I’d often meet up with Iñaki after he finished work at midnight, but then I’d have to be up again at six in the morning to get to work. My accumulated exhaustion kept growing because I didn’t even get to rest on the weekends; instead I’d go out with Juan to listen to flamenco all night, or when Iñaki could take a weekend off, we’d go up to his village.
My body reached a point where it refused to cooperate. Some days I couldn’t even walk to my English classes; I had to climb into a taxi for a two-minute ride from the metro to the company. One day I even had to sit down at the foot of the stairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because I didn’t know how I was going to make it up the three flights.
I got a shock one afternoon when I left Iñaki’s apartment to go to class. Iñaki lived on the fifth floor of a building with no elevator. We’d just had lunch and I had to go off to my class at the ministry. I was walking down the stairs when I tripped and fell, hitting my eye on the banister and somehow going head over heels to land with the back of my head hitting the wall.
The neighbors came up to see what had happened, and Iñaki came racing down. I lay in a crumpled heap in the stairwell, not wanting to move ever again.
After that I knew I couldn’t keep on living the way I was living, but it was too late. A couple of days later I came down with a fever. It descended over me like a mist, and I was unable to move the whole night. In the morning I had just enough energy to reach for my phone to cancel all my classes, then I lay on my bed, my body aching, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Iñaki called in the afternoon, and when he heard the sound of my voice, he told me he’d be there straightaway. When he saw me, I could see from the expression on his face that I was worse than I’d realized. He sat with me until he had to go back to work. Mariela told him not to worry, they were making me soup and chamomile tea, but he said that as soon as he could escape from the kitchen he’d come back to see how I was.
I lay in bed with fever for three days, maybe four, getting worse and worse. I couldn’t tell the difference between my waking hours and dreams. When Iñaki came to see me on the fourth day, I was so frightened I had tears streaming down my face. He tried to calm me down as I rambled deliriously about home, about my dreams, about the gypsies that came past my window singing. I didn’t want to die, but I was losing the little strength I had left. I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
• • •
When I opened my eyes, I had no idea where I was. Am I in my bedroom in Sydney? What time is it? I wondered. Am I late for work? Then I remembered that I had gone to Seville to dance flamenco. Maybe I was in my room in Inés’s apartment. I closed my eyes again and reopened them, and my memory started to come back. I went to Madrid, I thought. But where was I now? I was moving. There were bright lights flashing by. What was I lying on? I touched leather. I was in the backseat of a car.
I could hear a man’s deep voice speaking in a language I couldn’t understand. Where am I? I propped myself up on one elbow. A man was driving and talking on a mobile phone. I looked at the back of his head. His hair was brown. Who is that? Something told me I knew him. He looked at me in the rearview mirror. It was Iñaki. It all came back to me. I sank back into the seat. I didn’t know where he was taking me, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep.
• • •
I had to walk from the car, but it was so far and I didn’t think I could make it. Iñaki held me up, and I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. The lights shone brightly ahead of me. “Vamos, cariño.” Come on, darling, he said. I just had to make it to the doors and I could sit down again.
The cool air started to bring me around. “Where are we?” I asked. Then I realized I was speaking in English. I searched my brain for the equivalent in Spanish. “Dónde estamos?”
Iñaki gave me a concerned look. “Estamos en el hospital.”
A man in a green smock came toward us pushing a wheelchair. “I can walk,” I said, though it came out as a murmur.
“I know you can walk,” the man said with a smile. “But it’s more fun this way.”
I sat down in the wheelchair and felt all the energy drain out of my body. It took all my strength to keep my head from lolling on my shoulders.
We traveled down the corridor of the hospital and into the elevator. “Where are you from?” the man asked.
“Sydney,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.
“Sydney? I want to go to Sydney. It is a beautiful city. What are you doing in Spain?”
I didn’t want to answer his questions, I just wanted to sleep. But it occurred to me that he was probably trying to keep me conscious, so I made an effort. “Dancing flamenco.”
“Wow, flamenco,” he said.
I wondered what language we were speaking. It felt like English, but I couldn’t be sure. “Where are you from?” I asked him.
“I’m from Romania.” The elevator doors opened and he wheeled me out into another long white corridor.
“Do you speak English?” I asked him.
“Yes, I do. We’re speaking English right now.”
“Really?” I said, my eyelids closing heavily. “That’s nice. I like English. I teach English…” but I wasn’t sure if I was saying that out loud or only in my head.
He wheeled me into a room and helped me climb up onto a big, high bed. My eyelids dropped as if they were weighed down with heavy stones. I felt someone take my arm and a needle prick my skin, and I heard the sound of someone tearing off a strip of tape. But I didn’t really care what they were doing. I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.
• • •
“Give me your arm.”
I opened my eyes. There was a nun in a white habit standing over me. She took my arm and wrapped a strap around it. She told me to make a fist, which required all my strength, then took a needle and pushed it into my vein. I closed my eyes as the syringe filled up with blood.
What’s wrong with me? I wondered. Why are they taking all my blood? What happened? I looked down at my arm and saw that I was hooked up to an IV. Am I dying? But it was simply curiosity. I didn’t really care. So long as I didn’t have to move or talk or open my eyes, it didn’t really matter.
When I finally woke up, I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep. A night, a day, two days. I had lost all concept of time. When I tried to move, pain coursed through my body, so I stayed still, soaking up whatever dosage of painkillers they were pumping through my veins.
I looked around at the room. It was painted white with great high ceilings. On the opposite wall there was a Christ on the cross, and next to him a framed picture of Mary looking weepy. It was a huge room with a sofa and glass sliding doors that led out onto a sunny balcony. This is sooooo much nicer than my apartment, I thought as I looked around.
Then, finally, I started to panic. I was in a fancy private hospital in a foreign country. What on earth must this be costing? I didn’t even have travel insurance. Oh my God, I’m going to be in debt for the rest of my life. Maybe I’ll have to skip the country and start a new life in Morocco.
There was a knock at the door and I was surprised to see Juan poke his head in. His gray hair was combed back and he wore a suit and tie. He looked like a different person, so serious and businesslike, not like my friend from La Soleá.
“Lamparilla!” He walked in, picked up the clipboard at the foot of my bed, and flipped through the pages. “Iñaki called to tell me you’re not well. What’s happened?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, confused.
“What am I doing here? This is my hospital. What are you doing here?” Juan pulled up a chair next to me and placed a box of chocolates on my bedside table. He explained to me that in his life outside of La Soleá, he was the president of one of the biggest medical insurance companies in Spain. So he told me not to worry about a thing, all I needed to do was rest.
There was another knock at the door and Iñaki walked in carrying a bunch of flowers. “Hola, Iñaki,” Juan said, standing up. He took the clipboard and explained my situation to Iñaki in Spanish, then said he was going out to smoke a cigarette. Iñaki sat down next to my bed and took my hand.
“I’m not going to die?” I asked him.
Iñaki smiled and shook his head. “You’re fine,” he said, stroking my hair. “You have a fever, but you’re going to be okay.”
The nurse came in with a tray of food. She put it down on my bedside table. “I’m not hungry,” I said as Iñaki took the lid off a dish of vegetable puree. But he placed the spoon in my hand and watched like an anxious parent as I put a spoonful of puree into my mouth. The taste of food replaced the medicinal taste in my mouth from the drugs, and as I started to eat, I realized that I was hungry after all. I finished off the puree and ate the little fruit salad provided for dessert.
Then I let my head fall back on the pillow. I was tired again, but I didn’t want Iñaki to leave. It was starting to hit me what had happened. I was in a Spanish hospital. How was that possible? Never in all my dreaming and planning about moving to Spain had I once entertained the idea that I would end up in hospital. What a disaster.
A tear ran down my cheek. “No, no, no,” Iñaki said, wiping the tear off with his finger. I didn’t have the energy to try to explain to him why I was crying. I was such a failure. It was all a complete and utter disaster. I hadn’t even been able to look after myself. I was so lucky that I had Juan and Iñaki to look after me; I dreaded to think what could have happened to me if they hadn’t been there.
Iñaki unzipped his backpack and took out my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Spanish. He asked if I wanted him to read to me, and I nodded. I pulled the blankets up around me and settled back into my bed as he began. Before he’d finished the second page I was asleep.
They kept me in the hospital for three days. I decided not to tell my parents where I was. There was nothing they could do except worry, and there was no need for that. Each day Iñaki came straight from the restaurant after lunch, bringing food. He’d gotten approval from my doctor to bring me fresh fish cooked on the grill with olive oil and garlic, and vegetable soups and crunchy bread. He’d set up the meals on my little table, and while I ate the food from his restaurant, he’d eat my hospital meals.
Every night after dinner he would come back to the hospital and read to me until I fell asleep, then he’d make himself up a bed on the couch so that he’d be there if I needed anything during the night.
When the doctor came in with my results, I found out just how bad my condition was. Apart from the savage virus I’d caught, I was suffering from serious anemia and many other deficiencies. The doctor warned me that if I didn’t start looking after myself, I’d soon be back in the hospital. And that meant I had to sleep and eat. And by eating he meant red meat.
“Don’t worry,” Iñaki said. “I’ll make sure of that.”
That afternoon Iñaki took me home, and after I’d had a few days to recover, he brought me to the restaurant for my first steak. I’d broken my veganism on many occasions since leaving Sydney, but each time I was only flirting with meat. But this was the real deal.
He put the plate in front of me, and there was an island of red meat surrounded by caramelized red peppers. I looked down at it and said, “There’s no way I can eat that.”
“Uh!” Iñaki said, raising a finger. “Doctor’s orders.” Doctor’s orders indeed…only a Spanish doctor would prescribe this.
I cut into the thick steak and put a small piece in my mouth.
Okay…I’ve eaten a lot of good things in my life, but nothing could compare to this. It was perfection, and I understood why most people aren’t vegan or vegetarian, because this is what we’re missing out on. I felt my whole body respond to the nourishing protein, so I ate a little more.
It didn’t change my mind about the ethics of eating meat, but I was able to say thank you to the world for feeding me and looking after me at this time when I really needed it. And when Iñaki was satisfied that I’d eaten enough, he whisked away the plate and replaced it with a bowl of rice pudding. “But—” I tried to protest.
“Nell…” he said in a warning voice.
“I know,” I mumbled. “Doctor’s orders.”