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In Portbou they took the train that went directly to Murcia. Passing through Barcelona, the snow was still there, on the ground, on the branches and over the roofs of houses. But the accumulated layer was not as thick as they had seen in the already forgotten France.
Pedro had planned things well and got with the change of currency that he could do without problems in his bank. Behind, he left the first-class mechanic but now had a future ahead perhaps, working in the old workshop Railway Garage. Laura, however, was thinking, as the train rattled wearily, in the future of her children and in which she had already left behind the most horrible fear that a human being could feel in her body, the war. A certain death who knows if torn apart by the explosion of a bomb or in the worst case, death by starvation with his two children in the lap and crying until letting out the last tear of his eyes.
Passing through Tarragona, the snow had almost disappeared, and in Castellón, there was no longer, and the temperature was more pleasant, so much that even it seemed to disturb the weight of the jacket he was wearing. Inside, Laura was sweating with a live stream.
- "Are we going to live with Grandpa, Mom?" -Suddenly Claudio asked as he sat across from him, his feet moving.
- "Well, we'll look for something to live near them," -Laura said now, with a glint in her eyes.
- "And what is a cave?" -Claudio insisted, his hair disheveled. He had taken off his wool cap. It was wet.
- "You'll see, son," -Laura said, coming up to him and stroking his hair.
- "Nosy," -grumbled Adrienne, who was sitting next to Mom with her feet dangling from the wooden seat.
- "Do they speak French?" -Claudio asked once more.
- "No."
- "You see!" -Adrienne exclaimed. The girl of only four years of age was resolute and knew to speak in the two languages since in the house the French and the Spanish were spoken and practiced daily.
Pedro watching the whole scene began to laugh. His tense icy skin was now relaxed and pink.
Nine hours later they had arrived at the Carmen station in Murcia and the four of them together, headed down the long stairs to get off the train that ended their journey. With his gaze set like a hawk, Pedro looked at the structure's walls of the station to see if he saw the train sign that would take them first to Lorca and then to Aguilas. To one side of the main door sighted a poster that announced, "Next Departure: Lorca, Aguilas". Pedro saw his new destiny closer and closer.
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Gonzalo, Laura's father, was the first, with tears in his eyes, to lie down in the arms of his daughter. He squeezed her against his flaccid chest and wept like a child forever, hiding his face in her long curly hair.
Laura was in turn, a sea of tears and her eyes clouded as she saw the figure of her mother emerging from the cave. Claudio was behind Mama, his mouth in an embarrassed expression and close to his father. Adrienne was clinging to her mother's lap.
- "Are those caves Daddy?" -Claudio asked, pointing at them with his index finger.
- "Yes, son, yes," -his father answered and stroked his hair.
When Laura's father finally felt, he had no more tears to shed, he let his mother squeeze it against her huge breasts. Mary, too, wept for her, and again Claudius was in a trance.
- "Daughter! We thought you were lost! -Cried Maria, looking at her in the deep blue eyes that now shone brighter than even maidenly, Mary thought. - "They are your children?"
Laura with tears in her eyes and cheeks smiled showing her dimples and nodded her head several times. A knot of a tie squeeze tightly in her throat do not let her speak.
- "Your husband?" -Gonzalo pointed a finger deformed by the passage of time.
- "Yes Dad."
- "Hello." -Pedro's voice was broken with emotion as he waved.
- "Come here, man!" -Exclaimed Gonzalo, opening his thick arms. Give me a hug. You took good care of my daughter and gave me two wonderful grandchildren." -He glanced at Adrienne, who was still clinging to her mother's lap and Claudio standing beside his father, his hair ruffled.
Pedro approached his father-in-law.
- "The truth is that we had three entry points," -Pedro explained to his father-in-law. - "Puigderdá, Le Perthrus, or Col Dels Belitres and we chose the last one for being the one that was closer. Although we were almost two hundred meters high, the snow fell with fury forming thick layers ...
- "There was a lot of snow," -Claudio said, moving his hands.
Gonzalo gave a slight smile and brushed his hair.
On the other side of the round table of the only space at the entrance to the cave was Laura, Adrienne in her lap, talking to her mother.
- "And what happened to my three friends?" -Laura asked. Mary's face changed, and her eyes narrowed. - "What is it, Mom?"
There was a silence in which Adrienne looked at them with her sparkling light-blue eyes, waiting for an answer herself, even despite her young age.
Finally, her grandmother's lips moved.
-"Carmen is dead."
- "What?" -Laura's mouth fell open wider, and her eyes almost came out for the way she looked at her now. Her heart sank beneath her chest, and Adrienne noticed it, as she moved her head restlessly on her breast. - "Has it been the damn civil war?"
- "Worst!" -The word came out of her mother's mouth in a tired, slow way, almost like a doorbell.
- "Tell me!"
- "Carmen committed suicide by throwing herself against the rocks on top of this mountain."
Laura's hand went straight to his expressionless mouth.
- "It was a boy's fault." He left her pregnant, and her father threw her out of the house. The guy did not want to go with her. Carmen was very much in love with him, and when she saw him with another girl, she decided it was time to get out of her way."
- "Oh, my God!"
- "Your other two friends left the village." -She paused, and Laura noticed that she already had grey hairs and continued. - "As far as I know, by her mother, Raquel lives in Valencia and Sara went to Barcelona, but since the civil war broke out, nothing was heard of her."
Laura was becoming more and more alarmed.
- "We'd better go on to another topic," -Maria said quietly.
- "Yes, better," -Laura admitted, and Adrienne began to whine.
In the following years, Laura had settled in one of the small houses of Barrio Colon, in front of the beach Las Delicias, that was right on the beach El Hornillo and Los Cocedores. But they were barely separated by the width of these new two-story, small-sized houses. Laura liked the place and the new home, living near her parents, who resisted leaving the cave now. It was not the last house he had in Paris or the first one he rented in Toulouse, but it was cozy and somewhere in between.
Pedro visited his parents in the center of the village, next to the Plaza de Los Cortijos, in the houses that they had built under the skirt of the Castle of San Juan de las Águilas, and there, he attended the burial of one of them two years later. It was his father, who died suddenly of a heart attack. The death was a blow to the family, but Pedro had the support of Laura and her children who were already much older in 1963. It had been twenty-three years since they returned to Spain and their children had already married at this point in life. Claudio was thirty-one years old and had two precious children. Adrienne was already twenty-seven and a daughter of scandal. So, Laura at the age of forty-nine was already a grandmother of three grandchildren, Jean and Ambre by Claudio and his wife; Eva and Ana by Adrienne with her husband, Jose. All were well placed in life, at work and home. Laura's parents were still alive in 1963, and she fulfilled all her expectations of her own life. A life that traced many years ago on paper with the help of a charcoal pencil. Laura thought it was time to say goodbye when she was at the top. It was time to end his life, just before everything around her died, before the first wrinkles appear, the death of her loved ones, or the illness. She decided that she was going to throw herself against the rocks from the three steps of the "Moro", from the top of the San Juan de las Aguilas Castle; and no, she was not depressed, but quite the opposite. It was plentiful, but the time had come. Her plan was over. And life gave her a new surprise.
In 1963, the world and life itself told her sternly that everything had changed, suddenly, without her forcing it. Her path was no longer followed her plan drawn up at her sixteen years old, within a green bottle, God knew where it was now. Her desires written with a coal pencil, wandering by no one knows where floating or sunk at the bottom of the sea would realize what would happen to them from now on. But destiny was marked by two facts that significantly impacted her life from two points in her life, inflexible. The first would be bad news; the second was about to see ...
Laura complained of severe pain in her lower belly, but she blamed it on her menstruation or was already beginning to retreat in a hurry, but no, there was blood down there when she urinated and blood in her panties. At first, there were two drops of blood, but then it was a constant and rhythmic loss, during the whole month. She also had trouble urinating and had lost some weight. Her celestial eyes had lost their shine, and the color of her pink face had transcended to an absolute pallor.
One day Pedro was alarmed.
- "You have to go to the doctor," -he said desperately.
- "No." -Laura was a strong woman, and she did not want to go to the physician. In her mind was to put an end to all this as she saw to come a time of suffering for him and hers. Something she did not want to happen at all.
- "We'll go to the doctor whether you like it or not!" -Pedro's altered voice alarmed his grandchildren who were prowling around the pavilion. They were playing marbles, and suddenly the game stopped. Their ears and eyes were on the small window upstairs. They had never heard one voice louder than another in their grandfather.
Laura shook her head and said that it was something temporary, it was women's things. And time passed. The days became unbearable, and now the blood was accompanied by a mucous that gave off a bad smell. Laura stopped having sexual relations with her husband and was distressed in the fetal position every night. And she thought that maybe she would be dying and that if that were so, his plan had ended, differently, but it had come to an end. Except for the fear that showed on her face if this was only the beginning of a stage of pain and suffering for everyone around her. Then she decided to go to the doctor.
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- "Because of the symptoms you have," -said Abelardo, her family doctor, - "I cannot treat you from here since it could be a much more severe illness that should be treated in Lorca or perhaps in Murcia by a specialist.
Pedro changed his countenance. He was serious, and his brown eyes turned black.
- "All right, Doctor," -Laura said quietly. I'll go to the specialist.
Abelardo began writing on a small rectangular paper. It was a flyer for an ambulance that would take her from Aguilas to Murcia urgently.
- "Needless. "We have a car," -Laura said, moving her right hand on the table.
- "But it is necessary that you go by ambulance, so they will attend you without waiting and delays ..."
- "Yes. It's better,” -Pedro cut him off in a broken voice.
Laura gazed at him with a dull look.
Abelardo picked up the phone and started talking. Five minutes later the ambulance was at the door of the medical consultation in the South.
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In the Murcia Hospital, San Juan de Dios, she was diagnosed with a "disorder" in the uterus. The specialist who looked at her with strange restlessness could not believe his own diagnostic. But later she would release a boring speech about the matter.
The gynecologist brought in his fingers in her vagina and felt the walls of the vagina. There was nothing there. No bulge, but his glove came out of that hole stained with fresh blood and something that looked like mucus. So, he decided to do an x-ray. There were strange white patches inside the uterus, at the top, just where the bifurcations of the fallopian tubes begin to emerge.
The X-ray determined that she was not pregnant, which corroborated with a blood test. The nurse at his side had a sour face and did not smile precisely, while Laura complained of a pain in her lower belly.
- "I think it's a serious illness," -the specialist whispered to the nurse, but Laura's sharp ears caught the sound of his words.
- "Do not worry, I imagined it," -Laura said quite naturally. The Gynecologist opened his mouth before the patient's strength, which lay open with his legs spread over a kind of contraption very narrow.
There was a moment of silence, and a day without food. At last, the Gynecologist spoke.
- "We have to go in for a few days to see how her illness evolves and see what state it is in." -The Gynecologist was taking off his gloves. He looked at them sideways and threw them into a trash can next to his chair.
- "How much of my life do I have left?" -Laura asked, keeping her face serious and calming at the same time.
- "We cannot know," -said the specialist who was removing the mask from his mouth at the time.
- "We are facing a somewhat complex disease ..."
- "It is mortal?" -Laura cut him off.
- "Unfortunately, it does not end well," -the man said rising from the chair from where all he could see was the sweaty face of Laura and her pussy open and bleeding. You can get off the "donkey"; the nurse will help you."
- "Donkey?"
- "That's what I call this contraption where you, lady, is prostrate now ..."
- "Laura."
- "Laura! Forgive me for my poor memory."
- "That´s ok."
- "And your husband?" -The Gynecologist was sitting in his chair behind the table.
- "He's outside." -She paused and added, - "waiting."
- "Can you tell him to come in?"
- "Of course." -Laura had lowered her legs from the stands and was barefoot on the rubber floor.
- "Do not worry," -the man said. - "Tell me the name of your husband and the nurse will pick him up. He cannot be far away." -A cynical laugh escaped his lips.
- "Pedro. His name is Pedro. I'm sure he'll be in the waiting room."
The nurse walked to the green door, opened it and closed it after leaving the office. The blow sounded dry like a twig when it broke in mid-summer.
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- "Mister Pedro?" The nurse asked aloud in the waiting room that was full of people.
A hand rose in the middle of the restlessness and the constant murmur.
- "I! I'm here!"
The nurse lifted her head to look at that outstretched arm and then at the tall, thin man.
- "Please come to the office, please," the nurse said, waving her arm.
Pedro, who was standing, began to roll on the smooth ground as if he were skating. The murmur had stopped in a sordid silence and then returned with more force.
- "A little silence, please!" -Exclaimed the nurse with dark eyes and copious eyebrows. The murmur dropped, but it was still there.
Pedro was next to the nurse with an unpleasant face.
- "Are you Pedro?" -He nodded like a mischievous child.
- "Please go to the office, please."
And Pedro went to the green door that the nurse pointed out. She followed him silently in her white dress behind him.
The nurse closed the door once Pedro took a seat in a metal chair, painted green. It was uncomfortable, but what he needed at that moment was to know, how his wife was, that he was sitting right next to her.
- "What I'm going to have to tell you is difficult," -the Gynecologist explained behind the metal table. Behind his head, a panel of black cards filled with white stains gleamed at his head. It was Laura's x-rays.
Pedro shrugged, and his dark complexion turned pale as a dead man.
- "Is it bad?" -Asked Pedro, leaning forward in a strange curved posture on the table.
The Gynecologist stared at him and said.
- "His wife has a kind of rare cancer." -He paused to change his hand from the pen he was turning into his fingers and continued. - "Uterine sarcoma is a very rare type of cancer that develops in the muscles of the uterus or in the tissues that support the uterus, that is, the smooth muscles of the uterus walls. Uterine sarcoma is different from endometrial cancer, the most detected and the most common cancer, which is a disease in which cancer cells begin to grow over the uterus covering."
Pedro turned purplish, and his eyes widened horribly. Although, he did not understand that language if he perceived the reach of the seriousness. Laura, however, was quiet beside him or at least she seemed to be.
- "Uterine sarcomas," -continued the Gynecologist, - "represent less than 1% of the gynecological malignancies and 5% of all malignant uterine formations. Definitely, it is cancer with very high chances of rapid death."
Laura's eyes searched for Pedro's. These were whitish, and the brown color of his eyes had momentarily disappeared.
The pen changed hands. The nurse sat at the side of the table writing on some papers.
- "This type of cancer is not usual to appear before menopause. Do you have children?"
- "Yes," -said Laura.
- "Well, it's even weirder, since placentas protect the uterus from this disease, at least by a high percentage." Or put in it of another way, women who have had children usually suffer less of this type of cancer."
Laura shrugged her shoulders with a sad look.
- "Fortunately, we have treatment for this." - The Gynecologist looked for Laura's gaze and added. - "You will have to undergo an invasive operation and a few chemotherapy sessions."
- "What kind of surgery is a doctor?" Laura's voice sounds alarmed.
- "The main treatment for uterine sarcomas is surgery to remove the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries, as well as to take a sample of lymph nodes."
Laura saw how her moment had come, but not the way she had planned. She knew that everybody around her and herself were going to suffer. Just when she would have wanted to end with her life for not to see herself grow old, nor to die her parents or her husband or even some of her child. Just when she wanted to "quit", that was the right word, the movie in its climax moment, life played a hard setback that she would not accept from now on.
The nurse continued to write on the sheets that looked like forms, and the Gynecologist announced that she should stay in the hospital.
And It was like that during the next long six months, where the pain and suffering of the whole family were present in their faces and in their lives, something that Laura would have wanted to avoid at all costs. This lasted from the winter of 1963 until the summer of that same year. A moment after which she returned home, still alive. And then life gave her another surprise.