear of illness can consume a person.
Isolation: Paola lives alone, has few friends, and feels disconnected from coworkers. Her apartment becomes a prison when paranormal events invade; only escaping to her mother’s house offers respite.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is a turning point in the collection’s exploration of contemporary horror rooted in bodily vulnerability and digital life. Enriquez merges the everyday—makeup chairs, neighborhood grills—with the uncanny, showing how death and suffering bleed into safe spaces through misdirected technology. Paola’s journey from passive recipient of a wrong number to active flight from a ghost highlights how we cope with mortality: avoidance, research, and ultimately retreat. The mirror motif also establishes a key supernatural mechanism that may recur in later stories. “The Suffering Woman” stands out for its raw depiction of terminal illness and the way it isolates not only the patient but also those who witness it secondhand.

Study Questions and Answers

Why does Paola believe the voice messages are real, despite Luismi’s skepticism?
Paola trusts her intuition; the messages have “a realistic texture” and the sender’s tone is genuinely worried, not mocking. She cannot imagine someone faking the sorrow she hears.
What does the mirror represent in Paola’s experience?
The mirror serves as a window into the suffering woman’s home and, symbolically, into Paola’s own fears. It blurs the boundary between her safe apartment and the dying woman’s world, forcing Paola to confront mortality directly.
Why does Paola throw away her phone at the end of the chapter?
She wants to sever the electronic connection that allowed the ghost to reach her. The phone is the initial link to the cancer patient; destroying it feels like the only way to stop the haunting and reclaim control over her life.