The policeman brought me back to the gas station, because it seemed to be the only appropriate place to park an ambulance. My end, after all, would come by way of its beginning. Through the gas station, at the foot of Gloria Santa.
And at that moment, the lethargic state of my mind receded to give way to something sharper. Because opposite the ambulance across the gas station parlor I noticed a big, black van, with the United States flag stamped on it. That black van was only a needle tip amid Rio, but a God blessed hopeful one.
I tried to speak but failed. So I only outstretched my arms towards the van, my fingers wavering in the air, as the police officers pushed me into the back of an ambulance.
People in white hunched over me. They wanted to stretch my body out, administer medicines to keep me alive, for I was only an asset while breathing. A syringe needle slid into my skin, a man appeared at the door. He wore a suit, flashing a badge to the police, which after examined allowed him to pass. He came into the ambulance and brought a woman along with him.
That woman was Joanne, my boss. She looked pretty, much brighter, much younger than I could remember.
But before I opened my mouth, the medicines acted and my eyelids shut, bringing on a much welcomed deep sleep.
Chapter 37
All white defined my surroundings when I woke. Soft mattresses and clean bedsheets, fabrics that carried a faint Angel’s Touch of flavor with them, even though the softness of hotel clothes is always greater than reality.
The constant beep coming from the monitor on my side announced what was already obvious: I was lying on a hospital bed. My mind was a blend of crispy nightmare images and blurred recollections of real life.
I could remember with eerie clarity the dreams that assailed my slumber—Rio, corruption, favela, blood—, yet I was unable to recover the events which led me to that hospital bed. What I did remember was taking an Uber ride to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. In the backseat of the car, thumbing through messages on my phone, I prepared myself for a week-long stay in Rio. Then nothing else. Nothing apart from that nightmare where pictures already began to fade away.
I rolled my eyes, trying to set them free from the restraints that made them so heavy to hoist. I sensed the world quivering, the walls bending, the tables and chair bouncing on the floor. My mind was sluggish.
Sounds bounced off surfaces. Noises that seemed to stretch infinitely, ricocheting in an eternal loop against the white walls. The sound of scratching nails, of gnawing rats, of . . . was something beneath my bed?
The beep rhythm improved, heartbeat rising. A light bulb on the ceiling, another sheer white bright, hacked at my sensible eyes. I closed my eyelids, only to filter that pain through thin skin. Then another sound, was it outside? And the figure of that man appeared before me. The plump officer stuck in the trolley door.
Scene of a nightmare. A terrible one. I was already awake, but nightmare images kept returning to haunt my real life. My mind had been functioning in improper ways, probably due to the medicine used to mend and patch the wounds from the accident.
I could tell that I had suffered a car accident on my way to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The shy throbbing in the back of my head, the soreness of my body, emboldened this perspective. A car accident would also explain the losing of my recent memory.
But it would not explain my need of finding Marlon. I had promised myself I would never forgive his cheating on me. But lying on that bed made me miss him. I wanted him before me, a known face, someone I could rely on. Not as a lover, not as a husband, but as a friend whose smile would pulverize bad dreams.
I was also cold. A draft cast from the air conditioner chilled the room, penetrated the cover of my bedsheets, the skin and my flesh, and reached down to my very bones. As though cold came from inside out. My body wanted to tell me something. A message of warning, conveying the idea that I should leave this white room as fast as possible.
Otherwise, they would find me. They would find me here.
I skimmed my eyes over my body and noticed a small red button within reach. Emergency, it said. I clicked it.
A new sound rang, an old telephone ringtone. The gnawing under my bed stopped, but I knew the beast was still beneath it. And now I had sounded the alarm, it would crawl out from its shelter and climb onto my bed, claws going deep into the flesh, screams coming out from my throat. It would feast on me before help arrived.
But the beast was not daunting enough, because when the door got pushed open and the woman came in through it, the beast from beneath went completely silent.
The silence that precedes the bellow.
The woman was a nurse, clad in white, black rimmed glasses over face mask. But the other woman, the one who came in her wake, was in regular clothes.
Joanne.
I gave a faint smile. My face muscles weren’t available for me. Joanne gazed at me in earnest after exchanging looks with the nurse. When the other woman walked out from the room, Joanne came to sit by my side.
I tried to reach out to her, but my arm didn´t obey me. I was in need of warmth. Instead I received the seriousness of Joanne and the rattling of steel in my ears. The sound was an echo of my latest dreams, the fading away recollection of the trolley and its support cables,
