Iosi Havilio - Paradises

Afternoon in the hospital is nothing but desolation. After two, there’s hardly a soul there. The few people who cross a corridor or enter and exit a door, porters mostly, just accentuate the feeling of emptiness. Simón has been moved to an intermediate care room, a stage between A&E and formal admittance, as will be explained to me later on. There are around twenty beds facing each other in two rows. In the middle is the desk for doctors and nurses, a cluster of apparatus and monitors. You almost always have to wait a couple of days for a bed to become free, you were lucky, I’m told. Before entering, we have to rub our hands with alcohol and put on surgical masks. There can be no more than five mothers at a time so we have to take turns. As Simón’s fever lessens, he starts to become aware of where he is and doesn’t like it. They connect him to a saline drip. Annoyed by the needle stuck in his wrist, he tries to rip out the cannula in one go. I hold his hand so that he doesn’t wound himself. We stay like that for a while, until he gets used to it and falls asleep again.

I go out to the courtyard and witness a cat fight. Someone calls me from the end of the passageway. I can’t see properly; the stained glass of the chapel projects a diffused light that has a clouding effect. Here, says the voice. I stay where I am, unable to make anything out. Sonia advances down the corridor and becomes visible. I smile and walk up to her. I was looking for you, she says and makes as if to give me a kiss on the cheek but stops halfway. How is he? Better, they’ve brought his fever down and he’s been sleeping for about two hours. I also tell her about the blood tests. Come on, she says and I follow her. We go through a swing door between the pharmacy and the chapel that leads to a wide staircase to the first basement level: operating theatre, resuscitation room and, at the back, the morgue. We walk towards it, but branch off again, going down another flight to the boiler room. Smoke and rust. Sonia guides me to a room which she opens with a key and locks from the inside. No one comes here, she says in a conspiratorial tone. A couple of chairs, a standing lamp, a small table. High up, a ventilation grille. Would you like some maté , she asks. I accept and Sonia opens a metal cabinet with lots of shelves from which she removes the yerba , an electric kettle and some sachets of sugar. With this movement, she exposes an arsenal of medication: boxes, blisters, pills, pills and more pills. Of all colours, shapes and sizes. Also a collection of phials held by the neck with rubber bands: morphine, oxytocin, diclofenac. The kind Tosca uses leaps out at me from the pile.

Sonia unplugs the kettle, brews the maté , spits the first mouthful into a bucket, sucks the straw for a second time and passes it to me. They’ve been wanting to throw me out for a while now, she says, justifying herself. Did you see the orange girls? They’ve been here a year, contracts, they pay them peanuts, there are new faces every day, they bring them in to gradually wear us down. There’s just me and one other left; there used to be about fifteen of us, almost all of them ended up resigning. Well, I’m staying and I take care of my own business, she says. I’m not harming anyone, am I? I shrug, it doesn’t look like it.

I spoke to the woman, she says, and clarifies: The healer. Ah. She told me you have to make an infusion with the bark of the paradise. The antidote alongside the poison, that sounds reasonable. Like with the snakes, my dreams and the drawing. It occurs to me that I’m bound to find a paradise tree in the hospital garden. There must be one here, I say, but she disagrees energetically. It has to be the same one — if not, it won’t work. I’m beginning to doubt the healer’s remedy, it’s a touch fanciful. Sonia says that if she’d known she would have brought some with her but she was only able to speak to her when she got to the hospital. Before we leave, I ask her for something for my headache. She offers me a grey pill especially for migraines.

I go back to the ward, Simón is awake, sitting up in bed with a glum face. The nurse: I think he was looking for you. She also says that a doctor came by wanting to see me. Another says: Bring him some comfy clothes. I buy him a vanilla yoghurt which he doesn’t even try and I flee back to Sonia’s hideout to see if she can stay with him while I go to the flat and return. No problem.

I take a taxi. The man spends the whole journey talking to someone on his mobile through a device stuck round his ear like a caterpillar, headphone and microphone in one. He gesticulates, letting go of the steering wheel, as if the other person could see him. I pay no attention to what he says. I just retain the phrase nasty piece of work.

I enter el Buti at a run. I make quick work: clothes, money, biscuits. Before I leave, standing at the door, I take a look at what remains of the emergency: a mountain of towels, an upturned glass, the bed is beyond dishevelment. I drop into Tosca’s to inject her with morphine, but she tells me she sorted it out herself and lifts her blouse to show me her pricked stomach. But it’s not the same, dear, chalk and cheese. She asks after Simón: And the boy? Still there, I say. She distrusts doctors, they like the sound of their own voices. On the pavement, walking to the corner, I remember Sonia, the paradise tree and the healer. I retrace my steps a few metres, rip a piece of bark from the trunk and put it in my trouser pocket.

Back to the hospital in a bus that drops me ten blocks away. I enter the ward and Simón is surrounded by nurses. Sonia tells me she was about to call. It’s gone right back up. I give a questioning look; they answer with a mix of confusion and contempt. I stay at the margins as they perform a series of procedures on him, they clean him with cotton cloths, they insert and remove the thermometer, they make him take more of the pink syrup. I go out into the corridor and approach the first doctor I come across and as chance would have it, it’s the head of A&E. I tell him about the fever, Yes, yes, he already knows. Let’s see how he does overnight. And he informs me that he’s already sent him for some X-rays to see how his lungs are. He also says he spoke to the folk from toxicology and that it can’t be those little balls. We can rule out an infection. And I should stay calm, they’re monitoring him, he says and leaves. Eight o’clock comes round and things get worse. Simón peaks at forty again. They give him an analgesic in a drip that leaves him half stupid. He doesn’t want to eat, he refuses everything I offer him. I stroke his forehead, I console him in his ear, I tell him it will be over soon, I start to feel afraid. A nurse tells me off for all to hear, showing me with her finger: Not like that. I make myself comfortable in the chair and feel the piece of bark digging into my leg. A cleaner finds me a glass of hot water which he borrows from the doctors’ kitchen. I cross the very dark garden. I stop under a light, split the paradise bark in two and submerge it. I sit on a bench and wait. Ridiculous. The water is barely tinged, very light brown. I return to the ward enveloping the glass between my hands as I blow near the surface. Simón is asleep, I have to wake him up for a bit to make him drink the tea, concealed from the nurses’ eyes. I try to put myself in his place, imagining what he must be feeling and thinking, but it doesn’t get me anywhere. I stay by his side until I’m thrown out. I don’t understand how anyone can sleep in all this light.

With the night, the void of the afternoon becomes sinister. Or charming, it’s difficult to say. Few lights illuminate the courtyard, the tall trees, a fig, a rubber plant, lots of bushes. Along the drains, bordering the corridors, rises a white smoke, sporadic, like the breath of a subterranean beast. It must be the boilers that surround Sonia’s hideaway. An ambulance approaches, the siren intensifying. I have a sugary coffee sold to me by a man at the taxi rank. It’s a heavy night, with no moon or stars, just clouds. A cave. I take two steps along the pavement. From the darkness I hear whistles that could be directed at me, I can’t be sure; I turn back just in case.