“Now we’ll get you to the operating room.”
And she left after injecting him with a painkiller. Right away, before Gaspar and Pablo could speak, another doctor appeared, a man this time, and he repeated the same questions, the observation of the wound, the insistence on the need for surgery. He spoke of the type of suture, asked about parents. I need a responsible adult, he said. Pablo suddenly remembered the obvious. He couldn’t explain how he hadn’t thought of it sooner.
“Dr. Lidia Peirano works here, maybe you know her? Her daughter is our best friend, she’s our neighbor. She’s friends with Gaspar’s father.”
“Ah, Lidia. She’s here today, I saw her on the floor.”
The doctor picked up the phone and spoke into it. Then he prepared another syringe, lowered Gaspar’s pants a little, and gave him the injection. He also smiled at him, for the first time. You’re going to be okay, he said. That’s one ugly cut, were you running on the stairs, were you two playing? I was alone, said Gaspar, and yes, I was running down the stairs. You need to be careful, said the doctor, and he smiled again, but Gaspar didn’t smile back. It wasn’t just the pain, Pablo realized. It wasn’t just fear.
He was lying.
Lidia Peirano came in dishevelled and talking loudly. Oh, sweetheart, what happened to you? Again, the story of the fall on the stairs. Were you together? No, said Pablo, he came to get me like that. We rode here on the motorcycle. Lidia looked at them in astonishment. You can tell me all about it later, for now we have to sew you up. I’ve given him a tetanus shot, an antibiotic, and a painkiller, said the doctor, who was taking Gaspar’s pulse. He wasn’t talking to them anymore, only to Lidia. He has tachycardia, he lost a lot of blood. Lidia looked at the wound too, and shook her head. Lie back, she told Gaspar, and she placed some pillows under his feet. That way you won’t get as dizzy. Then she told the doctor, his father is a cardiac patient; as far as I know Gaspar doesn’t have problems, but let them know and monitor him, order an ECG right away. And then: How did you cut yourself so deep? I got stuck on the glass and I pulled on it to get free, said Gaspar. But honey, you could have broken the glass with your other hand. I wasn’t thinking, said Gaspar, it really hurt.
The look he exchanged with Pablo had something ferocious about it. Silence, his eyes ordered, their pupils dilated, dark blue eyes in the badly lit emergency room.
We’ll talk later, Pablo mouthed in reply, and Gaspar nodded.
The doctor took his blood pressure, and Gaspar closed his eyes. A little low, said the doctor. Let’s take him in. Miller’s on duty in surgery, the kid’s lucky. You’re lucky!, the doctor smiled at Gaspar, and then he said something to Lidia about nerves and tendons. And about how strange the wound was: there wasn’t a scratch on the underside of the arm, which was much more delicate.
“You wait outside.” Lidia went with Pablo as far as the waiting room. “I’ll let you know. What about Juan? We have to tell him.” She gave Pablo two tokens. “There’s a pay phone in the hall, call him. If he doesn’t answer, call my house, tell Vicky and have her keep calling.”
Pablo hesitated and started to say something, but Lidia interrupted. “I know he’s a strange person and he’s not good with you guys, but he’s his father. And that’s a very, very ugly wound. Do as I say.”
At Gaspar’s house the phone rang and no one answered, but Pablo imagined Juan Peterson sitting on his yellow sofa, listening to those peals like screams until they stopped.
Pablo listened while the man with the swollen foot told him how when he was young, he’d cut himself on a metal sheet at the factory, and the tetanus shot had hurt worse than the cut. He showed him the scar on his hand. I thought it was going to affect my fingers, but it didn’t. Then the factory shut down, but that’s another story. Your brother is going to come out just great.
He’s not my brother, Pablo repeated. Why did people keep making that mistake? They didn’t look anything alike. He called Vicky and told her what had happened, and she kept asking, but is he okay? until Pablo got mad. Finally she said:
“I’m not going to Gaspar’s house, especially not alone.”
“Your mom didn’t say to go, she said to call.”
“I want to go to the hospital. I’ll bring tokens and call from there.”
The call cut off as Vicky was telling him she was going to get Adela’s mom: she should be home by now, let her talk to Gaspar’s dad, or go and look for him if he wasn’t home. And Pablo returned to his seat and the wait. He was still holding the bloody towel. He suddenly remembered the motorcycle and went out to secure it. No one had stolen it, but he had forgotten to bring the chain. He ran back to call Vicky with a token he’d found in his pocket and asked her to bring it, and he also told her he’d left the garage door open. Then he sat on a bench outside the ER under a small tiled roof, facing a flower bed.
They fought and he hurt him, Gaspar’s dad had hurt him. Pablo was sure of it even though it was unthinkable and he had no proof beyond the way Gaspar was acting. He remembered that window. It was big, placed right where the stairway turned. He had brushed against it that night when he’d gone into Gaspar’s house and seen Juan with his friend, his boyfriend, that night Pablo still dreamed about and then woke up sweating, damp between his legs; sometimes he had to lock himself in the bathroom, get into the tub, close his eyes and remember Juan’s back, smooth and pale under the moonlight, and his friend’s back, marked by two painted lines, or were they scars? He tried to think calmly, to forget the circle on the floor, the smell, his own fingers clammy under the sheets every time he dreamed of those men or thought about them before going to sleep. It would be easy to fall into the glass if you slipped or tripped: it was in a dangerous location. Still, he knew Gaspar well enough to know when he was lying. And what should he do? If Juan was capable of such a thing, he had to get Gaspar out of that house. He had no tokens left, but he found some money and ran over to the kiosk to make another call.
“It’s a mess,” said Vicky. “My dad had to leave because who knows what happened at the pharmacy, they got an order in or something, and I’m stuck here with Virginia. I can’t leave her with my grandma because she’s feeling bad. Adela’s mom went to Gaspar’s. She says she’ll take care of it.”
Pablo bought a Coke but couldn’t get it down, the bubbles felt too big, and then went back inside the hospital. He sat down next to a newly arrived patient who was clutching his arm against his chest and saying he’d fallen like a dumbass in the street. Pablo could smell the alcohol on his breath. Should he call his mother? He looked at the clock: four in the afternoon. Would she be back yet? Sometimes she took a long time at the doctor’s. He had to call because she would get scared, there was blood on the front step, on the sidewalk, on the sofa, in the garage, and the towels were missing from the bathroom. The motorcycle was gone, too, though Vicky had taken the time to run over and close the garage door, so that wasn’t a problem. But the blood was. She’s going to think it’s mine and she’ll get scared, it’s a lot of blood, Gaspar might even need a transfusion. What if they give him the wrong blood type? That can kill you. Though here in the hospital they must know. What’s his blood type? I’m a universal donor, they told me, I can give him blood if he needs it.