In Puerto Rico, a musician serenades his dying wife – with songs she may not hear

Candelaria playing his guitar and singing with Dr Guzman by his sick wife’s bed. Candelaria sings every day to his wife and to the staff at the emergency shelter. Photo: TNS

At an emergency shelter in Manati, Puerto Rico, people had arrived with wounds from the twisted metal and debris that still littered streets. Others came sick from the contaminated water and mosquitoes that followed the hurricane. And a few, displaced from the local hospice, were spending their final days in the company of family.

All around them, doctors and nurses conferred in hushed tones amid the neat rows of cots lining the sports stadium turned temporary medical shelter. Generators hummed in the background, powering the ventilators and feeding tubes of patients who had fled nearby hospitals after Hurricane Maria knocked out power across the island.