In a barely heated ward for newborns on the top floor of the Georgian Republic Children's Hospital, Tamila Gogitidze carefully opens a glass ampul filled with amber liquid. The hospital, in the Degomi suburb of Georgia's decaying capital city, Tbilisi, is a spartan affair: its radiators are ramshackle, the electricity intermittent and the raw concrete heavy on the eyes. A few American posters of babies cavorting in cabbages seem direly out of place. The liquid trapped inside the ampul, meanwhile, can be identified from a box on the floor.
The nameless teenage Mexican immigrant killed in a drug skirmish could hardly have imagined that this would be his final resting place. His knees are drawn up into the fetal position; his body appears almost mummified, the skin a leathery brown merging with the fall leaves underneath. The sloped woods around him hum with cicadas. All is deathly peace in this hillside spot. A few feet away, a leg lies perfectly camouflaged in the brush, given away only by crimson strips of flesh still clinging to it. Under a row of trees nearby, a woman lies on her back, half rotted away, her arms outstretched in a frozen gesture and her hair lying in a molted mat around her skull.