A hospital porter held out his hand to Sara and pulled her out of the car. She stood a little to one side, took some deep breaths and removed the surgical gloves. By the time she turned round, the car had disappeared and Maribel was on the trolley, with a drip in one arm and a bag of blood serum above her head, and another drip, as yet unconnected, in her other arm. Juan was beside her with two or three other people. Then they took her inside.The wheels of the trolley screeched as they rolled across the cement surface and Sara couldn’t remember ever having heard a more welcome sound. She was tired and very dirty, with sweaty hair and bloodstained clothes, and two trails of dried blood ran up her arms. But she felt happy—more than that, as euphoric as a general who has just won a battle he thought he had lost. After standing there a few minutes without knowing what to do, Sara also went inside. She saw the clock in the entrance hall and couldn’t believe her eyes. She glanced at her own watch and didn’t believe that either. She asked a porter what time it was and he replied that it was almost ten past six. She sat on a bench and, not long afterwards, a nurse—small and friendly looking—came towards her.
“Hello, you must be Sara,” she said, without waiting for an answer.“My name’s Pilar, I work in Orthopedics with Dr. Olmedo. Would you like to come with me? I can lend you some clean clothes—only hospital scrubs, but at least they’ll be clean.You can even have a shower if you want to.You look as if you need it.”
The hot water and soap cleaned her on the outside but also washed away her feeling of euphoria, which hadn’t survived a quick review of the situation.
“How long will it take?” she asked the nurse.
The nurse was at a desk, filling out forms, and she smiled when she saw Sara dressed in scrubs, her wet hair dripping down her back. She didn’t answer immediately.
“Depends what they find. I think it’ll be at least two hours, but it might be three.”
“Was the liver damaged?”
“Yes, it was quite a gash.”
“Where’s Juan? In there?” The nurse nodded. “Is he operating on her?”
“Oh no!”The nurse smiled as if this were a ridiculous idea, so Sara realized it must be.“He’s a good doctor, but this isn’t his field.There are two surgeons working on her, and they’re both very good. And she has the best anesthetist in the hospital. Dr. Barroso’s taken care of everything. She’s lucky because sometimes, however much we try . . .Anyway, all the doctors here are good, but don’t worry, she has the best. She’s in very good hands. By the way, Dr. Olmedo said if you want to go home you can take his car. I have the keys here. But if you’d like to wait, there’s a room over there. It’ll be less worrying.”
“Can I make a phone call?”
“Of course. Just dial zero.”
Sara spoke to Tamara first, then to Andrés, telling them both the same story—Maribel had been mugged, she’d been wounded by a knife, they had no idea who could have done it, she was in surgery, but in absolutely no danger. Sara would wait for Juan to come out of the operating theatre and tell her how it had all gone, and then she’d call them again. She’d get back there as soon as possible, but they mustn’t worry, they must take care of Alfonso and keep themselves occupied. Tamara was calm for most of the conversation but then, at the end, she burst into hysterical sobs. Andrés, on the other hand, didn’t make a sound.
“Andrés, are you still there?” Sara had exhausted her supply of half-truths and now felt increasingly anxious.“Andrés, say something, please. If you don’t answer, I’m heading back there right now. Do you want me to do that? Do you want me to be there with you? I can ask them to tell Juan to phone us at home, and I’ll be there in no time.”
“No,” Andrés said at last.“Stay there. I’ll pass you back to Tam.”
But it was Jesús, the security guard, who came on the line. His shift had ended but he was happy to stay with the children for as long as he was needed. Sara asked him to keep an eye on Andrés, and gave him the number of the hospital and the extension she was calling from.After she hung up, she remained very still, feeling increasingly anxious, convinced she’d got it wrong and managed the conversation badly. By the time she saw Juan again at around nine, Tamara had already rung twice and she hadn’t known what to say to her.
“It all went very well,” Juan said. He looked exhausted, but then he smiled and the frown, the tension around his mouth, disappeared.“She’s in Recovery now.As long as nothing goes wrong during post-op, fingers crossed,” and he held up his crossed fingers, “she’ll be home within a week. I’m going to stay. I want to be here when she wakes up. Have you spoken to the children?”
“Yes, but I think I put my foot in it.”
She told him quickly about her phone conversation but he didn’t look too concerned. He had spent the last two hours in an operating theatre, after all.
“I think you did the right thing, Sara.You had to tell them something. The problem will be when Andrés finds out it was his father. But it’s not your fault.” He stopped and thought about what he’d just said, as if it had only just occurred to him. “That’s going to be really hard, isn’t it? Poor kid. Anyway, we’ll see. Go home and try to get some rest.Tam knows where I keep the babysitter’s phone number. Get Tamara to call her and she can look after everything. I’m going to call the kids now.” He went to the phone and then suddenly remembered something:“Oh, yes, Sara, make sure Andrés stays at my house tonight. The last thing Maribel said to me before she went into surgery was that she didn’t want to see her mother. And thanks.” He put the phone down, walked back to her and gave her a hug.“For everything.”
He’d just started dialing when, as if he didn’t know what he was doing, who he was calling or why, he hung up and stopped Sara just as she was about to leave.
“One more thing, Sara,” but he didn’t complete his sentence until she had turned to look at him.“This afternoon, the wind . . .”
“It was the west wind,” she said and wondered why he was mentioning it.“I’m sure of it.”
“That’s right, the west wind.” He turned away and dialed, striking the keypad much harder than necessary. Sara was again amazed at the violence hiding inside such a placid man. She heard him mutter under his breath a threat she didn’t understand. “The west wind. We’re going to fucking get him.”
The day Maribel was stabbed, Juan Olmedo hadn’t been due to go to the hospital because he’d just worked a night shift. In accordance with the restriction that the school holidays had imposed on the unconditional freedom the adults had enjoyed during term time, they had had lunch early, all of them together, and then Juan had tried to persuade the children to go to the beach because it was one of their few remaining afternoons before term started.At last, accepting he wasn’t going to convince them, he ended up settling for second best and allowed them to go to the pool.
Alfonso had just fallen asleep on the sofa, and Juan wasn’t prepared to waste any more time. He took off his shoes and tiptoed out of the sitting room, bumping into Maribel in the hall, who was coming out of the kitchen also barefoot, smiling and removing her apron. Maribel had a great range of smiles, and this particular one conveyed desire and an almost wild enthusiasm.The kind that engulfed her face later, as she stifled her moans against the pillow so as not to wake Alfonso, was blissful and self-absorbed, but also expressed the gratitude that she sometimes liked to describe aloud.
“If you knew how much I like it, if you could imagine how good it feels,” she’d said once.“You can’t imagine how grateful I am, really, you can’t imagine.”
Barely an hour later, Maribel was very cold and had lost almost a liter of blood. As he drove to Jerez at suicidal speed, Juan couldn’t get her words out of his head.“You can’t imagine how grateful I am, really, you can’t imagine.”Wrapped in her pleasure was her death, and he felt more responsible for the latter. His head felt as if it were full of ice, about to crack like a glass wall, and Dr. Olmedo struggled to resist the urge to collapse on top of the steering wh
eel. He’d told Sara it was a miracle that Maribel was alive, and this was true. He didn’t know how to define the mercy of a fate that had directed the knife blade straight to the liver without severing a major artery on the way.The blade must have stroked the mesenteric artery without even scratching it.The mesenteric artery. The femoral artery. A hidden curse.When he saw Maribel lying on the pavement, his heart had stopped.“I’m a dangerous man,” he thought,“a dangerous lover.” He’d performed many tasks at once, fast, but his heart, the muscle that pumped blood with the mechanical regularity of a well-oiled machine, had not started up again until he had inserted a finger in the wound and confirmed that merciful fate had decided to allow both of them to live.
“What do you need?” Miguel Barroso hadn’t bothered with greetings or unnecessary questions. “Let’s see: an operating theatre, A-positive blood—well, that’s lucky, at least—a surgeon . . .”
“Or two.”
“Two?”
“Yes. And make sure they’re good ones, both of them.”
“Two good surgeons.” Miguel’s voice, even on the phone, betrayed a surprise that Juan had expected.“And an anesthetist.”
“No,” Juan interrupted again.“Not just any old anesthetist.A great anesthetist. I mean it.”
“Fine, I’ll get you the best, don’t worry.Who is she, Juan?”
“She’s my cleaner.”
Juan Olmedo had heard many nurses—tens, hundreds, thousands of nurses—say the same thing, with the same regulation smile:“They’re all good,” to reassure a mother, a husband, a wife, a son.“They’re all good”—the standard phrase accompanied by a bright smile, while a fragile body on a trolley was wheeled down a corridor and through double doors that closed behind it with the disconcerting smoothness of silk.The relatives remained on this side, tortured by their imagination, abandoning themselves to fate, to their faith in God, science, or progress.“They’re all good.” Maybe it was true, maybe all doctors were good, but some were better than others, and some were good, but not good enough. Juan knew this. He took a deep breath.
“Miguel?”
“Yes?”
“It’s her. And it was her ex-husband.You understand, don’t you?”
Miguel Barroso took a moment to answer, as if he didn’t know what to say.
“Do you want me to send an ambulance?” he asked at last.
“No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll get there quicker by car. If it gets bad, I’ll ring for one myself.”
“OK, I’ll tell them to stand by, just in case. And don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything here.”
Juan had kissed her on the mouth to stop her talking, not knowing what she was about to say, just in case she tried to tell him that she loved him. In a way, she’d already told him, with oblique, reassuringly ambiguous words, and with that surprising instinct that is often mistaken for intelligence in cunning spiders that slowly, steadily weave their webs.
“What are we going to do when the school holidays start?”
They were lying in bed, naked, one lunchtime. It was very hot and they were both sweating.The blinds were down, the ceiling fans were on, but barely making an impression on the stifling air of a prematurely, tropically hot June day.
“We can send the kids to the beach,” he said. He was leaning on one elbow, caressing her with his other hand.“It’s good for them, gives them an appetite.”
But it hadn’t been so easy. Alfonso, at least, was out of the way for a time. In return for a promise from Juan that he wouldn’t have to go back to the daycare center until Tamara’s term started in the autumn, he continued attending the center until the twentieth of July. But Andrés and Tamara seemed to be coming and going all day long. And they had friends. Lots and lots of friends. Andrés would get to the Olmedos’ house around nine, which was the time Maribel was due at Sara’s, and about an hour later he and Tamara would peer around Juan’s bedroom door to say they’d be back at lunchtime. But ten minutes later Tamara would appear at the back door—“Hello, it’s me, I’ve come to get the ball.” Andrés would follow about three minutes later—“Hello, it’s me. Tam, are you getting the ball or what?” Five minutes later their friend Pablo or Fernando or Laura or Alvaro or Teresa or Lucia or Curro or Rocio would ring the bell—“Hello, can Andrés and Tamara come out to play?” And a quarter of an hour later the dance of the fridge door would begin—“Hello, it’s me, I’ve come for a glass of water, have you seen Andrés? I can’t find Tam, is she here?”—and the bell would ring again and a lost child would politely say—“I’ve come for Andrés, I’ve come for Tamara, could I have a glass of water? There’s no one home at my place.” Juan couldn’t understand why their friends had such trouble finding them because they were in and out of the house all day. But he was much more tolerant of the interruptions to his mornings after a night shift than those after lunch, because they ruined the only two hours he had to accommodate the lust he’d been patiently nurturing all week.“Maribel, have you seen my goggles? Mama, can we have a snack, please, we’re going to the beach. Maribel, I don’t like paté, can I have ham instead? I can give this one to Alvarito, he’s always hungry. Mama, I wanted paté, why did you give me ham? Hello, it’s me, I forgot to take the lilo. Hello, is Andrés there? Hello, it’s me, I’ve come to get sun cream for Rocio, she’s forgotten hers and she’s going to get burned. Hello, it’s us, we’ve come back because the wind was blowing really hard and we couldn’t stand all the sand. Switch on the TV, let’s see what’s on. Why don’t we go to the pool? OK, let’s go and find the gang, we can do something with them. Are you coming with me? No, I’ll wait for you here.”
“Why didn’t you open the door to Marina this morning?” Tamara asked, aggrieved, one lunchtime in July. “We’d agreed to meet up, and when she couldn’t find us, she had to go shopping with her mother.”
“Because I was bloody sleeping!” yelled Juan, getting up and lunging at the little girl like an ogre in a fairy story.“Because I’ve been working all bloody night and I was asleep! Because I’m fed up with you not letting me get any sleep!”
Maribel leaned across the table, put a hand on his arm and squeezed it.
“I’m sorry,” said Juan.“I’m sorry. But it’s true.You never let me sleep.”
That afternoon, the children left together right after lunch and didn’t come back till half past six. If they saw Maribel’s bag and shoes in the downstairs cloakroom, neither of them remarked upon it, or asked why she hadn’t left yet.They just took the sandwiches that were ready on the counter in the kitchen and rushed out again. The following morning, Andrés made a sign with a white card and colored pens:“Please don’t ring the bell, Juan is asleep.”A week later, the sign was lost and the bell began to ring incessantly once more. On top of that, Alfonso’s daycare center had closed for the holidays.These were all banal, predictable setbacks.The fact that in the Bay of Cádiz the sky had clouded over at three in the afternoon on the last Thursday in July was unusual, but not extraordinary. But when it turned a dark, dirty grey more reminiscent of a November afternoon, Juan Olmedo took it to be a sign of pure spite on the part of the elements.
“I don’t fucking believe it!” he muttered to no one in particular.
“It’s going to rain!” yelled Tamara.“It’s incredible!”
“I don’t fucking believe it!” said Juan again, and Maribel laughed.
“It’s already raining,” yelled Andrés, getting up from the table and running out into the garden.
Tamara and Alfonso joined him there, and they all started shouting like a pack of happy savages, running about in the rain. Maribel stopped watching for a moment and leaned towards Juan.
“If I were you, I’d go and get some sleep,” she said, smiling. “This doesn’t look good.”
“I know what we can do!” said Andrés, standing in the middle of the garden, his hair,T-shirt and swimsuit all dripping wet. “Let’s go and ask Fernando for his Scalextric! We can connect it to mine and Alvaro’s and set
it up on the porch.What d’you think?”
“Yes!” cried Alfonso, waving his arms about enthusiastically.
“And we can ask Juan for his too!” said Tamara.Then, delighted with her brilliant idea, she ran to the sitting-room window and shouted much more loudly than she needed to: “You’ll lend us your Scalextric, won’t you, Juan?”
“Of course I will,” he said, laughing resignedly. “That’s just what I fancy, playing with the Scalextric all afternoon.”
“Great!” shouted Andrés.
“Go and get some sleep,” insisted Maribel.“I mean it.”
Then Juan, not thinking what he was doing, turned towards her and discreetly brushed her fingers under a napkin.
“Have dinner with me tonight, Maribel.” He whispered it, but he knew very well what he was saying.“I’ll pay.We can go wherever you like.”
He’d thought about it before, many times. He’d even picked up the phone on a couple of occasions, just before leaving work. In those instants, it suddenly seemed so easy, so obvious—Maribel was at his house and in his head, she was ironing his clothes, tidying his wardrobe, making his bed, and she was touching him, caressing him, placing a hand on his face, stroking it with timid, hesitant fingers, as if she could hardly believe he was still there, hadn’t melted away, disappeared like a warm, welcome ghost down the passageways of a pleasure fulfilled. But he was still there, he continued to exist outside the house on days when he went to work, in the routine of his daily commute to Jerez and the smell of disinfectant in silent corridors. He had a phone on his desk and he knew the number by heart, and she’d answer at the other end—it was easy. He’d taken a long time to admit it, but he wished he had more night shifts. While he was wandering about the development at weekends, bumping into Sara on purpose to ask her if she had any plans, suggesting to Tamara at breakfast that she ask Andrés to stay for lunch, listening out for the doorbell and the phone, the process of plotting kept him busy, although sometimes he didn’t even get to see her and went to bed on Sunday nights feeling the same disappointment that used to ruin his evening when he was a kid and Atletico were playing at home and lost.At weekends he had no control over Maribel’s life, no control over where she went and when. But the rest of the time he did, so he began to see her occasionally, always at one, two, or three in the afternoon, and these sporadic, fleeting encounters became more regular as spring progressed.While he spoke to patients, read their case histories, and examined them, he pictured her cleaning, moving about the house, cooking, eating, opening windows and closing them; he could see her, and he could count the pores, glistening with sweat, on her face like a freshly washed apple, and even her ribs when she arched her back like a majestic wild beast. He could hear her voice, her peculiar way of asking him something,“Please.”And over her voice, another one urging him on: “There’s a phone on your desk, you know your home number, call her, she’ll say yes.” He knew she’d say yes, to everything, anything, whatever he liked. He’d thought it over many times.Too many. He’d even picked up the phone on a couple of occasions, as he was about to leave work. But he’d always put it back down again, without dialing.
The Wind From the East Page 48