Mortality has descended with a vengeance upon this family that lives and loves in a tiny trailer home on a muddy patch where the Philadelphia suburbs brush the Delaware state line.
Two months ago, it struck the girls' father, a man with a wild top of frizzy hair, a raging work ethic, and a stoicism that carried him through his demise.
Said one doctor of the 75-hour-a-week landscaper and father of four who had earned legal U.S. residency after emigrating illegally from Mexico two decades ago: "He just wasted away - just bled to death."
No one knew Jose Hernandez, 36, was dying - or why. No one even knew he was seriously ill. He never stopped working; there were mouths to feed.
But an autopsy turned his family's grief into terror, ultimately mobilizing one of the nation's elite health systems into a labor of science and mercy, if not love.
In death, it was revealed that Jose Hernandez suffered from esophageal leiomyomatosis - so rare that only a few dozen cases have been recorded worldwide.
It is the same condition that appeared last summer in chest X-rays of Jose Hernandez's oldest daughters, undocumented Mexicans who lived with grandparents until last year, when their parents spirited them into this country.
The girls' abnormalities were detected during medical tests required for public school admission. Their father's autopsy confirmed suspicions.
Untreatable and degenerative, the condition can develop into cancer, doctors say. Removing the esophagus is the only treatment. And because it is familial, the youngest Hernandez children, 2-year-old Cristina and Jose, 1, could be next.
Gabriela's surgery and two-week hospital stay expected to cost at least $100,000 - will be covered by Children's Hospital and the state, in the interest of medical research and a concern that no one be denied emergency care.
