Evelyn Lopez’s life changed on June 26, 2014. Her mother, Migdalia Fleites, was fine that early Thursday morning when Lopez dropped her off at work in Orlando Latin Market. Fleites, 47, began her morning duties before it was time to open the business.

Lopez, then 17, went to work out at a local park and, when she returned, noticed the door was still open. She and another employee found her mother laying on the floor inside.

“I got very nervous. I began to cry and cry and I couldn’t… I couldn’t call 911,” she said. “I was trembling.”

A man who entered the store immediately called for help. From that moment on, Lopez said, her mother lost consciousness. She didn’t wake up again.

After emergency personnel arrived, Lopez joined them in the ambulance truck to be with her mother.

“A man told me, ‘I don’t know why she won’t open her eyes. She’s breathing by herself but won’t open her eyes,'” Lopez recalled.

In the hospital, Lopez was asked many questions about her mother’s health.

“They asked me how my mother felt before and I told them that she always complained about having many headaches — many, many but she never wanted to see a doctor because she would say she was going to have something bad,” Lopez said. “She was afraid.”

When Lopez told the hospital staff that, an MRI scan and other tests were done on her mother. They told her to wait outside. She had called others but no one had arrived yet, so she waited alone for about a half hour before a doctor came out to speak to her.

“The doctor said ‘Don’t get scared, don’t panic but your mother has a big tumor in her brain — very big, and it needs to be operated on immediately,'” Lopez said. “I was in shock. I didn’t know anything.”

Lopez learned that her mother had a stroke caused by the tumor. Her voice shook as she recalled that moment.

“I was alone and to hear that… I began to scream and cry,” she said. “They gave me something to calm me because I was very ill.”

Lopez sighed heavily. It feels good to let out things you’ve kept inside, she said. She’s only told two other people this story.

Her eyes lit up as she spoke about her mother’s progress in less than a year.

“She can talk now, she can move, she hugs me. She moves her toes,” Lopez said. “She tells me if she feels bad, what she wants. Now she tells me how she feels.”

She added that what has happened to her mother made her realize something.

“There are a lot of people who say they’re your friends, they say they’re this… but at the end, they’re nothing,” she said. “When they see you at your lowest, they turn their backs. Many of my mother’s friends have never gone to see her.”

She paused for a moment.

“But thank God, we’re getting out of this,” she said. “What’s left is a little bit. I feel good because I have taken care of my mom alone. I stayed with her at the hospital for four months, day and night — and I didn’t like to go home and rest… I feel good that I’ve stayed beside my mom this whole time.”

Yesterday, Lopez said her mother told her “Mi chiquitita linda, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be like this.” Lopez said her eyes welled up, but she refused to cry in front of her mother.

“I held back my tears and said ‘Ay mami, any daughter would do this for her mother,” she said. “It’s my duty.”