Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Valentina Parini isn't so much sitting in as collapsed into the wheelchair Lucas Giraut is now pushing along a hallway of the hospital that's lit by white fluorescent bulbs. With the upper half of her body fallen to one side of the chair and her head hanging on that same side. One of her alarmingly skinny prepubescent arms hangs in such a way that her knuckles drag on the floor. Picking up dust from the floor of the hospital hallway. Her mouth is slightly open and although a string of saliva isn't hanging from the corner, she does have a dried white stain that indicates she has been drooling at some point. Her state is not technically catatonia, according to the explanation given by the intern in charge of her case, but rather a semi-catatonic state induced by the medicines she's being given.

Lucas Giraut arrives at a bend in the hallway of the renowned children's psychiatric center that Valentina is about to be released from, and maneuvers the wheelchair to make a ninety-degree turn. He is wearing a gunmetal gray Lino Rossi suit and nonprescription glasses. Beside him walks a shockingly young and svelte nurse, compared to the idea of psychiatric nurses Giraut had been led to believe from every movie about such places he had ever seen. The group composed of Giraut, the nurse and the semi-catatonic girl in a wheelchair takes a new hallway and stops abruptly when a door opens in their path. As a result of the sudden braking, Valentina leans even farther to one side.

The door finishes opening and out of it comes the intern in charge of Valentina's case. Looking at something that's written on a sheet of paper attached to a plastic clipboard. Giraut looks at the intern through his nonprescription glasses. Glasses that he thinks give him a paternal air. The doctor looks up from the clipboard and looks at Giraut with his head slightly leaned down.

“Mr. Parini?” he asks in a tone that doesn't manage to be probing in the least. A tone that somehow manages to be imperious and perhaps convey certain suspicion. “Would you mind if we spoke in private for a moment? If you want I can ask that they call your wife.”

Giraut readjusts his glasses on his nose with his middle finger the way he's seen people who usually wear glasses do so often. For a moment he considers the advantages of declaring that anything the intern has to say he can say in front of his daughter. As part of his interpretation of the character of Valentina's father. He's aware that the shockingly svelte nurse and the intern are looking at him with openly inquisitive faces. Finally he shrugs his shoulders.

“Is there some problem with the paperwork?” he says. Drumming his fingers on the anatomical handles of the wheelchair. One of Valentina Parini's hands is completely crumpled on the ground. “I assume that all the signatures are where they should be. I've already spoken with our legal counsel. I found his advice to be very rigorous.”

Valentina Parini's face is blank except for a series of sporadic muscle spasms similar to tics that seem to give her features some sort of intermittent activity. In her face that is no longer at all childlike. Valentina's face is the face of someone that has experienced in some indirect, torturous way what is usually known as an initiation into post-pubescent life. Including the addition of an aura of sexuality that's not related to the appearance of secondary sex characteristics. Valentina's alarmingly skinny and inert body isn't sexual in any concrete way, but at some point it has lost that absence of sexuality that children's bodies have. The patch held on with white tape that covers one eye is falling off. So that a couple of strips of white tape are hanging off one side of her face, like two oversized fake eyelashes.

“Technically speaking,” the intern starts to say. Giraut can see that the doctor is avoiding looking him in the eye. “All the paperwork is correct. The transfer to the center in Uruguay seems to be in order. Although I've already mentioned what I think about the unclear communications we've received from that center. The reports from the doctors that will be taking care of her seem perfectly competent. Their opinions are pretty respectable. You have made it quite clear that they have qualified nurses available for her transportation. Valentina's mother was here yesterday to give her consent. And of course, it's natural that you would want to have your daughter in the center you see most fit.” He pauses. That pause that always separates the apparently conclusive reasons in an argument from the counterargument that will disprove that conclusion. “And however…”

Another pause. Time seems to freeze for a few seconds under the white fluorescent lamps of the hospital hallway.

Lucas Giraut opens and closes his hands around the handles of the wheelchair. He changes the position of his feet on the linoleum hospital floor. The hallway walls are partially covered by those signs you find in medical centers with lists of recommendations and proscriptions. A muscle spasm runs across Valentina's face, followed by another that looks like a low-voltage electrical shock.

“And however,” continues the medical intern. With his gaze fixed on the papers in his hand. His doctor's coat isn't long and white. It's more like some sort of man's blouse that's a blue color that makes you think of the blue color of certain medicines. Of surgical sheets covering sliced-open bodies. “And however, I want to insist on how ill timed a transfer is for Valentina's treatment right now. Maybe we could postpone it a few weeks. Maybe a few months. We're talking about the possibility of losing your daughter in many respects. On the other hand…,” he starts to say, and at this point he lifts his gaze for the first time from his clipboard and looks around him. With serious professional consternation. And certain cautiousness. As if he feared that someone might be listening from behind one of the hall doors. “On the other hand, we understand that you haven't had any contact with Valentina for more than six years. Not even a single phone call.”

A new muscle spasm animates Valentina's features. A spasm that this time moves across the right side of her neck and through her shoulder to the arm touching the floor. A dry sound is heard when Valentina's knuckles hit the linoleum floor. Lucas Giraut readjusts his glasses with his middle finger again and runs a hand through his long straight hair. The sheet of paper the doctor has on his clipboard doesn't seem to be a medical document of any kind. It looks like a regular sheet of white paper with notes and doodles, like the kind people make when they're talking on the telephone.

“He's not my father,” says a hoarse and alarmingly subdued version of Valentina Parini's voice. From the wheelchair. From the head fallen to one side of the wheelchair. Which now starts to slowly rise. “This man. He's not my father.”

Everyone looks at Valentina. The silence in the hospital hallway seems to change. Into a silence that's different from the simple absence of sounds. Different from that metallic, reverberating silence typical of hospital hallways. Somehow, Valentina's words seem to have reconfigured the scene. They seem to have endowed it with something intensely surreal. Not as if her words had revealed that the man claiming to be her father isn't her father and that had reconfigured the network of relationships between the four people in the hallway. More like that Valentina's words had just revealed that none of the people in the hallway were who they claimed to be. Like those moments onstage when the characters in a scene turn into actors.

“Valentina?” asks the intern. His brow furrowed.

Valentina sits up with a crunching of bones and stiff joints. The various parts of her body move with a marionette's disjointed motions. Or like those dolls whose different parts are held together with string. Finally she lifts her neck and looks around.