FERMÍN OPENED HIS eyes to an immensity of celestial white. A uniformed angel was bandaging his thigh. Beyond, a corridor full of stretchers disappeared into infinity.
“Is this purgatory?” he asked.
The nurse raised her eyes and looked at him askance. She did not appear to be a day older than eighteen, and Fermín thought that for an angel on the divine payroll, she was much better-looking than the pictures given out at first communions and christenings suggested. The presence of impure thoughts could only mean one of two things: improvement on the physical front or imminent eternal condemnation.
“It goes without saying that I renounce my villainous unbelief and subscribe word for word to both Testaments, the New and the Old, in whatever order Your Angelical Grace esteems best.”
When she noticed that the patient was regaining consciousness and could speak, the nurse made a sign, and a doctor who looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week walked over to the stretcher. Lifting Fermín’s eyelids with his fingers, the doctor examined his eyes.
“Am I dead?” asked Fermín.
“Don’t exaggerate. You’re a little beaten-up, but in general quite alive.”
“So this isn’t purgatory?”
“Wishful thinking. You’re in the Hospital Clínico. In other words, in hell.”
While the doctor was examining his wound, Fermín considered the turn of events and tried to remember how he’d got there.
“How are you feeling?” asked the doctor.
“A bit confused, to tell you the truth. I dreamed that Jesus Christ paid me a visit, and we held a long and profound conversation.”
“Football, mostly.”
“That’s because of the sedatives we gave you.”
Fermín nodded with relief. “That’s what I thought when the Lord confessed himself a Real Madrid fan.”
The doctor smiled briefly and mumbled instructions to the nurse.
“How long have I been here?”
“About eight hours.”
“Where’s the child?”
“Baby Jesus?”
“No. The girl who was with me.”
The nurse and the doctor exchanged glances.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said, “but there was no girl with you. As far as I know, it was a miracle someone found you, on a roof terrace in the Raval quarter, bleeding to death.”
“And they didn’t bring a girl in with me?”
The doctor lowered his eyes. “Alive? No.”
Fermín tried to sit up. The nurse and the doctor held him down on the stretcher.
“I need to get out of here, Doctor. There’s a defenceless child out there who needs my help.”
The doctor gave the nurse a nod, and she quickly took a bottle from the medicine trolley and began preparing an injection. Fermín shook his head, but the doctor held him firmly. “I’m afraid I can’t let you go yet. I’m going to ask you to be a bit patient. We don’t want things to get worse.”
“Don’t worry, I have more lives than a cat.”
“And less shame than a politician, which is why I’m also going to ask you to stop pinching the nurses’ behinds when they change your bandages. Are we clear?”
Fermín felt the prick of the needle in his right shoulder and the cold spreading through his veins.
“Can you ask again, Doctor, please? Her name is Alicia.”
The doctor loosened his grip and let his prey rest on the stretcher. Fermín’s muscles melted into jelly and his pupils dilated, turning the world into a dissolving watercolour. The faraway voice of the doctor was lost in the echo of his descent. He felt he was falling through cotton-wool clouds, fading into the liquid balm with its promise of a chemical paradise, as the whiteness of the corridor fragmented into a powdery light.