“Can he talk?” he asked.
Gaspar looked at his father, sitting up with his eyes closed and his breathing making that desperate, wet rattle.
“No,” he said.
“I’ll wait for you at the hospital, then.”
And he hung up. Gaspar sat beside his father and took his hand, which was trembling. He couldn’t do anything more than stay there and not let him lie down, because if he did it was worse, he couldn’t breathe at all. His fingertips were already blue. Gaspar concentrated on listening for the ambulance, which always came fast, the wait never reached five minutes. Everything was well organized. Doctor Biedma said they needed a permanent nurse and Gaspar agreed, but he’d heard his father say, very calmly, if you bring in a nurse you know what I’m capable of.
Gaspar knew what the coming days would be like: fifteen minutes at noon and fifteen more in the evening visiting in intensive care; wait for him to be moved into a general room, and then the slow recovery and the bad mood. He would feel like he was living inside a plastic bubble, isolated, able to hear and see everything, but floating, as if he were tiptoeing and his body were lighter and he had to make an effort not to lose his balance. He stroked his father’s back. He felt a pain in his throat as though he were trying swallow a nut whole, and then he heard the ambulance’s motor: it never arrived with the siren blaring.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and he ran downstairs to open the door for the doctor and the medics. They rushed up the stairs while Gaspar waited outside. He didn’t want to hear or see anymore. It would be enough to go with his dad in the ambulance, the cables, the machines, the explanations from doctors who treated him like he was stupid, the dash inside, the uncomfortable hospital chairs.
They arrived very fast because it was nighttime and the hospital was nearby. Gaspar rode up front with the driver; they wouldn’t let him ride with his dad, and he didn’t argue. He jumped out as soon as they pulled up, but the stretcher was carried in at a run and the doors closed in his face; he had to push them open to get in, and then he found himself alone. He didn’t know which corridor his father had gone down or if they’d taken him in the elevator, and he unconsciously brought his hands to his eyes; the fluorescent light hurt, the flowerpots with their plastic flowers bothered him, the laminate floor, the smell of disinfectant, the people with exhausted expressions on that hot early morning. No one came near him until he heard Esteban’s soothing voice very close:
“Gaspar, I’m here. We have to wait on the third floor.
They rode the elevator up in silence. Esteban’s hair was tousled and his shirt wrinkled. They reached the small waiting room for intensive care and Gaspar watched the green-clad nurses go in and out for hours, until finally Dr. Biedma appeared, with her short hair and white uniform. She seemed calm, and before looking at Gaspar, she nodded a “yes” to Esteban. Gaspar spoke before she did.
“Can I see him now?”
“Not now. Tomorrow. He’s sedated, resting. Gaspar, your dad had an acute pulmonary edema. Do you know what that is or should I explain?”
“I know what it is, he had one before and you explained. I don’t forget things.”
And then she turned to Esteban and told him that Juan was in a serious condition, that luckily—Gaspar clung to that “luckily”—it was caused by an arrhythmia, that he had decompensated heart failure, and that they were going to try some new drugs. Then, with a familiarity that surprised Gaspar—they knew each other that well?—she rested a hand on Esteban’s shoulder and said: You two don’t need to stay here, but go somewhere with a phone. Esteban replied that they would be at Juan’s house. Before Dr. Biedma went back into the treatment room, she told Gaspar: You did very well, dear. You were calm and, especially, very fast.
“You just said it was serious.”
“Your dad’s condition is very serious, Gaspar, but he could be dead.”
Gaspar had crossed his arms and was looking at the doctor with an anger he didn’t understand, a rage he could barely contain; he didn’t want to keep talking. He followed Esteban to his car, a gray Mercedes. The hospital parking garage was immense and the sound of the keys echoed. Esteban had hardly spoken to him in the waiting room, though they had been there for hours. He never did say much to him. Gaspar settled into the front seat and thought about how little he knew about his father’s best friend. He worked at the Spanish consulate; Esteban had once explained that a consulate was like an embassy, only less important. His father and Esteban had met in Europe, when his mother was studying in England. He didn’t have family, wasn’t married. And that was all Gaspar knew about him.
“Why don’t we go to your house?” he asked.
Esteban started the car, lit a cigarette, and said: “Because your dad doesn’t want you to know where I live.”
The sincerity of the answer surprised Gaspar; he sat looking at Esteban, who was smoking and in no hurry to put the car in motion.
“Really?”
“Does that surprise you? Let’s go. To your house, then.”
Day had already broken and Gaspar shaded his eyes from the sun: he hadn’t eaten in hours, and that could give him a headache. He said as much to Esteban, who quickly parked in front of a diner to have breakfast. He doesn’t know what to do with me, thought Gaspar, and he’s very worried. Though he was hungry, it was hard to choke down the croissant. I hope he dies, he thought. I hope Dad dies once and for all and puts an end to all this and I can live with my uncle or with Vicky or alone in the house and I don’t ever have to think again about locked rooms, voices in my head, dreams of hallways and dead people, ghost families, boxes full of eyelids, blood on the floor, where he goes when he leaves, where he’s coming from when he returns, I wish I could stop loving him, forget him, I wish he’d die. The croissant hurt going down. Esteban downed his coffee in one gulp and smoked another cigarette. He paid without calling the waiter over, leaving the money on the table, and he signalled to Gaspar to get in the car and wait for him: he had to make a phone call from the café’s public phone. He must be calling work, thought Gaspar, or what if he was letting someone know about his dad? There was no time to figure it out: Esteban came back to the car quickly, after a conversation of only a couple of minutes. They got home equally fast: there was little traffic, but also Esteban drove with precision and a certain risky brutality that Gaspar loved. They still weren’t speaking. But once they were inside, Esteban said:
“Sleep for a while, I’ll wake you up if anyone calls.”
“Why don’t you talk like an Argentine?” asked Gaspar while he took off his sneakers. He wasn’t tired.
“I could never get used to using ‘vos.’ Some of the turns of phrase escape me, or mix together, rather. You and I never have talked much.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a child. I don’t get along with kids.”
Gaspar nodded, and then said:
“I don’t believe you. Well, maybe you don’t like kids, but I’m not a kid. He doesn’t want you to talk to me. I know it. I don’t understand why, but I can tell.”