It takes a moment for the penny to drop. The scene is disconcerting: Simón is on his back, shivering; Mercedes is smoking by the door; another woman is spying from the shadows; Sonia is scaring me; Herbert is pale, back against the wall. Everything is spinning, inside and outside too, the wardrobe, the faces, the bucket, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling which blinds me for an instant whenever I look at it. Blind, stupid, lost. Finally I react and kneel down. I take Simón’s hands, cold and clammy, I say: Simón, Simón. I remove the damp cloth, I kiss his eyes, his forehead, he’s boiling. I pick up the sheet, wrinkled at his feet and I’m about to cover him but Sonia steps forward and shakes her head from above. Best not, she says.
I look at her with annoyance, as if she were guilty of something. I can’t stand the fact that she’s giving me instructions. I can’t stand myself, dirty, worn out, mouth like a swamp. Impossible to disguise the stink of alcohol on me. I’d like to go back in time. Sonia tries to make Simón drink some water. I’m grateful for her good intentions, her care, I regret having given her a dirty look. I gradually find out what happened. Herbert says Simón woke in the middle of the night crying like a baby. Having nightmares. And because he felt so hot, he was concerned and went up to call Sonia. When the two of them returned, Simón was shivering and had vomited on the pillow. Sonia immediately realised he had a high fever and undressed him, changed the drenched sheets and opened the windows to allow the air to flow. Simón vomited again twice, the last time just a thick, white paste. That’s what Sonia tells me, she’s kept a bit on a cloth to show me. She also says she thought about making him a herbal tea to calm the pain, sure that he had an upset stomach, but she preferred not to do anything. Herbert brought a thermometer from their place and they took his temperature. He was as high as forty, they wrapped him in wet towels and brought him down to thirty-eight. They also gave him half a teaspoon of Novalgin. I’m about to ask why they didn’t call me to let me know, but I stop myself in time, I didn’t leave them the number of the mobile I didn’t even have with me. I’d prefer not to know whether they tried to find me. I venture a hypothesis: It could be the heat, sunstroke. Sonia insists: I think it’s a stomach upset, we can make a herbal tea from burro or common rue, it won’t do him any harm, at worst he’ll just throw it up. I look at her in silence, unconvinced. For the time that follows, a long time full of doubts and suppositions, I stay by Simón’s side, without touching him so as not to make him hotter. Dozing, at times he half opens his eyes and looks at me from his feverish sleep, silent, interrogating me: What is happening to me, what is this thing that’s coursing through my body, this new thing I’ve never felt? It’s the first time I’ve seen him really sick; until now he’s only ever had coughs, colds and scrapes, never anything serious.
We need to bring his fever down, says Sonia, then we’ll see, and she passes the damp cloth for me to cover his forehead again. In contact with the cold fabric, Simón shudders, tenses his muscles and my head fills with dark thoughts. The minutes pass, the thermometer shows 39.3, the vomiting starts again. More cloths, more towels, more water, and when there finally seems to be an improvement, Simón starts to shake uncontrollably on the bed, showing the whites of his eyes, demonic. Sonia shouts at me: Put him on his side. And when I don’t react, she pushes me away and does it herself.
The convulsions pass, we calm down a bit, I decide to take him to a hospital. Agitated, upset, Sonia starts pacing the room until I see her bend down in a corner and hear her say as if enlightened: That’s it. She comes over to me and shows me the little ochre ball she’s holding between her index finger and thumb. He must have swallowed a poison bead, she says with the excitement of someone revealing an enigma. Ask him, she orders, as if it has to be translated into another language. I don’t really understand what she’s talking about, I try all the same but Simón is gone, in another reality. I insist a couple of times and finally he nods his head. Yes, he ate one of those little balls which I now see are scattered around the bedroom floor like old, unexploded ammunition. Sonia says we need to find out how many he put in his mouth. She asks Herbert. It certainly wasn’t with me, perhaps it was before I arrived, he says and looks at me. I can’t remember having seen anything either. Sonia suggests I consult a healer, she doesn’t call her a healer, but a woman who knows how to cure this kind of thing. I’d prefer to go to hospital.
First, it occurs to me to drop into Tosca’s, she must be awake by now. We leave Simón in Herbert’s care, giving him instructions not to let the cloth fall off his forehead. As we descend, Sonia tells me about poison beads. They are the fruit of the paradise tree, they come in through the window, she says and concludes: In large quantities they can make you retarded or paralytic. I enter without knocking. Tosca is watching television, Benito is sleeping at her feet, curled up on the floor like a fairy-tale pet. I explain the situation. Die, he won’t die, says Tosca and repeats what Sonia said: We need to find out how many he swallowed, the best thing is to take him to hospital to have his stomach pumped. And looking me in the eye: Inject me, girl, hurry, then go, you never know what might happen.
Upstairs again, we wrap him up well and I carry him to the street. Mercedes is waiting for us at the entrance to the building at the wheel of his fake taxi. Sonia comes with us too, Herbert stays on the pavement, he says goodbye with his arm raised and his lips drooping, annoyed at not being allowed to come along. The car journey is torture, Simón keeps vomiting that phlegmy cream and I’m not always successful in getting his head out of the window. He dirties his clothes, my legs, the upholstery too. Mercedes complains in a low voice. He curses in his own language, that sharp Guaraní he uses at times, and accelerates, ignoring the traffic lights.
Sonia decides for me, we’re going to the hospital where she works. The doctors are good, she says, and she silences me when I say I think it would be better to go to the children’s hospital. It’s not very far, ten, fifteen minutes, it feels like a century. We go through a tunnel underneath the railway lines and come out on a very wide road between a piece of wasteland with weed-covered ruins and a supermarket as big as an airport. Further away, there’s a group of high-rises with balconies overlooking the void. I look so that I don’t have to think.
I get out of the car carrying Simón in my arms as if he’s war-wounded. The hospital signs calm me: A&E, X-rays, Haemotherapy. There’s no way we can be seen quickly, in spite of Sonia’s influence. None of her acquaintances are around. They’re all new doctors, she complains. At the paediatric emergency window they ask me for Simón’s symptoms. What’s he got, that’s what they say. High fever, we can’t bring it down with anything. They register us, no one shows their face but they did warn me: You’ll have to wait a while. We have an emergency, a boy who’s really serious.
Three quarters of an hour until we are called by a tiny female doctor. I tell her: vomiting, fever, convulsions. Any history? I don’t know whether to tell her about the poison beads. She strips him, takes his temperature, listens to his heart, checks his eyes, his ears, listens to his breathing and finally, as I’m dressing him again, she puts a syringe full of a pink liquid in his mouth. Seven point five, remember in case they ask you. I pluck up courage: My neighbour says it could be these, I say and show her a couple of the little balls I brought in my pocket. They call them poison beads, I murmur, I think he’s eaten some. The doctor observes them without touching. Ok, she says, disregarding my contribution. First we’ll do some tests and then we’ll see. In any case, we’ll check with toxicology later.
We stay in the small consulting room, Simón lying on the stretcher, me, standing, unable to move much because of the passing nurses, doctors, more patients. A girl with a cut on her forehead, another with a sharp pain in her groin that won’t allow her to stand up straight and a blond boy with lots of teeth and a dislocated elbow. Since there’s no orthopaedic specialist in paediatrics they’re going to be waiting a good while until the adult consultant, with a twisting and flexing manoeuvre, slips the bone, after two refusals, back into place. Magic.
When I’m beginning to suspect the doctor has forgotten about us, she comes up from behind with an order for a blood test for Simón. We take a number in the clinic, it’s at forty-five and we are seventy-three. I entertain myself with the mobile, the calendar, the games, the alarms. A girl with Yessica’s hair passes and I remember the vipers, I clearly won’t be able to go to work. I send a message to Iris so she can let them know, Simón sick, I write, and her reply: Serious? I don’t answer. We get a friendly male nurse with a thin moustache and swollen bags under his eyes. He uses a rubber dinosaur to try to distract Simón, who is still half zombie, incapable of anything. It isn’t easy to find a good vein, the man sweats, switches arms, from left to right, he scratches around with the needle, Simón cries and kicks his legs as much as his strength will allow him. Then he surrenders. I wonder whether it’s really necessary to poke about quite so much, if there isn’t something brutal about this way of doing it. Looking around, the tubes, the drips, I find it hard to believe that there isn’t a more modern method. The man puffs, he grabs his head, it seems like he’s about to give up and just then, that red, dark, thick liquid Simón has inside him which I’ve never seen before begins to run along the tube. The nurse covers the puncture with lint and warns me: Don’t be scared if he gets a bruise, it’s normal. With a filled test tube and a note saying Urgent, he sends us to the central laboratory.
Three flights of stairs, I knock several times at a flaking door until a side window is opened. A horrible man with the worst breath ever sticks his head out. Do I look deaf? I apologise and hand him the blood. The machine isn’t working, I can’t promise you anything, he says and shuts the window in my face. We wait on a bench with our feet dangling. I don’t know how long. Simón curls up using me as a backrest, I read and reread a poster about the prevention of sudden death syndrome.
With the results of the analysis in my hand, we return to A&E. On the way I see the doctor who attended us, minus her apron, in sandals and miniskirt. She is in a hurry, tapping at her mobile, I intercept her as she’s getting into her car. She can’t place me immediately, I help her: The boy with the poison beads, I say. Ah, yes, sorry, I didn’t tell you, the guys from toxicology, so she calls them, are at a conference, they’ll be back tomorrow, so you’ll have to wait. I have the test results, I say and show her. The white cell count is a bit high, we’ll need to keep an eye on that, she says. Take it to the head of A&E. Meanwhile we’ll keep him under observation. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine, it might just be a bad virus. Or a bit of stress, but best to be sure. I can’t work out whether the stress thing is serious or a joke.
Simón gets hot again. Another syringe of paracetamol and he falls asleep by himself, without pats or caresses. He takes a nap on a stretcher and I wait in an adjoining room with very high ceilings. I could also willingly fall asleep. A woman speaks to me from behind, I hear her voice before I see her face: What did they find? Nothing, he’s got food poisoning, I say with determination and the woman looks at me doubtfully. If they’re keeping him in it must be for something, they don’t have beds to spare here. I’m about to say that he hasn’t been admitted yet, that he’s just under observation, but I stay quiet. Mirta introduces herself and indicates a door with a bronze plaque that says Mothers’ Room. In there you’ve got a kitchen, TV, fridge, there aren’t many of us today, there will certainly be room for you to stay. There are some armchairs, failing that, the air beds. She takes me by the arm, she wants me to see. I don’t go in, I glance in from the door: a strong smell of fried food. The vapour leaves a trail like a jet plane. I locate the origin: a spitting pan on a hob just below the wall-mounted television. Around an oval table two women are drinking maté, engrossed in the news, one of them very old, the grandmother of some child, I think, the other almost still adolescent, a sister or premature mother. Mirta insists on showing me the facilities: There are hot showers from seven to ten, the laundry is at the back. There, she says, pointing out two trunks, is where the blankets are kept. In a low voice: Keep an eye on your things, there’s always a thief lurking about. The clothes horse was swiped yesterday. Back in the corridor, without my asking, Mirta tells me she came in for a consultation about some spots that appeared on her son’s face and he’s been here three months. His cheeks went red, his lips swelled and his temperature rose every night. First they told me it was a virus, then that it was an allergy, they did some X-rays and an electrocardiogram and they discovered a heart murmur. In the end they came up with Kawasaki syndrome. Do you know what that is, she asks. I shake my head but she doesn’t tell me, she moves her hand like a windscreen wiper giving me to understand that it makes no sense for her to explain. They’ve already given him two bypasses, chronic cardiac insufficiency. It looks like we’re heading for a transplant, she says in a strange tone, almost proud, as if the gravity of the situation gives her a certain status. It’s not easy to find a donor of his age.
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.
A security guard blocks my way at the entrance to the hospital, where am I going, My son, I say and he moves aside unwillingly, shaking his head, as if I were mocking the law. A small troop of gloved women is moving along the corridors in orange uniforms, Sonia’s competition. They clean the floors, sweep the ramps and stairs, carry enormous bags. The smell of disinfectant makes me dizzy. I carry on, not quite sure where I’m going, and when I’m opposite the chapel, this time I push the door with the stained glass. A large lady is praying or sleeping, her arms resting on the plateau of the start of her stomach, her hands covering her face. It’s a modest but pleasant chapel which, you can tell, was built without many resources. The finishes are irregular, the benches are different styles, as are the lamps, a mishmash. The altar is a plank with trestles and the cross couldn’t be more restrained. Two crossed pieces of wood, no varnish or Christ figure. A young couple enters holding hands, they sit down in the first row. They talk loudly, they converse as though they were in any other place, not noisily, just normally, a long way from prayer.
A mobile phone rings and I take a while to accept that it’s mine. The lady I thought was asleep turns her head, indignant. I squeeze the device firmly, reprimanding it, to muffle the sound, like someone gripping the hand of a child who won’t shut up. I stand up and reach the exit quickly. In that couple of seconds a chilling shiver runs through me, I think about this morning when we were admitted to hospital, the moment when the woman behind the barred window noted my details, my name, my telephone number. I think about Simón, I think the worst. Once I’m outside, I look at the screen, a message from Eloísa: IM FUCKED YOU?
Tiredness drives me into the mothers’ room. I’m scared to fall asleep, I feel as though if I close my eyes I won’t open them again. The place is crammed, there are bodies all over the place, many have already gone to bed, others are playing cards, the rest are watching television, a quiz show. The woman who spoke to me in the afternoon, the transplant one, gestures to me with her hands, her eyebrows, her lips, as if saying: I’m sorry. I find out that some children were diverted here from a provincial hospital after a bus overturned. Grab one and lie down there, she says pointing out the pile of air mattresses. She also insists I take a blanket, and I do, even though it seems absurd in this heat. In the corridor, following the example of others who have been left outside, I recognise the couple I saw in the church. I settle down next to an old lift under a large window looking over the top of a tree I can’t identify. Large leaves, dark green, drooping branches, Canetti would be able to tell me. I lie down on the bare mattress and take a while to get used to the rancid smell of the rubber. And yes, the woman was right, I feel cold, the humidity, the fear, those very high ceilings. I take off my sandals and undo my trousers, allowing the red stripe marking my waist to breathe. The silence is terrible. The clacks, the hurried steps, the screeching wheels, the crash of chains when the lift starts moving. I’m so worn out and yet my body and my mind seem to have got used to resisting, incapable of ceding even a minute of vigilance. I curl up against the wall but sleep doesn’t come. I haven’t slept since the morning of the previous day. I shiver, boiling inside. Could Simón have infected me with whatever he has? I scratch my skin, dig my nails in deeper, I’m angry with myself.
I close my eyes and see Eloísa spitting ping-pong balls out of her cunt. One after another, like a warped factory. At the edge of breathlessness, she tells me there’s still one in there. Jammed. I insert my hand, the whole arm, and she twists, killing herself with laughter. Her body becomes a glove, oily, soft, very light, for my giant’s hand, a doctor’s glove, a magician’s.
In the middle of the night I wake up perplexed, trembling. Dying of thirst.