A night in Madrid by Marina Zrnic©

There is no wind in Madrid. When there is no wind, there are no changes. Or so they say. 

The summer is utterly suffocated by walls, locks, fines, lack of money and possibilities. It is suffocated by false optimism and empty applause that doesn't mean a damn thing. We all share the same lung problem and in that way, even though life is unfair, it is unfair for all of us and that is what makes it easier. Stupidities of the human race. 

In front of us there is a dark, short man with greasy hair sitting on the edge of his chair. A puzzled look in his eyes makes my heart beat 300 per minute. He is staring at the paper and I feel that he has already read all the infernal text that there was to be read. He is just not sure what to say or how to say it. 

His hands are very small and, even in that state, I am asking myself if he is a bit complexed about it. On his name tag I clearly read: Mariano, dr. It is a very shiny name tag, highly positioned on his doctor's coat and highly positioned in this reddish building, named by some saint, unknown to me and unknown to my husband. It is a quite nice and cozy building as it usually is the case with all private hospitals where you pay 400 € per night and where they smile at you, even if you're about to die. That smile is well paid and they have to smile. 

The magnetic resonance they have done in this reddish, private hospital is not well done even though it is well paid. 

"Nothing can be understood from it," says dr. Mariano.

"So how come it costs 200€, if nothing can be seen from it?" I ask.

There is a pause, a tense pause.

"And how come they call us at 9 o'clock in the evening, to say that we urgently need to speak with someone from the hospital? If nothing can be seen from it," I add.

Another tense pause and then he breaks and decides that this is taking too much time, that this is not his speciality and that we need to go somewhere else. Anywhere but not here. Not because he dislikes us but because he knows that we can't afford to pay not even a night in that hospital. Even if we could, that beautiful, reddish building doesn't have a neurosurgeon working during the night. He also has to have some rest and read a newspaper with a coffee in the morning, before he goes to his work just to say that the magnetic resonance isn't well done and that you need to do another one and ask for forgiveness and then drink another coffee.

"It is not well done, but we see something that we are not sure what that is. It could be really anything. Your husband has headaches and dizziness and in that case he just has to go to medical emergencies. You have to go right now."

My inner world is accelerated, it is highly sensitive and it is pumping all the blood into my face. It is too hot, even though it's 10 o'clock at night. My hands are sweating and I feel that the whole universe has decided to make more pressure over my spirit. I have felt it before, the rage of the space that overwhelms you and suffocates you in such a dramatic way that you wish to laugh. Nevertheless, I have never felt it so hard.

"But where are we to go? We don't know well Madrid, we came just three months ago. We haven't even got our health cards here."

"You just need his ID number. You can cross the main road. In front, you'll find a huge public hospital. There, they will attend him."

"Across the road?"

"Yes, across the road."

I am confused.

"You mean that in a city of 9 million people, we just have to cross the road to get to the public hospital?"

"Yes. It's over there," and he shows us the way with his small hand and short arm.

I know that the universe speaks to me regularly, but this time it has surprised me with all its rage and mercy.

My husband is quiet. I cry and walk next to him. He is so good when there's dark all around us. That is how all the Spanish are. I was always amazed how brave they are and how they accept their destiny, so quietly and patiently. I have spent a whole decade with him, but that braveness has never stopped surprising me.

So, we cross that road. It is so hot and there are emergency vehicles all around the hospital. The hospital is made out of who knows how many building. On the mobile, I see that it spreads around as a maze, streets and streets full of its buildings, departments, halls, yards, vehicles...

He is afraid and he walks next to me, smoking a cigarette and thinking about what is to become of him.

I am trying to concentrate on where to find the entrance. My high heels are clapping and making such a glamourous noise that I wish to take them off and throw them away. I wish to walk barefoot, to match with all that fear and heat and awfulness of this sticky night in Madrid.

We find the way in. We walk in. I have never been in medical emergencies. When I think about it, I have never been near such a place. 

A sliding door opens and suddenly you feel a cold, a chill and a breath of alcohol smell mixed with sweat and something rotten. That rotten smell is the sickness, the pain and the confusion of all the lost people inside that hall. While approaching the emergency counter, I see that one of the empty seats is pissed and the piss is dripping from the seat. The seats are plastic and blue. There are some scattered people also dripping from their seats, some half-dead and some quite alive but in obvious pain.

As we cannot touch anything, the nurse behind the thick glass orders me to show my husband's ID through the glass and somehow, magically, she finds him in a system of 47 million people who live in Spain. She asks me what is the problem and I explain it all. All the epic story and how we tried hard to get to some doctor, but because of the pandemic, at the end we ended up in a private hospital where that wretched magnetic resonance wasn't well done but even so, they say he is an urgent case. 

The nurse glanced at my husband and was very much confused, as all the other people before where. He is a tanned, good looking young man who doesn't look sick at all at the moment. I am not even trying to explain the pain he has gone through with the headaches, dizziness and difficulties with walking. I am not trying to explain that I have known him for more than a decade, even though we look so young. That I know that something is happening with him. 

We sit and we wait. We don't talk, we don't move. He reads the newspaper on the internet, he tries to be the best as all Spanish try. The bravest. I am not. I am not Spanish. I am afraid. But I sit quiet and even more confused. 

Two hours have passed and they call his name. I am his wife, but even so, they just can't let me in. No problems, madam. I'll wait there, thank you so much, here are some results from the private hospital, it seems they are not well done, just sit over there and wait, we'll call the neurosurgeon who is working here all night, don't worry, all is fine, he is in the right place. He enters with a low battery on his mobile. I almost don't have any battery. 

I am alone. I am the loneliest person in the world right now. All the people around me are with their families, with their friends, they cry and they look exhausted. But I am alone, with my glamourous high heels and short skirt. I had no idea I was going to be here tonight with my handsome, tanned husband. We are so young, we have moved all around for so many times, we had had numerous problems before this wretched, awful night.

I sit there and hours pass. It's 2 o'clock in the morning and the hall is almost empty. My feet are frozen because of the air conditioning and my back is stiff as wood. But I dare not go out. What if they call me? What if some doctor comes in search of some answers? 

A man and a woman come inside. He looks like a teddy bear, all chubby and flabby. She is excessively slim and so full of colours! Her hair is dyed in yellow, green and violet. Her clothes are so parrot-like that I can't even memorize all those shades of colours. But her face is pale and drowned just as this awful night is. Her eyes are all red and swollen and she is shuffling and pressing her stomach with one hand, in pain, in exaggerated agony. 

Finally, I go out. I observe the emergency vehicles, all that fuss and disturbance around them, poor souls trying to understand what has happened to their modestly happy lives.

Five hours pass. I try to ask some nurses, I stutter. They don't know, oh, it is such a huge place, who knows where my husband could possibly be!

Around five o'clock one nurse comes in. The waiting hall is empty, it's only me sitting there on those blue, pissed seats. She gives me a paper and says to follow the green line. He'll have to stay in the hospital.

To stay in the hospital.

I run, they stop me, they ask for the paper. It's 5 o'clock in the morning and I have never been so awake in my life. All my senses are aroused, it is like walking barefoot in the woods while wolves rambling around you. 

I run and the green line is ugly, there are people in the wheelchairs sitting all around. I run and I hear him, calling me. I turn around.

My husband is sitting on the chair, so tanned and handsome, with some tubes stuffed in his veins, with a doctor next to him doing some very serious tests. The look in his eyes saying that they'll take him from me that night, that he won't sleep with me, that he doesn't understand what is all the fuss.

"You've done it all well. He has to stay in. This, what you brought from that hospital, is no good. We have to repeat it all and then we'll know more."

But he is not an emergency case, even though a week ago I called an emergency when we were walking in the streets and he started losing his balance, but even so, he can't be an emergency.

And so he stayed in the hospital.

The metro isn't working until 6 o'clock and I need to go home. I am so afraid and frozen and sweaty and tired and sour. I take a taxi and the driver chats with me, but I can't hear him. 

There is no sound around me, just inside me. An echo of an alarm siren that you hear just before the bombs fall, just before your world crumbles into pieces, just before you start eating dust from the ground. A dry, cracked soil where I cannot hear my high heels anymore.

END.