Fever Dream: A Novel(19)

At the clinic they tell you everything is fine, and half an hour later you are all on the way home again.

But why skip over it like that? We were following this story step by step. You’re jumping ahead.

None of this is important, and we’re almost out of time.

I need to see it all again.

The important thing already happened. What follows are only consequences.

Why does the story keep going, then?

Because you still haven’t realized. You still need to understand.

I want to see what happens at the clinic.

Don’t drop your head like that, it makes it harder to breathe.

I want to see what’s happening now.

I’m going to bring you a chair.

No, we have to go back. We’re still in the car on the way to the emergency room. It’s very hot and the sounds gradually grow more muffled. I almost can’t hear the motor, and I’m surprised at how smoothly and silently the car moves over the gravel. A wave of nausea forces me to lean forward a moment, but it passes. My clothes are stuck to my body with sweat, and the sun’s sharp reflection on the hood of the car makes me squint my eyes. Carla isn’t in the driver’s seat anymore. When I don’t see her I feel disconcerted, frightened. She opens my door and her hands take hold of me, pull me out. The car doors close without making a sound, as if it weren’t really happening, and still I see everything up close. I wonder if Nina is following us, but I can’t turn to check or ask the question out loud. I see my feet walking and I wonder if I am the one moving them. We walk down this very hallway, the one behind me, outside the classroom.

Lean your head here.

Nina says something about the drawings, and hearing her voice calms me. She’s still with us. The nape of Carla’s neck moves a few steps ahead of me. I can stand up on my own, I tell myself, and the image of my hands against the wall, on the drawings, brings the intense burning back to my skin. Carla’s hair is pulled back in a bun and the edge of the neck of her white shirt is stained a light green. It’s from the grass, right? Another woman’s voice tells us to come in and there she is, I feel Nina’s hand in mine. I hold on tight and now she is the one who leads me. It’s such a small hand, but I trust her. I tell myself that she will instinctively know what to do. I enter a small room and sit down on the cot. Nina asks what we’re doing here, and I realize she has been asking what’s going on the whole way here. What I need is to hug her again, but I can’t even answer her. It’s hard for me to say what I need to say. The woman, who is a nurse, checks my blood pressure, takes my temperature, looks at my throat and my pupils. She asks if my head hurts and I think yes, a lot, but Carla is the one who says it aloud.

“I have a terrible headache,” I confirm, and the three of them sit there looking at me.

It’s a shooting, intense pain that goes from the nape of my neck to my temples. I feel it now that it’s been said out loud, and I can’t feel anything else.

How many hours have passed?

Since when?

Since what happened in front of Sotomayor’s office.

It’s been about two hours since we left the office. Where were you, David?

I was here, waiting for you.

You were in the doctor’s office?

How do you feel now?

Better, I feel better. It’s such a relief to be somewhere without so much light.

But we still have a few hours to go, we need to move forward. Is there something important about this moment?

When I say I have a headache, Nina says she does too. And when I say I’m dizzy, Nina says she is too. The nurse leaves us alone for a moment, and your mother says to herself that she did the right thing in bringing us here. If your mother were five years older, she could be both of our mothers. Nina and I could have the same mother. A beautiful but tired mother who sits down now, and sighs.

“Carla, where is David?” I ask her.

But she isn’t startled, she doesn’t even look at me, and it’s difficult to know if I’m really saying what I think I am, or if the questions are only in my head, mute.

Your mother takes her hair down from the bun and uses her hands like two big brushes, her slender fingers open and spread.

“Why aren’t you with him, Carla?”

She shakes out her hair in a distracted movement. I’m sitting on the cot and Nina is sitting next to me. I don’t know when she climbed up but she seems to have been here for a while. My hands are at either side of my legs, holding on to the edge of the cot because at times I think I might fall off. Nina is in the same position, but she’s resting one of her hands on mine. She looks silently at the floor. I wonder if she is disoriented too. The nurse comes back humming a song, and still humming intermittently she opens some drawers and talks with Carla, who is putting her hair back up in its bun. The nurse wants to know where we are from, and when Carla tells her we’re not from the town, that we’re here on vacation, the nurse stops humming and stares at us, as if with this information she had to start the examination all over again. She’s wearing a necklace with three gold figures: two girls and a boy, the three of them close together, almost on top of each other, squeezed between her enormous breasts.

One of that woman’s children comes to this waiting room every day.

“No need to worry,” she says. She opens up the same drawers again and takes out a blister pack of pills. “You’ve just had a little too much sun. The important thing is to rest: go home, take it easy, and don’t be scared.”